Leadership and Memberships
- Random Hacks of Kindness, Toronto Coordinator 2010-2011, Montreal Support Team 2011
- Stand By Task Force, volunteer
- Crisismappers Network, member
- The Scream Literary Festival volunteer, 2000 – 2011 (event retired)
- CrisisCamp Toronto, City Lead 2010-2011
- CrisisCommons.org, Community Co-lead March 2010 – March 2011
Public Speaking Engagements
ICT4D: Post-Conflict Session (Commenter) (March 16, 2012, Atlanta (USA))
York University: Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami, Lessons Learnt (March 9, 2012, Toronto (Canada))
AMREF Coffee House: Mobile and Africa (March 7, 2012, Toronto (Canada))
Podcamp Toronto: Do More Disrupters (February 26, 2012, Toronto (Canada))
USDN: Urban Sustainability Director’s Network Webinar (February 24, 2012)
OpenPolicy@DFAIT: Speek Geek (February 9, 2012, Ottawa (Canada))
USRIO 2.0: Demo Ally Speed Geek Session (February 4-5, 2012, San Francisco (USA))
UN Human Rights Council, Ambassador’s Retreat (February 4, 2012, San Francisco (USA))
NGOMap (November 2011, Geneva)
ICT and Development Conference @ North South Centre, ETHZ: (November 2011, Zurich)
SMS to Map: (November 2011, London)
Mozilla Festival (November 2011, London)
Civicus (September 2011, Montreal (Canada))
NXNEi: The New Volunteers: Social Media and Emergencies June 19, 2011
NetChange Week: Mobile for Social Change June 10, 2011
GTA Linux User Group, May 10, 2011
Podcamp Toronto February 26, 2011
Ontario Ministry of Natural Resources January 2011
York University Seminar – Haiti One Year Later: Lessons Learned January 10, 2011
2010 Provincial Emergency Conference, Canadian Red Cross Niagara-on-the-Lake November 10,2010
Toronto Social Tech Unconference, November 2010
Toronto Girl Geek Dinners Toronto November 15, 2010
Mozilla Drumbeat Festival, SpeedGeek on Crowdsource Training November 4, 2011
Techsoup/NetSquared Net Tuesday – October 19, 2010
Ignite Toronto September 2010
First International CrisisCongress Washington July 2010
CrisisCommons Founders Weekend Washington March 2010
Speedgeeking Mozilla Drumbeat Toronto March 2010
Podcamp Toronto February 2010
Social Media Week Toronto February 2010
All presentations are posted on slideshare.
Event Management
Random Hacks of Kindness 4.0, Montreal, December 2011, Support Staff
SMS to Map: Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS joint event November 2011 (London, Nairobi), organizer
Ushahidi .ke Evaluation Launch August 2011 (Nairobi), organizer
Random Hacks of Kindness 3.0, Toronto June 2011, coordinator
CrisisCommons, co-lead Community Working Group (March 2010 – March 2011), event and global virtual collaboration
CrisisCamp Toronto, City Lead 2010 – 2011, Event lead, facilitation
Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0, Toronto December 2010, event lead, facilitation
Mozilla Drumbeat Festival November 2010, Blogger
International CrisisMapper Conference, October 2010, volunteer
Random Hacks of Kindness 1.0, Sydney (Australia) June 2010
Podcamp Toronto 2010, February 2010, Volunteer Coordinator
Scream in High Park 2000 – 2010, various positions (assistant back-stage manager, volunteer coordinator, and volunteer)
Media
ISN Podcast: Crowdsourcing for Change (February 28, 2012)
PBS: Ushahidi’s Distruptive Deployers: the People behind the Stories (guest post)
CNN: June 3, 2011 Hackers gather around the globe to fight climate change Gather they will, from Nairobi, Kenya, to Buenos Aires, Argentina, and everywhere in between. RHoK organizer Heather Leson has been putting together Toronto’s second RHoK and is expecting 90 hackers to attend.
“The most exciting thing is to watch brains collide,” she said. “People come from all walks of life. We have emergency managers, accountants, health care professionals, journalists, open data and open source developers, UX/UI, trainers, and many more. It is a diverse group of people lending their time, energy and knowledge in inspiring ways.”
Global News: May 11, 2011 Mapping the Manitoba and Saskatchewan Floods “A map can tell a story, change the world and help a neighbour,” says Leson. “But a map is part of the story. The real piece is that human connection of helping by doing.”
Global News: December 2010 Hacking for Humanity
“We’re building prototypes and concepts,” said Leson. “We’re creating tools that be used by local communities to help our neighbours.”
Global Nerdy: December 2010 (blog) Random Hacks of Kindness and Hacking for Good Causes
Ignite Toronto
Ignite Toronto 4: Heather Leson: Brain Sharing from Ignite Toronto on Vimeo.
September 2010: Movements.org: “Case Study of CrisisCamp Haiti”
Quote:
“Mass collaboration during a crisis will always include some chaos. We just need to find ways to ease the crowdsourcing to make it teachable and valuable,” says Heather Leson.
“My biggest challenge was balancing the software development and social media projects while trying to match the volunteers to the tasks at hand. I’ve used these experiences to guide my effort to spearhead improvements to the volunteer and CrisisCamp experience. Mass collaboration during a crisis will always include some chaos. We just need to find ways to ease the crowdsourcing to make it teachable and valuable.”
July 2010 – Cited as an Internet industry leader for transparent technical emergency communications on the Transparent Uptime blog: Transparency in Action at OpenSRS
July 2010 – Interview with Mashable (blog): How CrisisCommons Is Helping the Tech Community Help Others
May 2010 – Interview with Good News Toronto (PDF) : Cyber Saviours “Crisis-Communication Aid, a World Away”
Good News Toronto
In this monthly column (Cyber Saviours), Winnie Czulinski features Torontonians who are going above and beyond to help increase internet safety and awareness.
Feb 27, 2010 – Toronto365 (Blog) The Amazing Volunteers of Crisis Camp Toronto
February 9, 2010 – The Bulletin – University of Toronto (PDF) CrisisCamp participants offer technical assistance to Haiti
Feb 7, 2010 – Techvibes (blog) A Post CrisisCamoTO Interview with Heather Leson
January 31, 2010 – imaddicted (Blog) – CrisisCampTO
RadioCanada (French Radio) , January 30, 2010
January 30, 2010 – CBC National News- CrisisCamp (Haiti)
January 30, 2010 – Toronto Star – Offering Haiti Relief Using Laptops in Toronto
January 30, 2010- Learn4kicks (blog) More Crisiscommons Wonderfulness – a wiki training video
January 29, 2010 – Techvibes Toronto’s Tech Community Unites for Haiti
January 23, 2010 – Technology Examiner (blog) -Technology–philanthropy–disaster-relief Technology + philanthropy = disaster relief
January 22, 2010 – BlogTO (blog) Toronto Tech Community Bands Together to Help Haiti
January 21, 2010 OpenSRS.com (Blog) – Techs Volunteering with CrisisCamp-Haiti and Hosting for Haiti
