Ushahidi

Dispatch from Intl Space Apps – Part 2

SpaceApps is live in most cities now. It is midday EDT with Vancouver and San Francisco about to start their days. There are 60 spaceapp challenges ranging across 4 categories: Software, Open hardware, Citizen science & Data Visualization. Participants are in 24 cities with over 2000 people registered.

IRC: “ favorite part of this challenge experience so far has been exposure to all these awesome existing projects and datasets.”

It is no secret that I love hackathons – big, global ones. Why? Because, the idea of doing a global hackathon is in its nascent stages. Each of the attendees may go on to lead other events to shape their world. Some of us have collaborated previously and others are new. All are welcome on this exciting effort to think about ways to contribute to real world topics. The best part of a global hackathon like SpaceApps is that we are all keen to tinker and make with avid curiousity. All the attendees are completely inspiring in their drive to contribute in self-less spirited ways.

Hacking My Way To Space from Nicholas Skytland on Vimeo.

Nicholas Skyland is in between Exeter and Oxford this weekend. MetOffice news wrote about his visit. Exeter is working on setting your location with #PredictTheSky #spaceapps. The app will default to current location.
via @sophiedennis (Note: all the projects have hashtags, much like twitter. That is how we communicate via IRC and piratepad.)

Exeter is launching a man into space. Or, so they say. NYC is spinning tunes for their event: “We got NYC startup @turntablefm rocking the house at @intlspaceapps New York! Join in & spin tunes with us turntable.fm #spaceapps”, Nairobi has 25 new arduino noobies hacking hardware: (photo courtesy @afromusing)

Istanbul is also playing with Open Hardware: reading external sensors and sending them with a GPS tag to a web application.

Santa Domingo is just getting project oriented.

Conduit visited Israel #spaceapps and found this gadget

Jakarta got a visit via skype from @astro_ron

There are even virtual-only teams like Offline-Online with participants in Netherlands, US, Canada and Italy. (Disclosure: this is a project that I’m working on).

The teams are emerging, code is being built, and, most of all, people are talking about space, data and their connected journey.

Under the hood:

Global collaboration is hard, but worthy. We have parsed together Ustream, google docs, skype, IRC, scribblelive, twitter and email in a mash-up of communication mazes. All in the effort to keep the vibe and information going. here is an example pirate pad from Lausanne to show you how the cities are organizing in teams.

We highly encourage you to drop into the various Ustream channels to connect with folks and watch their progress.

Every single virtual and in-person global event we learn ways to improve the communication and workflow. It helps that there are familiar faces with experience in tech for social good. As we say, hackathons are love. We connect.

The virtual team is fantastic. Thanks Michael Brennan, Chris Gerty, Sara Farmer, Herr_Flupke, Aaron Huslage, and Willow Bl00.

Stay tuned for the next update from another team member. I’m on the early shift and need a hacknap.

Heather

16Apr

The Journey to Change

[Cross-posted from the Ushahidi blog]

When we think about maps and Ushahidi, it is often easy to get caught up in the technology. But, the biggest change is with the people who are deploying and building communities with Ushahidi. These brave souls are trying out new methods to tell map stories. Often, their efforts to break new ground in their communities and countries meet resistance. Some of the risks that they take to amplify issues of human rights, corruption, women’s rights and more are simply breathtaking. Yet, they persevere and create. When I meet these brilliant people, I am in awe of the change that they are trying to build. Their passion and drive to use map stories to be involved in their world is infectious and truly inspiring. Each demonstrate the potential of citizens to be truly engaged.

On my own journey, I meet Ushahidi community members online and in person. Often, I have the rich opportunity to watch them learn and build their projects. Our community mentors them, and they, in turn, mentor us. Whenever I am asked to speak at events, I have the honour to share Ushahidi community stories. I firmly believe that Ushahidi is a vehicle for other people’s social change. We may be part of that movement, but really, we are giving them a place to germinate ideas, unify and coordinate, model and build. Last week I had the opportunity to do this in Istanbul,Turkey for TedxSilkRoad. I shared the following stories with them:

Map it, Change it

View more presentations from Ushahidi

Map it, Change it! can be summarized by five big themes:

The power of individual to affect change and be citizen engaged. (e.g. Shemeer (Maps4Aid).
The power of relationships and networks. Partnerships exist both outside and inside formal corporations and institutions. Some of the best deployments are cross-institutional collaborations which include citizens. This can include private, public, community-based, non-government organizations, individuals and more (e.g. map.Occupy.net, Ushahidi Liberia and the Standby Task Force).
Maps have always connected us and told us stories. What if the map was no longer static, but interactive? Communities connect by topic (topical maps like human rights, corruption and more) and even include diaspora communities. (e.g. Somalia Speaks). The borders dissolve by using mobile devices and connecting to global communities.
We are collectively teaching people to “hack the map“. People first learn that they can use a map to tell a story, then they learn that they can connect with others to collaborate, and then they change Ushahidi as they evolve best practices, discover methodologies and create techniques. So, really, Ushahidi users “hack” us as they change and explore opportunities to make the software more effective for particular mission. This includes the powerful mentorship and partnership that is growing in the community. People want others to succeed in their efforts, irrespective of location.
There is a new type of social entrepreneurship evolving with these map deployments. Some start with the mission/project and others tinker with Ushahidi to find a mission/plan. All see the potential and evolve it. They are asking institutions to participate. They are asking why. They are the new mapmakers, storytellers, and disrupters. This type of social entrepreneurship is at its nascent stages. This includes groups like WaterTracker.

As part of the journey to TedxSilkRoad, we held our first ever Ushahidi meet-up in Istanbul. So far there have been two deployments in Turkey: Van Earthquake (Al Jazeera) and Mechul Orgenci (student activists). It was exciting to have them join us to share feedback and talk about future plans. Orkut Murat Yilmaz and Can Unen, who are creating an OpenStreetMap community in Turkey, also joined us. This is Orkut’s laptop being Usha-stickered.

Aksam interview

Aksam (A Turkish newspaper) interviewed me about Ushahidi. I hope that this will inspire others in Turkey to use maps to connect. (article in Turkish)

Thank you to the community members in Istanbul, to the TedxSilkRoad fellow participants and organizers of TedxSilkRoad.

4Mar

Speaking events: Mobile and Mapping

AMREF : Mobile Africa

I’m honoured to talk about the rise of Mobile and Ushahidi at this week’s AMREF coffee house on Wednesday, March 7, 2012:

Mobile Africa: How Technology is Reshaping the Continent

AMREF’s Coffeehouse Speaker Series on global development. Join us at Urbana Coffee on the first Wednesday of every month at 6:00 pm.
Technology advancements are reshaping Africa politically, socially and economically. Join us to explore innovative technology solutions being used to make a lasting difference in people’s lives.

African Medical & Research Foundation (AMREF)

York University Symposium on the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami

The online response to the Japan earthquake was an incredible surge of volunteerism. I’ll present the story of Hal Seki of Sinsai.info and his team’s mapping experiences in response to the Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami.

“The Japan’s Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami of March 2011: LESSONS LEARNT”: March 9th, 2011, 9AM -5 PM

Organized by: Disaster and Emergency Management Program

21Feb

YYZ to NBO

YYZ to NBO: Why luring start-ups to Nairobi is a good thing. Josh Erratt’s article in Now Magazine focuses on how technical start-ups from Canada can connect with the Canadian Government and the SFO technical community.

For years I, too, yearned for the opportunity to work in Silicon Valley. Employed with Internet organizations since 2000 (backbone to registrar = OSI career), my first Internet access was via Carleton University’s Freenet in 1992 and I created my first website in 1995 at library school. SFO has been completely entrenched throughout my career as the tech golden bridge. When the Dot Com busted in 2001, I held on hope for a career in Internet and to someday work in SFO. With one foot in communications and one in technology as a Technical Incident Communications Lead, I began to apply to the big organizations who had their own data centers and technical crisis communication teams.

The 280 is a beautiful drive, dinner in Chinatown (amazing), gazing at the Bay Bridge is awesome and attending events with Internet leaders is thought-provoking. There is no doubt that SFO is worth visiting and, perhaps, heeding the call to move your start-up there. To be honest, how anyone gets work down with those views is beyond me!

Ihub photo by Erik Hersman

Location, Location

Now, these aspirations seem so myopic. The explosion of great technology worldwide shows that it is time to rethink “location plus Internet” start-ups and your career. Digital activism and volunteering after the Haiti earthquake took me on a journey into other global ecosystems. Random Hacks of Kindness (RHOK), a global hackathon which I have lead in a few cities, takes place in Internet hubs around the world. By participating, I’ve had the opportunity to collaborate with Internet leaders and various start-ups. Learning about their technical communities is inspiring. But, one does not need to look only to hackathons to see where the pulse is. Read the economic reports about the rise of mobile and beyond the BRIC to emerging economies.

Why NBO?

Nairobi, Kenya’s technical community is red-hot. Disclosure: I work for Ushahidi, a Nairobi-based start-up. The ihub is brimming with start-ups, events, bright savvy entrepreneurs and amazing ideas. Every time I go to the Ihub, I am overwhelmed by the pulse of start-ups, collaboration, and new technology.

David Talbot and I had coffee in the ihub while he was researching his Technology Review article: ” Kenya’s Startup Boom.” On the ihub:

The incubator opened in 2010 and now counts more than 6,000 members, with an average of 1,000 new applications a year. Most members are merely part of iHub’s online community, but more than 250 of them use the space. Some 40 companies have launched from iHub, and 10 have received seed funding from venture capitalists. The most successful so far is Kopo Kopo, which helps merchants manage payments from M-Pesa and similar services. One key to iHub’s growth is that Kenya’s IT infrastructure has improved significantly. The first Internet fiber connection landed at the Kenyan coast in 2009 (previous service had come through satellite dishes in the Rift Valley), and the country’s first truly mass-market Android smart phone went on sale in 2010, for $80. Safaricom now counts 600,000 smart phones of all kinds on its network and expects them to make up 80 percent of the market by 2014.

What if your Internet start-up ….

Some of the brightest Internet minds and start-ups are based in Toronto. I work for a global dispersed team and have one foot in Kenya and one in Canada. While I cannot speak directly to what it takes to be a start-up, I am left with more questions? Why not Toronto and why can’t the ecosystem be changed here to keep our best and brightest here?

Why recreate the beaten path to SFO? The technical spirit of “doing” and “innovation” is happening around the world. There are mountains of technical and start-ups hubs worldwide. I encourage you to think beyond SFO to build your start-up or your Internet career. Buy a plane ticket to NBO or Malaysia.

20Feb

Do-more Disrupters: The People Behind the Stories

[Cross-posted from MediaShift: Idea Lab]

One spark and it happens: An individual or a team of people create a deployment using Ushahidi or Crowdmap. Their motivation and the inspiration are telling tales. These citizens, diaspora and a global community collaborate near and far to make change happen. Motivated often by the simple act of giving voice and building momentum for their ideas, most do so without payment.

Who are these deployers? One thing connects all of them irrespective of location or topic: They want to do more in their communities and world.

Ushahidi gives us a window into many varying disruptive movements, large or small: community members, from Syrian Tracker to Moroccan Elections Elections to Open Nuclear Iran mappers to Maps4aid.

Even children are trying to activate change outside the traditional methods or institutional structures: Amrita of Bangalore, India (8.5 years old) is a Trusted Food Reporter for the Cost of Chicken Project; kids from around the world are collecting data on local food conditions, from grade 8 students in San Francisco to grade 3 students in India; students are mapping to learn and collaborate about food production and food sustainability.

Olga Werby, Mapster and President of Pipspeak Productions.

Software Centre, the Morocco-based team led by Tarik Nesh-Nash, started with election monitoring with Marsad.ma and is now mapping corruption. Boyan Yurukov created the Bulgarian award-winning 2011 crime.bg. He also developed and installed Fairelections.eu election mapping, which was moderated by the Institute for Public Environment Development.

These deployments are aimed at giving voice to fair democratic practices. Each of these deployers mentor new mappers sharing best practices or create additional tools, like Boyan’s Facebook app. By sharing their story, they’re beginning to inspire others to map elections or corruption.

Why Storytelling Matters

Persistent outreach and storytelling are key to successful deployments. The Syria Tracker team is a collective of partnerships and volunteers, including some of our friends within the Crisismapping Network and the Standby Task Force. Over the past 286 days, they’ve mapped more than 6,300 deaths.

Melissa Elliot, left, is the Reports Coordinator for the StandBy Task Force.

Shemeer Babu is one mapper in India focused on highlighting the issue of violence against women with Maps4Aid. His next project is building out Blogs4Aid. His plan will be focused on using SMS (short message service) and maybe IVR (interactive voice response) since 90% of rural women in India don’t have smartphones. Both @maps4aid and @syriatracker use Twitter on a daily basis to keep their map story alive and in the minds of their followers, using free online resources to augment their story.

Melissa Elliot is a core team member and reports coordinator of the StandBy Task Force. This week she attended a Canadian government event to share the story of Crisismapping and volunteers. Her constant drive to make a difference in the world inspired officials to consider their first-ever Crisismapping Simulation. As a leader in a growing community that often uses Ushahidi, she is one of over 750 volunteers who map information for emergencies.

We’re delighted that these talented volunteers often assist other Ushahidi community members with their non-crisis related maps.

How can you help?

Every day deployers need support to build their projects. For example, Open Nuclear Iran needs a banner for its Crowdmap; Shemeer needs a hand determining how to grow his local project to a larger sustainable Blogs4Aid initiative; the Corruption Tracker and the Harassmap teams are looking for more volunteers to support their long-term projects.

Requests for assistance can include help with storytelling, project management, technical assistance, design customization and security concerns.

These people often use Ushahidi’s software in their spare time with no to low funding. They are the so-called “do-more disrupters.” Mentoring and help matchmaking are core to these deployers’ ongoing efforts.

We’re launching a new wiki space to assist our existing Community Connect with people who may be able to help. To find out more about this, join our community site or follow our Ushahidi blog. Who knows how you will inspire and be inspired to actively do more in your community and the world!

16Aug

Map Kibera, Kenya and Ushahidi

A map + GPS + volunteers + development = Map Kibera. My imagination of technology and mapping has been framed by a few strong examples of leadership, especially after meeting Jamie Lundine and seeing her speak at the International Network of CrisisMappers Conference.

Soon, I will have the honour to meet Jamie and her coworkers in the Kibera area. One of their projects, Voice of Kibera, uses Ushahidi. I consider this one of the more important aspects of my journey. Development using technology has its hurdles. Really, it is people who make these amazing projects happen.

Can you help Map Kibera:

Turn Maps into Action: Donate to the Map Kibera Project via Global Giving

Total Funding Received to Date: $1,715
Remaining Goal to be Funded: $2,285
Total Funding Goal: $4,000

Ushahidi: from volunteering to working

When I traveled to Ireland in 2009, I decided that I wanted to live a more meaningful life. For various reasons, I had been holding back on living my dreams and by my values. These are freeing “on paper” concepts. My family worked hard to give me the rich opportunity to do the type of work that inspires. This decision and the journey since has been incredible and, at times, very complex. Volunteering has lead me to find my calling of technology for social good and I work with Ushahidi. Now, I am constantly reminding myself to make sure that I leave time for breathing, while I focus on building community. Coworkers and the greater volunteer community of developers, translators, project managers and idea hackers leave me awestruck on a daily basis. It is motivation to do.more.act, and to take breathing lessons.

Kenya

I arrive in Nairobi on Friday, August 19th and return to Canada on September 3, 2011. While in Nairobi, I will co-work at the iHUB, run a few events, including testing Toolboxes to help deployers, and, most of all, learn as much as possible about Nairobi, Kenya, and Africa. I consider it a privilege to work for a innovative Kenyan company. And, going to Kenya will most likely alter my life as every touch point on this path has done. I am ready. Nervous because it is the big unknown, but excited and ready.

Watching the news and supporting various donation campaigns for the people of Somalia and the Horn of Africa is also on my mind. I have so much respect for humanitarian groups and encourage people to support their efforts to help. Every person can change the world and help their neighbour, even those half way around the world.

Heather

4Apr

Changes: Volunteering Globally, Nationally and Locally

Volunteering is a gift. For the past year, I have been part of the CrisisCommons – Global Core Team as the co-lead of the Community Working Group. We grew the community from US, Canada, UK and New Zealand to other events and volunteers in Australia, France, Thailand, Belgium and others. I volunteered on efforts for Haiti, Chile, Pakistan, New Zealand and Japan. I contributed to the writing of the content for the CrisisCommons Sloan Foundation Grant, especially the city and project profiles.

A number of reports about Volunteer Technical Communities have been released in the past weeks. They really speak volumes about how each individual volunteer and group changed the world. I am proud to be part of all these movements. We are friends and partners in leadership and volunteerism.

Reports:

UN Foundation – Disaster Relief 2.0: The Future of Information Sharing in Humanitarian Emergencies

Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery – Volunteer Technology Communities: Open Development

(picture by Tolmie Macrae).

Today, I made the following announcement on the CrisisCommons global and CrisisCamp Toronto mailing lists:

Morning everyone, Hope your weekend was grand.

For the past year, I’ve been your CrisisCommons Global – Community Working Group co-lead. And, what an adventure it has been. I will be stepping down from this volunteer role effective April 4, 2011. With this change, I will transition my responsibilies to Chad Cataccchio, who is a co-lead of this group. He sent a call to action for the Community Working Group yesterday.

One of the big lessons learned about CrisisCamps is preparedness. I believe in this community and will continue to volunteer as the CrisisCommons/CrisisCamp Canada lead and CrisisCamp Toronto lead.

I am honoured and proud to have volunteered in this role. I will continue to play a part within the global community when and where I can.

Thank you,

Heather L.

What’s next:

I will continue to volunteer on a number of projects including:

Grow CrisisCamp Toronto and in Canada as well as support CrisisCommons global when I can.

Continued involvement in the Missing Persons Community of Interest Working Group, CrisisCommons.

Collaborating withUshahidi friends on the on mbfloods.ca and skfloods.ca initiatives

Organize and support Random Hacks of Kindness 3.0 for June 4/5, 2011.

Mapping the world with Stand By Task Force and CrisisMappers communities.

Fostering Mozilla Drumbeat projects. There is a real opportunity to connect Volunteer Technical Communities to projects within Drumbeat. For example, P2PU.org, Webmademovies and Universalsubtitles.com offer resources which could assist these global communities. But, mainly I am fan focused on the existing projects supporting an Open Web.

20Mar

Canadian Mappers Prepare for Spring Floods

Ushahidi Mappers in Canada!

(cross-posted on the Ushahidi blog)

Be still my prairie girl heart. Laura Madison and Dale Zak spent the winter preparing for the Spring floods in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Extensive flooding is expected in both the Red River Valley and North/South Saskatchewan River regions. This is the first time that Ushahidi has been used to prepare and to report the Floods in Canada. In fact, both maps are the first time that full scale Ushahidi maps have been prepared as part of the citizen reporting and digital volunteer response in Canada. There are Canadian university classes learning Ushahidi and CrisisCamp Toronto conducted an Ushahid beta test in February 2011. Laura is very active in the Ushahidi and Stand-by Task Force communities. Dale is active in the Ushahidi team. Each of us has mapped events around the world. And, we are delighted to see mapping come home.

How to help

Ushahidi is an open source project. There are three types of help required: Mappers, Developers, and Digital Volunteers. Maps are community-driven crowdsourcing. In the coming weeks, the needs will change daily or hourly. This is the beauty and curse of volunteer digital response. Both leaders have been in contact with official responders. However, at this time, their efforts are for citizen response and collaboration.

MBfloods and SKFloods maps allow for reports to be filed by webform, Ushahidi app, iphone, android, or email. Maps allow for various layers of useful open data to be added. People will be able to add news reports, pictures and videos. Maps evolve depending on the community use. So the needs will change over time. The work they have done is fantastic. Bring on the crowd! People are needed to file reports, coordinate mapping teams for about 2 weeks. Laura and Dale will be coordinating this adventure via Skype. I am sure that the great mapping communities may lend a hand. If you are an individual volunteer or are part of a volunteer technical community, please consider contacting:

Contact Dale for Saskatchewan: skfloods AT gmail DOT com
Contact Laura for Manitoba: mbfloods AT gmail DOT com
Participate in the joint Skype channel: Add Laura (organization9) to get started.

Types of help required:

Preparedness
Laura has added layers for the Manitoba RCMP and Manitoba First Nations. She would like to add more layers. Mappers most welcome to churn out KML/KMZ files. She also needs some PHP help and Ushahidi expertise.

Volunteer Recruitment and Training
Both maps will need digital volunteer teams to support the mapping. The types of content you will be adding is geo-location, media monitoring (mainstream, twitter, facebook), and handling the various streams of online reports (webform, apps and email.)

About Ushahidi

To learn more about Ushahidi, see recently released Ushahidi manual , created by the lovely crisismapper Anahi Ayala Iacucci. It outlines how to get started with Ushahidi and implement a successful deployment. Maps need people and process to work. This Ushahidi Practical Considerations is also very helpful.

Feel free to contact me as well (heather at textontechs dot com) if you want more information or want to be connected to Dale or Laura.

(Note: I am involved a friend, a Canadian, a serial volunteer and chronic Ushahidi mapper fan club member. This is not a CrisisCommons or CrisisCamp initiative.)

Heather L.

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