Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this may cause.

It will be back as soon as we can make it happen. Stay tuned!

.

Here’s how you can get involved if you are a:

Volunteer that can attend in person: If you would like to attend a CrisisCamp in person, please sign up on one of the EventBrite pages below.

Volunteer that can’t attend in person: There will most likely be many projects that you will be able to coordinate on with volunteers at the event, so if would like to participate, please sign up on Eventbrite as well so you’re in the email loop.

Project or Organization that could use some help: If you are currently involved in a the recovery process for Sandy – preferably in an official capacity, but non-official projects that are providing a needed service are great too – and would like some help from volunteers participating in the CrisisCamp, please let us know by emailing Chad Catacchio or Pascal Schuback.

These events are free and open to the public. You don’t have to be technical to volunteer time.  Also, you may show up at anytime during the day for as long as you wish – although obviously we will get the most done with the most people there.

View Larger Map

• Auckland, New Zeland: http://crisiscampakl-sandy.eventbrite.co.nz/(connect on its Facebook Group too)
• Boston/Cambridge, MA : http://sandycrisiscampbos.eventbrite.com : @HurricaneHackrs
• DC : http://crisiscampdcsandy.eventbrite.com : with DC HackWeek
  
• Galway, Ireland: http://crisiscampireland.com/2012/10/23/crisiscamp-monthly-meetup/ (no EventBrite)
• London, England : http://hurricanehackerslondon.eventbrite.com/
• Montreal, Quebec : http://sandycampmontreal.eventbrite.com
• Portland, OR, in conjunction with CyborgCamp : http://portland.cyborgcamp.com:@crisiscampPDX
• Rockville, MD : http://sandycrisiscamprockville.eventbrite.com
• San Francisco, CA : http://sandycrisiscampsfo.eventbrite.com
• Seattle, WA : http://sandycrisiscampsea.eventbrite.com

Next week:

• Southwest FL : http://crisiscampswflsandy.eventbrite.com

Don’t see your city listed? Here’s a rundown of what running a CrisisCamp is like. If you have a venue lined up, email Chad Catacchio of CrisisCommons or Brugh Willow and we’ll get you set up. Once venues are live, we’ll add them to this list.

About CrisisCamp

CrisisCamp will bring together domain experts, developers, and first responders around improving technology and practice for humanitarian crisis management and disaster relief. Each and every day, people across the world can find themselves in crisis. Whether it be for a day, a month or an area of social distress, we all have a common need to connect with loved ones, access information and offer assistance to others.

CrisisCamps are hosted in a BarCamp style where great minds come together to share their knowledge and expertise for social good.

Image

CrisisCommons is among a group of Volunteer Technical Communities (VTCs) and others who have joined forces to launch a new initiative to bringing together the expertise and good will of software developers and the passion and knowledge of those working in humanitarian assistance.

NetHope, GeeksWithoutBounds and CrisisCommons, supported by Microsoft ak DotNetRocks, are behind the launch of the Humanitarian Toolbox. The initiative intends to create synergies for the common good.

Microsoft is playing a key role in support of the Humanitarian Toolbox by offering its Team Foundation Services as the technical platform. All of us realize that our world is increasingly coming closer together as new technologies bring testimonies of despair and tragedy to the entire globe.

We are here because we care and know we can make a difference. We also believe collaboration is at the heart of assistance during a disaster.

A Humanitarian Toolbox is the latest illustration of this principle.

More details on this initiative is available in the news section of The Humanitarian Toolbox or listen to the .NETRocks! podcast . We, at CrisisCommons, feel privileged to be among its early supporters.

Featured image

Hosted by David Black and the University of Toronto, representatives came from all over the U.S. and even Europe for the two-day event. Workgroup leads presented their reports, along with goals and plans on how each committee should move forward. After some discussion, plans were finalized and committments were made.

Perhaps the most important part of the discussion was the current status of the incorporation process. CrisisCommons has been an ad-hock network of volunteers for nearly three years now, and it became obvious that a legal entity of some sort must be created. Pascal Schuback took the lead on that and has been dealing with a lawyer provided by the Woodrow Wilson Center to help us through the process of becoming a non-profit corporation.  Soon, when the paperwork is complete, some members present at this meeting will become the first board of directors for the incorporated CrisisCommons.

More details will follow, but please don’t hesitate to contact anybody who attended for more details.

Italian Campers joining the conversation

The first Italian #SMEM Camp

The first Italian Camp on Social Media in Emergency Management took place in Bologna, on the 17th of March 2012. It has been a great camp, not only by the number of participants (40!), well beyond our expectations, but for the quality of the work done and the commitment of the whole group. 

Special thanks go to CrisisCommons for the support, guidance and for keeping us focused on the global #SMEM conversation: there is a pattern emerging from the latest kan, a model that could be replicated. We are also collaborating with Stefania Milan, researcher and Italian expat, who is helping CrisisCommons better understand virtual volunteering.

Highlights from the Camp

The SMEM theme is particularly felt in Italy as a result of some emergencies of the last winter: many of us strive to foster a serious discussion on the topic and a more effective use of social media for risk prevention and emergency in Italy.

11 short talks were made during the morning, all very interesting and varied: a presentation on the basic concepts of emergency management and the Italian context, one on the impact on the legal framework, and one on communication/official communication; two startups (Metwit and UPTU) working on the topic! and many others.

Three talks were particularly relevant for the global conversation on SMEM:

1. Alfonso Crisci presented his amazing work on Twitter semantic analysis, showing the tools used and how well such analysis could monitor an emergency, and predict risk.

2. Michele d’Alena talked about #boneve, the beautiful, enlightening case on how Twitter had been used during the last snow emergency in Bologna

3. Emanuela Risso and Flavio Ciaranfi presented the stunning case of Angeli con il Fango sulle Magliette: how to reach millions of people and engage them in few days, using Facebook.

[Quote: “Twitter is king and Facebook queen of Social Media in Emergency.”]

In the afternoon we divided into three working groups to address the best practices of Twitter usage (guidelines, hashtags, …) in three different types of risk: health, volcanoes and earthquakes, geological.

Some of the presenters at the CrisisCamp Italia

We concluded the day with more open questions that we had before the camp, but different and definitively better ones!

One month later

After the camp the discussion continued online (there are now 85 people in the group), for the questions require some answers and, as Elena Rapisardi (co-founder of CrisisCamp Italy) reminds us: “emergencies do not wait”.

Here are the main points:

• it is rooted in the “citizens as sensors” approach that, to be a sensor, means to switch from an emotional participation to a proactive collaboration. It means to learn how to be ready, how to recognize a normal natural phenomenon from a risk, and thus be proactive when coping with natural hazards and emergencies:

• there is a serious demand coming from Civil Protection bodies, rescue bodies, monitoring research centers, scholars and volunteers for guidelines in Twitter usage

• itʼs not possible not control the hashtags but it is possible to influence them, and we have to find better ways to manage hashtags

• the geographical dimension is the most complex to manage online, tools are not there yet (we could ask Twitter to improve their system, right?)

Learning how to be a proactive – and not passive – sensor, could be a huge challenge, but the main stream on disaster reduction underlines that the wave of the cultural change could come from a wider citizens engagement: 

”Disasters can be substantially reduced if people are well informed and motivated towards a culture of disaster prevention and resilience, which in turn requires the collection, compilation and dissemination of relevant knowledge and information on hazards,  em>vulnerabilities and capacities." (Hyogo Framework for Action).