Tech Community Sitrep (Jan 22, 2010)
I’m a day behind on getting this SitRep up, my apologies.
Word Doc version:
Tech community sitrep – haiti 22 jan 2010
See it inline below:
(More …)
Tagged: SitRep RSS
-
Erik Hersman
-
Erik Hersman
Ushahidi Situation Report (1/20/2010)
Dev Items:
- Reminder, please check http://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Haiti/issues for current changes/updates to the issues
- Iframe: Push changes on core to iframe (ex: http://www.haiti.com)
- Resolved items (ie, “action taken”) need to have some visual representation that that happened. Ex: I “resolved” this item and it doesn’t show up with anything on the frontend http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/584
- Get OSM back up on the map, even if it’s just as the + feature on the tab.
- Haiti Tracker: Integrating EDXL and PFIF into Sulsa. (Jon)
- Haiti Tracker: Migrating Haiti Tracker from Magpie to Simple Pie thanks to volunteers at Souktel. (Jon)
- API logger: To track API activities (Henry)
- API: parameter for the API to track where ( could be a webservice or thirdy party client ) a post is coming from http://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Haiti/issues#issue/19 (Henry)
- Updating the UI for “Categories” on the reports submit page (admin and front-end) [Caleb]
- Minor UI tweaks on home page (move download CSV button to top of page) [Caleb]
Non-Dev items:
- Process flow of 4636 system, a graphical diagram is needed. (Josh Nesbit)
- Heatmap blog post (Erik)
- Organizing of volunteer situation room teams for incoming reports (Patrick & Ory)
- “Resolved Issues” – putting a process and teams in place to gather reports back from the relief orgs in Haiti and map them to the issues within haiti.ushahidi.com (Ory & Patrick)
-
caleb
Just updated the above post to indicate completed tasks.
-
Erik Hersman
Haiti Technology Community Situation Report (1/17/2010)
Again, thanks to the InSTEDD team for providing this technology situation report for Haiti. This is an overview of the last 24 hours worth of work within the community.
Download the Word Doc:
Haiti Technology Community Situation Report – 17 Jan 2010Read it online below:
(More …)-
Eddy
This is a fine, detailed and highly specific post. Please know how appreciated that is. Keep up the great work everyone.
-
-
Erik Hersman
Wyclef, Local Radio and the 4636 Shortcode
There has been a lot of work going on in the background to get the 4636 SMS campaign in Haiti working smoothly.
If you are in Haiti, report emergency information and location by texting free to 4636
We put together a message that will be sent out via a number of channels. We’re hoping that the first to put it out will be Wyclef at his site and Here, and also streaming live right now at CNN.com. Local radio stations are also starting to pick it up, and will start broadcasting the 4636 number shortly.
“Texting emergency needs and location information to 4636 on Digicel allows the surviving population to report issues, receive alerts and useful information and most importantly to get their emergency information to relief organizations on the ground in Haiti. These services are operated by a collaborating group of organizations including Ushahidi, InSTEDD, Thomson Reuters Foundation, Sahana and the US Dept of State and provides a channel for many response and information activities on the ground”
If you want to get the message out, say something like this:
In Haiti? Text 4636 on Digicel with your location and need. Report emergencies and missing persons.
Success Stories
People looking for success stories on http://haiti.ushahidi.com can find them here:
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/761
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/584
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/606
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/642
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/view/580
Who’s pulling the Haiti.Ushahidi.com RSS feed?
Currently we know that these orgs are using our data feed from Ushahidi.
- Red cross
- United Nations Foundation
- Plan International
- Charity Water
- Clinton Foundation
- US State Department
- International Medical Corps
- AIDG
How can you help?
By sending a local text message to 4636 or internationally at +447624802524
By sending e-mail to Haiti@ushahidi.com
On Twitter with hash tag #haiti or #haitiquake
Online at http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/submitMore news and updates on this will be coming soon.
-
Erik Hersman
Ushahidi Situation Report
What we’re working on at Ushahidi currently and the point person for each issue.
Dev and Design Side:
- **critical** “Action tag” system – to tag reports with who’s reported on them (feedback loop)
- **critical** Swift River/Haiti Twitter Tracker “curated tweets” – need update and ETA [Jon & team in UG / Swift River community]
- Ensure timestamp is accurate (Github link). Note: set for right timezone? [Henry Addo]
- Search query via the API (for http://www.haiti.com and other iframe users) [Henry Addo]
- “Download data” link on frontend [Ken Kasina / Caleb Bell]
- The Flickr page should use frames from Extraordinaires so that people can help tag flickr images [Caleb Bell]
- Beefing up the How to help page, including an option to map organizations providing assistance and adding a way for volunteers to indicate where they are and what they are available to do. [Juliana Rotich]
- Clustering of Haiti Map data [David Kobia]
- Degradation of map data over time (fading out over 12/24hr period). Closely related: degrading of “resolved” items from the map, maybe to their own category only, or an indication visually that it’s been resolved. [David Kobia]
- 4636 bug reporting place needed [Brian Herbert]
- 4636 feature request: Solving for the “urgency” problem. How does an org receiving the feed understand what is the “most important”? [Brian Herbert]
- Do something with the KML overlay section (either dropdown or move under the timeline) [Caleb Bell]
- Main page: we have a banner with the SMS info and then a box just above the map. I think that’s too much. Could we please remove [Caleb Bell]
- Admin stats page for “impact” is borked (link: http://haiti.ushahidi.com/admin/stats/impact) [Henry Addo]
Non-Dev Side:
- **critical** Strategy for approval/verification situation room sustainability. Fletcher Situation Room is putting together a guide to map incoming SMS, please hold off on creating reports from incoming SMS until then. Guide should be available by 4am Boston time. (need link) [Patrick Meier / Ory Okolloh]
- Get Comcel 4636 shortcode going [Josh Nesbit and US Dept of State]
- Reports approval/verification [Juliana Rotich / Patrick Meier & Team / Ory Okolloh]
- Twitter, Blog updates [Erik Hersman]
- Situation Room & Situation Report coordination [Erik Hersman]
- Graphic explaining how the 4636 system works [Caleb Bell / design volunteer?]
-
Erik Hersman
Update as needed via the comments.
-
caleb
Main Page: SMS Shortcode announcement above map has been removed.
-
jongos
Swift River/Haiti: button is working and live on the site, should be passing all correct values accept location and username
-
Henry
Search query via the API (for http://www.haiti.com and other iframe users) : Fixed
-
Erik Hersman
Right on! Nice work Henry.
-
-
caleb
KML overlay section has now been moved to below the timeline on the home page
-
Erik Hersman
That looks a lot better Caleb. Thanks for updating the UI.
-
-
-
Erik Hersman
Ushahidi Situation Report (1/17/2010)
Ushahidi Haiti Deployment: Situation Report – Jan 17, 2010
Dev items
- Look/fix the geoRSS from the 4636 system
- Fixing bugs and adding usability features on 4636.ushahidi.com (Note: Brian is 100% on this, has no spare capacity)
- Ory’s “Action tag” system – to tag reports with who’s reported on them (feedback loop)
- Halfway done on cluster mode
- Swift River – needed VERY badly for situation room to process incoming reports (how soon?)
- Add public data download on main page (Ken and/or Emmanuel)
- Bug reports – http://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Haiti/issues
- Make sure that the comments are fixed, there was an issue with the security code
- Figure out an automated way to track who is subscribing to the feeds – Brian to busy to do it now, can we use feedburner or something – that will help me see which organizations are tracking us.
- Admin report edit log so people can see what’s been edited, what hasn’t, and a log of who edited
Design items
- “About” page formatting
- “How to Help” page formatting
- “Report” page categories
- Improve UI on KML layers: text font too large, also big massive white space below time slider
- Graphic explaining how the 4636 system works
Non-dev items
- Put together database of contacts in Haiti with affailiation and contact info for Nigel (Patrick)
- Replying to emails coming to Haiti@ushahidi.com (Patrick/Ory)
- Approving reports to Ushahdi (Patrick/Ory & team)
- Add SMS reports to map (Patrick & team)
- Situation Reports (Erik/Patrick)
- Compiling updated database for Clinton (Patrick)
- Processing of non-English email reports – Creole especially
- We need to devise an sustainability strategy ASAP, can’t keep the Fletcher Sit Room open for more than a day or two, can shift to fully virtual Sit Room but this still requires some management, not sure how to do this.
- Need to show how are data is being used, who is using, etc, stuff that Ory is trying to find out
- Flag particular reports that have critical information e.g. a hospital needs supplies and broadcast to our network but then there is a risk of noise (part of “Action Tag”)
- Encourage responders, situation allowing to let us know if an action has been taken. We can then leave a comment on a report or something. (Part of “Action Tag”)
Recently done/currently doing:
- David – Timeline fixed.
- David – Map changes/updates
- Brian – 4636 system
- Caleb – formatting on homepage
- Caleb – new language switcher
- Ory – media outreach, with focus now on local media
- Ory – closing the loop – make sure aid organizations are tracking us and that we can then track their actions if possible.
- Ory – putting together a list of who is tracking us so that we can publicize
- Ory – approving reports on Haiti admin
- Ken – cleaned up and uploaded the KML overlays
- Patrick – combing all news sources
- Patrick – updating mapping locations database which CrisisMappers group found very useful
- Patrick – managing group of 20+ volunteers, in Boston situation room and virtual
- Erik/Sarah – Media release & blog update
- Erik – Twitter & media
- Erik – situation updates & team coordination
- Henry – bugs
- Henry/David – Alerts system
- Jon – Haiti tracker: “send to Ushahidi” button, tagging and controlling for duplicates
-
Erik Hersman
Tech Community SitRep (1/16/2010)
Courtesy of the good folks at InSTEDD, here is a comprehensive situation report on the tech communities activities through 1/16/2010.
Download it as a Word Document:
Technology Community SitRep Haiti 6 Jan 2010View it online below:
(More …)
Eddy is discussing. 
Henry and one other person are discussing. 
Erik Hersman
Ushahidi Situation Report (1/16/2010)
ACTION ITEMS
Good morning American chappies, here’s an update for you… Know, the Kenya tech team is still going strong with 8 members of the community having a hack day at Java Junction.
Dev Items: (most issues are up at http://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Haiti/issues already)
- SMS shortcode: “Project 4636″ is being led by Josh Nesbit. Brian Herbert is handling all of the Ushahidi-side items. He has setup http://4636.ushahidi.com to act as the database for incoming messages. You can see more on this sub-project wiki: http://sites.google.com/site/haitireliefwiki/sms-channel/use-cases
- Timeline slider: please set default: From: Jan 2010 To: FEB 2010
- Alerts Feature: This is an absolutely critical component of Ushahidi (Jason is waiting for some help from Henry on this)
- KML Overlays: Some are still not showing up. Ken is working on this, it seems some didn’t have any images thus no visual. He’s also cleaning up the files.
- Data Export: We need another page, very user friendly UI where users can use pull-down menus to query and retrieve data, something like this (but better): http://ddp-ext.worldbank.org/ext/DDPQQ/member.do?method=getMembers&userid=1&queryId=135
- Twitter Tracker: Jon is working with Jason on the “send to Ushahidi” button, duplicates, etc. Ping him if you have spare cycles and can help and keep up to speed here: http://github.com/appfrica/haiti_tracker
- Emmanuel Kala, Tim and Linda Kamau and Victor Ngeny are all doing bug finding and squashing.
- Sahana now has a KML file of organizations in Haiti. We need this integrated ASAP, it needs to be updated as they update it: http://haiti-orgs.sahanafoundation.org/prod/gis/location.kml
Design items:
- The layout of the categories list on the submit report page needs to be made more usable: http://haiti.ushahidi.com/reports/submit
- The KML layers are pushing the news/reports section further and further down the homepage. We need to come up with a solution for this. My suggestion is to move the KML layers to be side-by-side in 2 columns underneath the timeline.
- Please format the “how to help” section so that it looks nice
- The “About” page needs formatting to make it look better.
- Can we find a place to add the “missing persons” embed code to the homepage? Maybe replace the video area? http://haiticrisis.appspot.com/embed
Non-Dev items:
- Make sure to post remaining reports on this spreadsheet to Ushahidi (note the color coding): https://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=0Avs6NHXfC9andFA0ay1qSlZReEtuUGVEWWxwbkFac3c&hl=en
- We need a comprehensive strategy for report approvals/verification past Sunday when the Fletcher team can no longer work on it. (here for more on this) Patrick and Ory are handling this.
- Local Outreach:
Important to try and get more direct reports via web and via mobile when that’s up. These are unlikely to be from citizens in the beginning given the communication challenges but we can start reaching out to local NGOs, international NGOs with whom we have contacts, local media and regional media and build from there.Ideas:
- Maybe put together an outreach kit including the one-pager flyer of Ushahidi that Caleb put together, the how to filter guide Patrick has put together, and a riff of the press release indicating why they should report information or track our reports, and asking them to let us know if the website turned out to be helpful or what can be improved.
- Translate the outreach kit into French/Creole
- Connect with the various Facebook groups and diaspora forums. - Feedback loop:
we need to find a way to ensure critical information especially from a needs perspective is getting to people who can respond. I am not sure how best to do this? Can we maybe see who is currently subscribing to our lists/alerts and keep that as living/continually updated document that is part of the outreach kit?Other ideas
- Flag particular reports that have critical information e.g. a hospital needs supplies and broadcast to our network but then there is a risk of noise
- Encourage responders, situation allowing to let us know if an action has been taken. We can then leave a comment on a report or something.
Crisis Camps:
There are several crisis camps taking place (DC, NY, Silicon Valley) which is going to include hackathons. How can Ushahidi take advantage to correct bugs, etc?
- I’ve been updating the CrisisCommons page with a few of the projects we’re involved in here. Josh Nesbit will be there in Washington DC today and will be the Ushahidi liason.
Rachel Weidinger, -
patrick
+ DEV 1 ITEM – Please change the date setting default on Time Line Slider to:
From: Jan 2010 to **FEB** 2010
-
Erik Hersman
If you look at the chart, it’s effectively just January, though the slider itself says it’s up until Dec 2010. So, not a huge issue at the moment.
-
-
patrick
What’s the status on this, we need this layer up asap. Also, clicking on the locations layer creates an error
-
Erik Hersman
None of the KML files had any gif/image to make them show up on the map. Ken has spent the last couple hours cleaning up the files and pushing them to the dev environment. The Locations/Hospital file is being pushed from “dev” to “live” as I write this.
-
-
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Hi Erik, just to point a very small mistake – http://haiti-orgs.sahanafoundation.org/prod/
-
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Crap – meant to say that the link to the Sahana Haiti instance was incorrect. Cheers, SH
-
Erik Hersman
Ahh, they changed it… Okay, thanks Sanjana. Fixing.
-
Sanjana Hattotuwa
Hey Erik – sorry for this, but the KML link on the Sahana entry also needs to be fixed. Cheers.
-
Erik Hersman
You got the right one?
-
Erik Hersman
Nevermind, found it: http://haiti-orgs.sahanafoundation.org/prod/gis/location.kml
-
-
-
-
Rachel Weidinger
Sitting at Srisis Camp Silicon Valley. What do you still need help with?
Rachel
415-793-2939
skype:rachel.weidinger
@rachelannyes-
Erik Hersman
Probably the Twitter tracker right now. That’s the one item that needs the most work.
-
Erik Hersman
Comprehensive InSTEDD Sitrep (1/15/2010)
InSTEDD’s most recent Situation Report that covers communications, mapping, coordination, medical and missing persons information as it pertains to the tech community working on the Haiti response.
Technology Community Situation Report 15-Jan, 2009 as of 2359 hours
Prepared by Luke Beckman, National Response Liaison, InSTEDD, +1-650-740-5853, Beckman@instedd.org
Download it as a Word Document here:
InSTEDD_SitRep_15-Jan-2009
Read it online below:
(More …)
-
Sanjana Hattotuwa
InSTEDD kindly mentions the emails I have been sending. There is now an updated wiki with a more comprehensive information here – http://inventory.ict4peace.org/Haiti+Earthquake+-+January+2010
Erik Hersman
Comprehensive InSTEDD Sitrep (1/14/2010)
An older one, but good to catch up on if you’re new to the project
InSTEDD’s team of Luke Beckman and Nico di Tada are creating situation reports for both their organization and SOUTHCOM. These are comprehensive reports of the ongoing technical groups working on the Haiti earthquake response, and cover everything from mapping to communications to gaps where there are still needs to be addressed.
It’s available here as a Word document for download:
Summary_for_USSOUTHCOM_on_Open_Source_1-14-10a
Read it online below…
(More …)
Sanjana Hattotuwa 5:35 pm on January 24, 2010 Permalink |
Dear Eric,
You said that “Decision-makers on the ground still do not have access to accurate, real-time data.” In addition to points noted by you as to why this is the case, the format the data is published on also comes into play. One example is the hugely valuable master contact list in Haiti published yesterday by OCHA and available on the OneResponse website as a ZIP download containing a Excel 2007 format spreadsheet with multiple tabs. Far more simpler would have been to just upload this information to the web for people to access and search? In fact, what I did was to save each tab in that huge spreadsheet as a separate file, upload it to Google Docs, publish them as webpages and link to them on the ICT4Peace Foundation wiki, referenced above. Simple, effective, efficient.
VBW,
Sanjana
Erik Hersman 6:04 pm on January 24, 2010 Permalink |
Great point Sanjana. It’s one of the constant mysteries for me, why data isn’t published in a format easy to get to, mix and reuse for multiple purposes. Don’t even get me started on PDF maps as the only format on some websites…