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Networks of people
February 7, 2010
links for 2010-02-07
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Visualizing the facts behind aid rhetoric
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Great compilation of the tools I use as a frequent traveler (w descriptions)
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Best breakdown of tech response to Haiti Earthquake
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Featuring Beka & Dan!
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Collaborative calendar
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Beautiful videos from Jacmel
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Gaming system to make the government more transparent. A brilliant concept that I'd like to port to other projects, ie. Ushahidi Mechanical Turk
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From 8 Op-Ed Contributors
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strange sounds from NYC
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For all your datamashup needs from wordles to maps
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Great study on the current blogosphere
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Interactive map of stories and actions around the world
February 7, 2010
Transparency trumps objectivity
Visualizations can help hold governments accountable. How much aid was promised? How much sent? How much actually received? And can what happens in Haiti change the conversation. Transparency trumps objectivity.
Haiti Earthquake: Who has given what
January 29, 2010
links for 2010-01-29
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Pairing youth learning with mapping and political action.
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"Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam" begins the thoughtful review of a revolutionary little book. Paul Collier reviews the work of his former student.
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Two party policy where both parties must consent to surveillance is being abused by police
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Thoughtful observation by Sameer Padania
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As always, thanks George Packer
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Straight razors are more environmentally sustainable & generally badass
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WW 1 & 2 Propaganda posters
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A look at human trafficking in NYC & China
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A response to my question of whether the iPad tablet "kill Haiti like Michael Jackson killed Iran"
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Shots of me in the volunteer situation room in Boston
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State is seeding Iraqis in US tech firms
January 28, 2010
Haiti’s need for community-led reconstruction
The outpouring of support in response to the devastating earthquake has been astounding, with over $58 million being raised by Hollywood alone through the “Hope for Haiti Now” telethon organized by George Clooney. The European Union’s 27 nations are contributing $575 million. U.S. charities have raised $470 million for disaster. The U.S. is providing the largest slice of a global response that totals more than $1 billion in government pledges. Even with the Haitian government allegedly getting only 1 cent of every US aid dollar, it’s still $100 million dollars. Haiti is one of the most corrupt countries in the world, consistently ranking in the top 10 along with the likes of Iran and Turkmenistan. Even some charities, such as Yele (formerly Wyclef Jean Foundation) on the ground have been accused of mishandling records.
What does this pot of gold of reconstruction money mean for what will actually happen on the ground?
iHelp
With the iPad trending, the focus away from Haiti relieves some social pressures to keep companies, organizations, & people focused & accountable to Haiti ground realities. Some argued that Michael Jackson ended the “Green Revolution” protests against election results in Iran. I shot a message out to Twitter wondering whether “the iPad will kill Haiti like Michael Jackson killed Iran” as a tongue in cheek response in many ways. The Iran protests have continued. Besides, Twitter was never much of a tool on the ground in Iran. It was great for bringing the story to an international public. Nevertheless, the shot was heard round the world and as more people paid attention, the pressure on the Iranian government grew as did support for the citizens of Iran. Even Chinese netizens chipped in, hitting the #1 trending topic with #Cn4Iran (thanks @mranti). But @dirktherabbit warns that
According to the Pew New Media Index… The blogosphere might indeed be prone to quickening the news cycle prone, shortening attention spans and causing us to zone out when it comes to hard news…preferring to move onto lighter topics. Like sex really.
Will social media pressure continue to be applied from trending topics? Just because people are watching, doesn’t mean they are acting. There’s been a discussion about this issue on slacktivism, which I’ve generally avoided, on exactly that. The Haiti case became interesting to me because I watched first hand from the Ushahidi Situation Room in Boston how tags & RTs helped encourage open-source collaboration. Many groups from the ICRC to @nytimes & @CNN developed separate missing person systems to help contribute to the fforts. The problem is that these efforts reinvent the wheel, forcing concerned relatives to post pictures on as many disparate sites as they can in a desperate attempt to find loved ones. My reaching out to all these groups and encouraging that they become integrated and share information, it quickly happened. The same can be said for phone, credit card and money transfer companies who started offering their services for free as part of the relief effort, in response to accusations of “profiting from misery.” Groups that refused and continue to silo information notwithstanding (ie. facebook). With the iPad trend displacing Haiti as a major discussion point it relieves some social pressures that kept companies, organizations, & people focused & accountable to #Haiti ground realities
This has rise and fall of attention spans isn’t so simple. Haiti has been a teachable moment. I’ve seen the rise in sophisticated conversations around social tools in the public that I had not seen prior to this. New media literacy was on the rise. For example, the backlash against Yele not being a suitable group to donate to or the subdued donations to the Red Cross (ICRC) because of a notice on their website that says “Your contribution will be attributed to all our activities in Haiti, approximately half of the budget for which will be dedicated to the victims of the earthquake.” With so many people literally invested in the cause for Haiti, they’re also interested in not being duped and hopeful that the money they put in is actually being used to help people. It’s critical to follow and see whether those who put money in will continue to participate in the issues that Haiti will face long after it leaves the frontpage. It’s also a much different case than Iran where people were interested but not invested financially. Those who were socially invested of course have kept tabs on developments.
Will companies be too afraid to mess this up? Will there be enough pressure on either of these types of groups to minimize the amount of corruption that takes advantage of the influx of resources? People acted on ICRC, asking for the details of why they might only transfer half of the money that is donated to it for this issue. To ICRC, it’s business as usual, yes, but transparency means that old models might need to change if they’re going to be the donors choice over more grassroots organizations like Partners in Health, who have operated in Haiti for a long time and have the trust and commitment of many in the affected communities.
Another problem is in supporting one local solution is funneling to a group at what expense. Where does funding come for others like Fonkoze and other grassroots initiatives, and to whom are they accountable – local people, international groups, individual donors?
When CNN leaves Port Au Prince, what kind of 4th estate is left to provide the information necessary for informed decision making or social development. Community journalism can solve this issue. With infrastructure being put back in place, it’s going to be invaluable to connect grassroots voices to the newly established power structures. It’s not only a teachable moment for foreigners tuning into the headlines, but also for Haitian citizens to take control and have more say in the future of their country and eliminate barriers like pervasive corruption, inequality, and hopelessness.
In the days before the earthquake, Digital Democracy already saw a potential for this kind of work, having partnered with a research team from The Fletcher School at Tufts University to work with local youth on “Project Einstein,” having them document the economics of their lives in Gros Morne. They divided into 4 teams, and we asked each team to come up with a theme about money. They chose:
- The consequences of money
- Can you live without money?
- Does money make you better than other people?
- The meaning of money
While the pictures were lost in the collapse of the hotel in which they were staying, Project Einstein team member Chrissy Martin points out that:
Gros Morne, although unaffected, will not be able to deal with the influx of young people coming from Port au Prince in search of food, jobs, and houses. They already had a lack of industry, land, and sustainable agriculture
Project Einstein Haiti
Integrating voices such as these on a national scale in a post disaster situation can be a powerful way of closing the feedback loop of information dissemination and make the process of helping people actually involve those people that much more, making it more democratic at its core. A map and photography based storytelling curriculum can transcend language barriers, define community assets and amplify local voices that might have otherwise remained marginalized. Building on the great work that InStedd, Ushahidi, Open Street Maps and other open systems now on the ground have set up in the crisis aftermath means working with tools that are flexible and can be linked into.
The system of response is starting to work better. Groups on the ground don’t have to waste as many resources looking for information, nor do they need to deploy as many people into the field when basic necessities like food and water are low. The sharing of data and the use of online volunteers bringing in personpower when it’s needed. With information more readily available, the question becomes how to get better information, from more sources, verify it and deliver it with a potential to be acted upon. Not easy questions, but better than what existed before.
I’m confident that in the aftermath of so much devastation, there can still be a rainbow leading people to the resources they deserve to rebuild their lives.
January 23, 2010
links for 2010-01-23
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Cool infographic
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Sexual politics of the internet and conservative politics. Builds off of my post about Odnoklassniki in Armenia
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China isn't the only place Google (YouTube) censors. What about Thailand, Turkey, France, Germany, etc?
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Want to help in Haiti? Here's what you can do from your computer.
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I'm speaking about technology & Ushahidi on The Takeaway WNYC
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When I met with Facebook they said that they work within the legal structure of any government they operate in. Now they've taken it even further without considering the consequences.
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Google's China statement: the view from Chinese blogosphere.
"People born in 90s: Today I stepped out of the Great Firewall and saw a foreign website named Google. Shit, it is all but a copy of Baidu.
Born in 00s: What do you mean by stepping out of Great Firewall?
Born in 10s: What do you mean by website?
Born in 20s: What is ‘foreign’?" -
The real power of Google's China statement so far: security for all
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Old news, but important in the wake of Google's China statement
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open-source relief efforts for Haiti earthquake highlighted and summarized by the Danger Room
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Cuba IT & Social Media summit summary by Nancy Scola
January 18, 2010
Haiti: this is not a test
Do countries need a 911-type emergency response system? The situation in Haiti proves that this is not only necessary, but that it needs to be open for anyone to enter and access the data.
The response to the earthquake in Haiti had shown a radical shift in relief efforts. Rather than organizations with similar interests operating against one another with siloed information, we’ve seen collaboration on an impressive scale. The quiet premise is that openness will save peoples lives.
Social media has managed to be critical to this equation in two ways. Especially in the early hours of the crisis, but certainly throughout, it provides information in near real-time and available to anyone. It also provides real-time pressure to barriers interrupting relief efforts, whether individual, institutional, or logistical.
If there’s a tweet about people being trapped under rubble and no system to respond to it, does it still make a sound? The Ushahidi crisismapping system is largly responsible for filling this gap. It’s an ambitious attempt to take any info (tweets, facebook comments, SMS, newspaper clippings, radio, etc) in English, french and creole, and process it into a map for relief efforts on the ground to respond to. By crowdsourcing information, we are able to process more data than has ever been possible before, and convert this into something useful.
Haiti.Ushahidi.com
Crowds are not experts and with an outpouring of support and requests for volunteerism from social media networks, the question quickly became how to match the manpower needs of this system with people who want to help but have no prior knowledge or experience with the system, and in many cases with technology. Can this data not only be useful to people on the ground but to just arriving as well?
To do so effectively, it required the collective effort of experts with access to highly specialized information and of a crash course methodology for introduction to the field. Patrick Meier and Jen Ziemke coordinated the first International Conference on Crisis Mapping 3 months prior, which birthed the International Network of Crisis Mappers. A highly specialized knowledge base, this email group has been instrumental in coordinating efforts to find any and all available data on Haiti to work with – maps, addresses of hospitals, organizations being deployed, contacts, etc. To have the foremost deposit of info, one needs to be able to find it first.
It quickly became clear that even the most detailed information was not necssarily useful or hard to make useful 
because they weren’t machine-readable. People who have never been to Haiti were having a hard time mapping actual locations from satellite images and a bare Google map system. The Open Street Maps community quickly sprung into action and developed the most detailed map of Haiti available, carving out actual streets from satellite images, placing and naming important landmarks, and otherwise providing this info freely to the public freely and openly without the restrictions of a strict copyright license.
Vital in any crisis is locating missing persons. A lot of sites quickly sprang up to offer their services in helping to locate them. From Google to the New York Times to CNN to The Extraordinaries. Pulling pictures from social media and submissions to their own systems, there quickly emerged the concern that work was overlapping and some people were getting lost between the cracks. A coordinated effort between these organizations meant that their systems quickly became interoperable and shared info, thus making the search more efficient and effective, rather than forcing worried people to check many different systems as happened during Katrina and other disasters. Unfortunately, some groups like Facebook continue to silo information and prevent sharing. Other efforts that are providing different services on the ground (Sahana, etc) also enjoyed the benefits of collaboration at an impromptu set of Barcamps organized as Crisis Camp. In DC, it drew over a hundred volunteers to work together at the Sunlight Labs on a Saturday.
Social media and technology has provided an important check on companies too. Millions of dollars are being donated to Haiti via SMS messages in the US alone encouraged by users in social media networks offering an array of charities to donate to and means by which to do it. Users displayed an impressive amount of new media literacy, realizing the importance of verifying how much money was going to people on the ground and how much companies would be taking off the top as a “service fee”. Pressure to Western Union & credit card companies meant easing their strict fees, in some cases lifting them entirely. Groups like Google Voice & Digicel started to even offer free calls. Without the pressure social media has by offering an instant feedback loop on relief services, companies might have continued to profit heavily from this disaster, though as Naomi Klein points out, they are likely to when the media leaves.
The Haiti example is not the first attempt at an open and collective response system. Phillip Aslock writes about the issues of Open311 in New York. The NY Senate is also working on helping create systems for relief to the large Haitian community in the city. But in places that have old systems that need to be updated, the ability to streamline and coordinate will take much longer. It will be interesting to see how the systems in NY will be able to benefit from Haiti and vice versa.
The future brings both the challenges of dead data and protectionism as well as an opportunity for more coordination and openness. Depending on the successes from Haiti, organizations will see what makes the most sense and work together to coordinate before emergencies and not only in high risk situations but in test modes. While it was thrilling to figure out how to streamline the systems in an emergency, to really work, this will fundamentally change the way that countries, non-profits and relief organizations work, based on transparency and supported by accountability. The earthquake in Haiti might have sparked the movement to get this all going.
January 12, 2010
Top Books of 2009
While I don’t get much time to read, I did manage to find a great book: my iPhone. I have to concur that it’s been a huge help to me whenever I’m trying to read during travel and don’t want to drag along a big book. My arsenal consists mainly of free literature, either classics books that have entered the public domain or those that were published under creative commons (ie. Lessig, Doctorow, etc). I even get a bunch in Russian. Shout-out to Stanza, the self-described “revolution in reading” for being a stellar iPhone e-reader app. Byline does a great job of syncing my RSS feeds via Google Reader where NetNewsWire failed (though I still love the desktop client).
Other hits? I’ll make quick shout outs to:
- THE PHOTOGRAPHER, by Emmanuel Guibert, Didier Lefèvre and Frédéric Lemercier – experiences in Zaragandara, the Afghan town where Doctors Without Borders set up a makeshift hospital.
- Dead Aid, by Dambisa Moyol. She posits that aid is the root of Africa’s problems. While a good devil’s advocate perspective, Paul Collier has the best review of the book, stating that “Dambisa Moyo is to aid what Ayaan Hirsi Ali is to Islam.”
