Techs are superheros. I'm a bridge.
In December, I had the honour to present at the United Nations Spider meetings in Vienna. Here are those presentations with details notes:
Coining Global is a state of community for where Crisismapping and Digital Humanitarianism should grow:
Hurricane Sandy saw the rise of many Crisismapping projects, including the great Hot or Not test of satellite imagery. There was also a large number of Crowdmaps launched:
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:
(picture by Tolmie Macrae).
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.
I will continue to volunteer on a number of projects including:
Do something. During the CrisisCommons response to Haiti, I learned about the Crisismappers network. When the Chilean earthquake occurred, our CrisisCamp Toronto team got a crash course in Ushahidi and crisismapping by creating training materials while we learned how to map. We also volunteered for the Pakistan floods using the same tools and community networks. I became hooked. Geo-locating situational awareness and potential needs to provide context to humanitarian response continues to evolve. I am a mapper-in-training (MIT) and a serial volunteer.
In October 2010, I attended the International Conference of CrisisMappers. The calibre of organizations, academics and volunteers inspired me to join the newly formed Stand-by Task Force (SBTF). The SBTF is a collective of highly skilled, diverse people from around the world who can be activated to respond. As George Chamales of Konpa Group likes to say: a map is only as useful as the process and people to make it happen. It is hard, iterative work to map. But, the rewards mean contributing to a new, visual response. In January, I volunteered with the SBTF monitoring the Sudan elections with sudanvotemonitor.com. I spent time working with the geo-locating team.
I could spend a few years learning and still not be an expert. Everyone starts somewhere. While I have volunteered with Ushahidi and maps for a year, there are many layers. The CrisisCamp Toronto team is modeling and testing maps as a volunteer offering. We created Snow in Toronto. I applied the SBTF methods and cross-trained my local peers on how and what to map using the best practice templates and processes.
Mapful. The last weeks included large scale responses for the Standby Task Force and CrisisCamp. Digital volunteers from many groups have answered the call to action.
New Zealand – eq.org.nz
Monday, February 21st was the end of a long weekend. Upon checking my twitter stream around 20:30, I learned about the earthquake in New Zealand. I logged on to skype and began collaborating with people from around the world for 8 hours straight. We activated the Stand-by Task Force to assist with the initial response and training. I was given the honour to chronicle the experience on the Ushahidi and CrisisCommons blogs: Launching eq.nz.org for the New Zealand Earthquake.
In 12 days, the CrisisCamp New Team and friends have filed 1,355 reports and 10 layers of information. Their work has been chronicled on the CrisisCommons wiki and blog.
All the NZ folks like Tim McNamara, Robert Coup, Nat Torkington, Gavin Treadgold and hundreds of volunteers are changing the face of emergency response in NZ and inspiring people around the world.
Libya
The Stand-by Task Force was activated this week for a special project for the United Nations – Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (UN-OCHA). This historical action involved crisismappers in the humanitarian response. I joined the SBTF deployment team and began research social media resources and mapping. Four days later we have hundreds of reports verified and continue to volunteer. This effort included many diverse groups – CrisisCommons, Humanity Road, CrisisMappers, Google Crisis Response Team, NetHope and OpenStreetMap. Patrick Meier, Director of Crisismapping at Ushahidi, and Sara Farmer, Chief Platform Architect at UN Global Pulse blogged about the the Libya response. The map is not publicly available at this time due to the sensitive nature. Mappers do no harm, we just want to help. In time, it will be available. Volunteers are most welcome. You can contact the Standby Task Force.
Digital volunteers from the various Volunteer Technical Communities (VTCs) are involved in crisismapping. There are hard-core geo mappers like the OpenStreetMap and the Google Earth folks. And, there are groups like CrisisCommons, Crisismappers, and Humanity Road who provide surge capacity and often focus on situational awareness and research from social media, media and official sources. Add to this, the Ushahidi development team and other technical volunteers.
Who are these digital mappers? Well, they are doers. A mapper doesn’t want to talk for hours about doing, they just do. It takes a new volunteer about 4 hours to wrap your head around the process and begin to really dig in. The SBTF have worked on a number of deployments and are very open to new members. We are the people who map for 3 hours at night instead of watching tv. We are the people who wake up early before work, log into skype and add a few reports to the map. We map at lunch. We are the people who may drop everything to map for 4 days. We are communicators and friends. And, we believe that a map can and does change the world. Every day I am more and more honoured to call myself a mapper. While it might not show immediately that we are making a difference, it will in time. Iterative change starts with a few hours and a few dedicated people who want to make a difference.
Heather
The CrisisCamp Toronto team has been working hard to prepare for CrisisCamp Social Media in Canadian Emergencies. This morning I was delighted to receive some great response from the IAEM – Canada mailing list. Our goal is to connect the spirit of Canadian startup innovation, internet savvy and emergency managers.
When: Saturday, February 19, 2011 10am – 5pm Where: University of Toronto, OISE 4th fl
LiveChat- Social Media in Canadian Emergencies on Saturday, February 19, 2010,
14:00ET, 11:00PT for one hour
We’re hosting a tweetchat (live chat on twitter.com). If you search twitter.com for #CSMEM you can follow all the comments. If you have a twitter account, please use the hashtag #CSMEM and add your province code. (Eg. SK, NFLD). This session will be held in both English and French. We will have translators to help. It is our hope to host these regularly. Our American friends use the #SMEM hashtag.
Twitter hashtags
Follow us on Twitter : @crisiscampTO
#CSMEM
#CSMEMchat
Also see: @crisiscamp, @crisiscommons and #SMEM
I saw a demo of Scribblelive at Hacks/Hackers this week. I think it is a great fit for CrisisCamp Toronto’s event. It is all set up and ready to start posting content tomorrow morning. I also downloaded the free Iphone app. If it works for this event, I’ll be recommending it for more events in the future both in Canada and globally.
We will try to stream and record the morning sessions. This will help other folks learn. Again, it will be active around 10:00 ET on Saturday.
10 – 10:30ET – Introduction
10:30 – 1:00ET Morning session
Education Stream
We will run these three sessions, three times. You can pick which one you want to attend.
1. Emergency Management 101/Emergency Management in Canada
2. GIS/Mapping 101
3. Social Media 101/CrisisMapping 101
Dev and Tool Testing Stream
*Crowdmap/Ushahidi 101- test case and cross-training
*Ushahidi small code features – TBD
Other activities:
*Prep for #CSMEM Twitchat
*Canadian Virtual Volunteer Team planning: help us brainstorm credentials and organization for this idea.
1:00ET Lunch
Afternoon: 1:30 – 4:30pm
2:00-3:00ET – Live chat on Crisis Commons and Social Media in Emergency Management (skype – Heather Leson – Twitter #csmem)
1:30 – 2:00 Brainstorming ideas with Melanie on CrisisCommons Canada activities
3:00 – 5:00 ET
1. Project Demos
CrisisCamp Toronto wants to pick a project to work on. Demo your project idea in 5 minutes, then we will vote
2. Project Planning
We will build out the project requirements and next steps
3.Ongoing work playing with tools will continue in the other rooms.
5pm Event complete.
Join our CrisisCamp TO Mailing list
Comment