Watch: Us Now

27 05 2009

I’m two days into my new internship at the Center for American Progress and I’m excited to be working here at this time – i.e. at the beginning of the Obama administration and helping to build CAP’s social network engagement. Working full time from 9-6 means a “real world” kind of summer. As for my previous Debbie Downer post, I’m okay now and adjusting much better. I feel oriented in DC and have begun to make some friends.

I’ve also been trying to get a start on my rationale/colloquium topic for graduation (trust me, it’s still in its convoluted/overbroad stage). Trying to find some inspiration, I watched this documentary that was recently launched online (May 12) by London-based Banyak Films – it’s titled Us Now. The documentary helped me formulate some key ideas on the topic of “mass collaboration, government, and the internet.” It takes a look at collaborative websites such as CouchSurfing.org, Mumsnet.com, and MyFootballClub.co.uk.  The case study of MyFootballClub.co.uk is particularly intriguing – the club is the first web community to own a football (read: U.S. soccer) team, Ebbsfleet United, while also deciding how the team plays by vote (e.g. player positions, budget, etc.); not to mention Ebbsfleet United went on to win the FA trophy at Wembley in 2008.

Us Now examines these sites’ successes as precursors to new forms of participatory government. The video below is only a teaser clip of some especially insightful parts of the documentary.

You can watch the hour-long documentary online in its entirety HERE.


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Categories : NY in DC, social media

(Rough) Beginnings of a DC Summer

19 05 2009

Admittedly I am writing this blog post so I can feel like I’m talking to someone (as opposed to no one). I made the move to DC on Sunday.  After undergoing brief paralysis from sudden change, I spent the day unpacking and the night roaming DC.  I managed to pick up a late dinner at the only open place – none other than Heidi’s Brooklyn Deli (I ordered a Nathan’s hot dog and Manhattan clam chowder, haha).  On Monday I found my way to Trader Joe’s and somehow managed to lug back two 20 lb bags of food. I spent today (Tuesday) with my aunt, uncle, and little cousin – they live nearby in Virginia so it was easy to reach them by Metro. We went to Target, got ice cream, and food. They dropped me off at my apartment around 8 and I’ve since been wasting away my night (as I’m now accustomed to doing) by watching TV shows online.

The reason this post reads like a diary entry is because that’s basically what it is. I am in DC on my own and for the first time, I have to be completely independent and self-sufficient. This situation is not my forte. My Twitter bio says I “thrive when with loved ones” for a reason (okay, sorry, that was a bad example).  

To be honest, I’m struggling with how to spend my free time, how to be productive, and how not to feel lonely.  At times like these I normally call my mom, but she’s in Thailand for the next three weeks and not always available. I don’t want to cling to my aunt/uncle/cousin too much because I want to make it through this next week as an adult (I mean, by myself). Mallika (my roommate) and Max move to DC at the end of next week and I start work next Tuesday after Memorial Day. I know my new move isn’t a big deal but regardless, I get upset every time I confront the prospect of a full day/week with no set plans. I don’t know what to do with myself. At this point, I’m going to suck it up, pretend I didn’t just emo-word-vomit a blog post, take a shower, and go to sleep.


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Categories : Everyday/Life, NY in DC

InSTEDD Interview Recap

14 05 2009

Sorry for not updating in a while. Last week I was busy finishing up the semester and moving back to NJ, and now I’m preparing to move to DC this weekend. With my downtime at home, I’ve been finalizing this ICT for Disaster Response project and writing up my DigiActive post on InSTEDD’s Mekong Collaboration Program. Which reminds me, I have yet to blog about my experience with interviewing InSTEDD’s team members.

So close to submitting the post for review!

So close to submitting the post for review!

Two Sundays ago, I Skype-chatted with Ed Jezierski (VP of Engineering) and Shannon Oliver (Director of Communication, Mekong Region) for about an hour each. Ed had recently flown to Seattle from InSTEDD’s center in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, whereas Shannon was still stationed in the region. I spoke with Ed first, whose technological expertise provided a detailed explanation of how InSTEDD uses its collaboration tools (GeoChat, Mesh4X, Evolve). The bandwidth in Cambodia wasn’t cooperating at first, so Shannon and I had to wait a few hours before reconnecting (Ed said the slow connection presents an everyday problem to communication between team members). When we were finally able to connect, Shannon presented a thorough overview of InSTEDD’s background, mission, and projects in the Mekong region; he helped me understand the recent successes of the organization and nicely complemented what I had learned from Ed. Both men were very enthusiastic about answering my questions and I felt like I came away with a lot of information (read: I recorded over two hours of conversation). They thanked me for the interview and encouraged me to Skype them if I had further questions.

I’ve spent the past couple days listening to the two interviews and jotting down important features to discuss. I just finished the draft of my DigiActive post an hour or so ago. Though it seemed pretty daunting to synthesize all the interview information into a blog post, I somehow managed to do so (not gonna lie, the post is rather long). Given all of the success InSTEDD has had with its innovative technology, I’m glad I have the opportunity to give their work more much-deserved attention (no pressure, right?). I’ll link to my post once it’s up on DigiActive’s site :)

UPDATE: The post is up, you can read it here.


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Swine Flu and Twitter

2 05 2009

Since it’s finals week, I’m going to keep this post short and to the point. Conveniently enough, that’s exactly what Twitter is made for.  

  • The CDC’s emergency Twitter feed (@CDCemergency) JUST announced that they have isolated the H1N1 virus that causes swine flu – this is great news because it means we should have a vaccine ready by next winter, when flu season starts up again and we’re more at risk of a pandemic (it’s warming up now so it’s harder for flu viruses to spread).
Good news.

Good news.

  • Another great Twitter account to follow is @Veratect – professionals in the field have been following it for a steady stream of the latest reported cases of swine flu around the world.

Of course, in the case of emergencies and the Internet (and Twitter, especially), there’s always the problem of separating valid information from rampant speculation and plain misinformation. My response to the argument that Twitter only serves as a medium for noise: the fact that Twitter functions as a community where people can @reply others and link to trusted news sources allows for a self-policing of information.  If someone says something false or misleading, there’s a strong chance that another Twitter user will address this person and provide accurate information.  Twitter by itself is never the best source for news – it’s the best source for linking to other sources and for facilitating conversation.

Hm, did I say this was going to be a short post?  This InSTEDD resource, Trackernews.net,  is also amazing – aggregates lots of different articles/sites for swine flu information


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Categories : ICT for Disaster Response

Current Developing Crises

27 04 2009
Residents wear surgical masks while riding the subway in Mexico City, Monday, April 27, 2009. Mexico's government is trying to stem the spread of a deadly strain of swine flu as a new work week begins by urging people to stay home Monday if they have any symptoms of the virus believed to have killed more than 100 people. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Residents wear surgical masks while riding the subway in Mexico City, Monday, April 27, 2009. Mexico's government is trying to stem the spread of a deadly strain of swine flu as a new work week begins by urging people to stay home Monday if they have any symptoms of the virus believed to have killed more than 100 people. (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)

Over the past couple days, the international community has been monitoring the somewhat-panic-inducing spread of swine flu, which the World Health Organization has declared could become a pandemic.  With over 100 deaths and thousands of potential cases in Mexico, swine flu has also been confirmed in about 40 people in the United States (including 28 students in a school in Queens), all of whom have recovered or are recovering.  Elsewhere in the world, this strain of the flu has been found in Spain as well as in Canada.  This is a new viral strain of influenza (combining human, avian, and mostly swine flu components) and is transmitted from person-to-person, not from pigs or eating pork.  NPR seems to have a great lineup of articles whereas Mashable offers some ways to track swine flu online via RSS reader/GoogleNews or Healthmap.org (definitely check these sources – they’ve helped me stay informed and also calmed me from my overactive anxiety).  And, of course, there’s always the real-time #swineflu hashtag and trending topic on Twitter.  Paul Currion of humanitarian.info also lists good resources from the WHO and CDC.

Update 4/28: From InSTEDD’s most recent blog post, regarding their involvement in the swine flu situation: “From the early hours of this outbreak, we’ve been engaged with WHO in Geneva and we’re working to support the public health community at large in tracking and responding to this event.”

Update 5/1: President and CEO of InSTEDD, Eric Rasmussen, posted yesterday about the relevance of InSTEDD’s Citizen Guide to Pandemic Influenza, aka the Flu Manual – it’s available for free download here. Without being at liberty to say much about the organization’s work regarding the outbreak, he points us to two good resources:

Internally we’re following the notifications on Twitter from Veratect (www.Twitter.com/Veratect) and reading the really exceptional work that Janet Ginsburg is doing on TrackerNews.net. Don’t miss her hair-curling blog on factory farms and their infectious disease risks at www.TrackerBlog.InSTEDD.org.

P.S. I plan to interview InSTEDD team members this weekend about their use of technology in the Mekong region. It’ll be interesting to hear how they think their tools can be/are being applied to the current disease outbreak.  Expect a post on my experiences later next week.

Update 5/2: InSTEDD talks about how they’re using Evolve - one of their main tools – to visually track (on a map) and collaborate around the latest information on swine flu. It’s really interesting, make sure to look at this picture for an understanding of what Evolve does.

HealthMap's visualization of news from around the world concerning Influenza. The markers are color-coded for "hotness," or intensity of the disease (see Mexico).

HealthMap's visualization of news from around the world concerning Influenza. The markers are color-coded for "hotness," or intensity of the disease (see Mexico).

Another developing crisis in the world is taking place in Sri Lanka as the civil war continues between the government and the Tamil Tiger rebels, or LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam). Based on my very limited understanding of the ongoing (25 years, to be exact) situation, the Tamils recently called for a unilateral ceasefire, which the government refused to acknowledge.  The UN urged for the end of combat, concerned for the safety of the civilians caught in the Northeastern region war zone. Though this crisis is not exactly on-topic for my project on ICT for response to natural disasters/disease outbreaks, I’ve found that this particular activist field spans most humanitarian emergencies. ICT is widely used for crisis mapping as well as war/violence response in places like the Sudan.  The Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) team situated in Thailand has been closely monitoring the situation in Sri Lanka but reports little access to the country to provide humanitarian relief.  Their latest status: “A TSF emissary has been in Sri Lanka since Sunday April 26, in order to assess of the situation and prepare for an eventual deployment of personnel and telecommunication equipment.”

Sri Lankan soldiers. From NYTimes article, click on picture. Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press

Sri Lankan soldiers. From NYTimes article, click on picture. Photo credit: Eranga Jayawardena/Associated Press


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Categories : ICT for Disaster Response

“Coordination is not a luxury. It is an absolute necessity.”

26 04 2009

On April 24, 2009, just two months shy of the 4.5 year anniversary of the December 26, 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, delegates from the five most affected countries – Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand, India, Maldives – gathered in New York for the Tsunami Lessons Learned event. Reporting on their continued relief and recovery efforts in the years since the disaster claimed almost a quarter of a million lives worldwide, these countries met with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, UN Development Programme Administrator Helen Clark, and Bill Clinton, former President & UN Special Envoy for Tsunami Recovery.  Below is a rather choppily-edited video featuring remarks from each of these officials as well as images of recovery in the severely-affected coastal region.

Without a full transcript of the report, I can’t be sure how often the delegates discussed their use of information communication technologies.  What is clear is that all of the countries have worked toward better and quicker disaster management (which includes disaster reduction/early warning and preparedness, with the aim to decrease the need for emergency response).

Perhaps my favorite part of Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon’s speech is his acknowledgment of the countries’ shared strength: coordination.

The tsunami recovery was unique in this respect. All Governments have emphasized coordination.

India has established a National Disaster Management Authority.

Indonesia has created a Rehabilitation and Reconstruction Board.

In Maldives, the Government set up a National Disaster Management Centre, while in Sri Lanka, the tsunami was a catalyst for the creation of the Ministry of National Disaster Management and Human Rights.

Thailand enacted a Disaster Prevention and Mitigation Act and a high-level command for disaster response.

The United Nations matched the effort by establishing a “One UN” office for Recovery Coordination in Aceh and Nias.

Coordination is not a luxury. It is an absolute necessity.

Read the rest of this entry »


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Overview: InSTEDD

20 04 2009

InSTEDD = Innovative Support To Emergencies Diseases and Disasters

“The InSTEDD Platform: Collaboration Technology for Humanitarian Action and Global Development” via Slideshare

This is a presentation created by InSTEDD’s Chief Technology Officer, Robert Kickpatrick, about their 3-part collaboration technology suite for humanitarian response to global health emergencies.  If all goes well (which I think it will!), I should be interviewing InSTEDD team members this week for a Digiactive.org post on key aspects of their Mekong Collaboration Program.  The presentation above gives a great overview of their platform and tools. Read the rest of this entry »


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Categories : ICT for Disaster Response

“Natural” Disaster or Not, Response is Key

20 04 2009

While browsing my Netvibes tab, I came across a post from Development Gateway’s Disaster community about the contested definition of a “natural” disaster.  On the one hand, consider the UN’s definition: “the consequences of events triggered by natural hazards that overwhelm local response capacity and seriously affect the social and economic development of a region.”  On the other hand, humanitarian activists question whether natural disasters are indeed “natural” in the sense that they occur without provocation – an “act of God,” as it were.  In a world of human-induced global warming and climate change, the number of natural disasters (hurricanes, floods, earthquakes, etc.) worldwide is rising accordingly.

This same debate comes into play with disasters that occur as a result of human intervention (or lack thereof).  As with the recent “mini tsunami”/dam collapse in Indonesia, many local bloggers are demanding the government be held accountable for its negligence and poor maintenance of the Situ Gintung dike.  Though the dike was built almost 80 years ago by the Dutch colonial government, people still lived in the surrounding dangerous area.  When it burst (after people reported leaks for some time), it destroyed hundreds of nearby homes and took approximately one hundred lives.  After the jump: one of the videos embedded in the very informative Global Voices article; shows one village after this tragedy.

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L’Aquila Earthquake: From Online to On-the-Ground Response

13 04 2009

About this time last week, a 6.3 magnitude earthquake struck L’Aquila, Italy, killing approximately 281 people in the region and injuring over 1000 others.  With towns and homes destroyed, estimates of the number of displaced and homeless are upwards of 20,000.

via Breaking Tweets: #earthquake (Posted by @Buonaiuto in LAqulila, Italy)

via Breaking Tweets: "#earthquake" (Posted by @Buonaiuto in L'Aqulila, Italy)

As we’ve seen the immediacy of social networks like Twitter and Flickr in reporting past disasters (e.g. the earthquake in California this past summer, the Mumbai terrorist attacks, the airplane crashes in NY), local Italians were the first to break the news of the earthquake (or, #terremoto & #italy hashtags) via Twitter. Twitter user, @danybus1, tweeted about waking up to the earthquake. Much thanks to Global Voices bloggers for aggregating such great responses.

Twitter user @danybus1, tweeted about waking up to the earthquake. Much thanks to Global Voices bloggers for aggregating such great responses.

The following tweet reads (again, thanks Global Voices): "Awaken by the earthquake, look up immediately info on twitter (and I find them)"

Not only did Twitter help spread the word of the disaster in the hours following its initial destruction, but over 500 Facebook groups were created during this critical time, in which people offered their volunteer efforts, their homes for  victims, and their support.  It isn’t clear from the Global Voices post whether any of these people indeed secured housing for earthquake victims to live in, but Facebook was definitely used as a medium to help coordinate citizen action.

On the relief organization front, Télécoms Sans Frontières (TSF) reported on its blog that it had deployed a response team by April 6th.  TSF (or, “Telecoms Without Borders”) is a French organization with other offices in Nicaragua and Thailand.  Priding themselves on being “deployable anywhere around the world,” TSF specializes in rapid disaster response by establishing ICT hubs in the worst affected areas. Through these hubs, they help connect victims with their family members in the country and abroad.

The TSF team set up mobile networks as well as camps in the Abruzzo region (of which L’Aquila is the capital city). They further assist search/rescue teams by providing access to broadband Internet and phones via mobile “satellite-based terminals.”  And, since many homeless/displaced victims still have their mobile phones with them, TSF set up a generator in the largest shelter (Paganica) to allow people to charge their phones.

Not only did online communities like Twitter enable citizens to report the disaster, but this immediate reaction helped effect rapid response to an urgent situation.  In that ICT means quicker newscasting, it also synchronizes quicker coordination and subsequent action by humanitarian organizations and dispersed individuals.  Because of this ability,  ICT tools will become increasingly integral to disaster response campaigns.

As I work to become more well versed in this area, many of my next blog posts will look at established groups like TSF (”In the past 10 years TSF has deployed to 11 earthquakes world wide”) and analyze the effectiveness of their work in saving innocent lives.

P.S. I’d love to hear any feedback you, my dear readers, might have about this new direction for my blog.  Are you interested in the use of ICT for humanitarian relief?  The role of social media in responding to disasters?


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Categories : ICT for Disaster Response

ICT for Disaster Response

13 04 2009

For the final project in my Globalizing Social Activism & the Power of the Media course, I’m blogging about a global cause of my choice.  After much uncertainty, I decided my topic should delve into the use of information and communications technologies (ICT) for disaster response.  Why this specific area of ICT use?  My cousin died in the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami (she had been working in Phuket, Thailand at the time). My family knows firsthand the emotional pain of not being able to locate a loved one after a disaster; without going into further detail, her remains were not identified until about year later. Combining this sensitive part of my family’s history with my blatant enthusiasm for the potential of the Internet/technology/new media, this topic becomes personally relevant.

Over the next four weeks, this blog will shift slightly in direction, to the sphere of activism and humanitarian relief.  As I’m not accustomed to posting two entries a week, this assignment should be good for my blogging muscles.  As a general overview, my posts will examine the ways in which ICT enhances people’s/NGOs’ abilities to communicate and coordinate relief efforts.  After all, in emergency situations such as tsunamis, earthquakes, and epidemics, people’s lives are at risk and timeliness is key.  In that humanitarian organizations/aid workers use ICT to effectively communicate with headquarters as well as with other relief groups, everyone can properly allocate resources while simultaneously  sharing critical information.  Victims, too, can use telecommunications tools to contact loved ones, let family know they’re safe, and ask for aid. Put simply, information communications technologies (mobile phones and laptops, SMS and micro/blogging, etc.) save lives by connecting various relief efforts in a rapid, collaborative way.

Expect more posts soon about specific organizations and disaster relief cases (e.g. last week’s earthquake in L’Aquila, Italy and Télécoms Sans Frontieres’ response team).


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