News — 26 April, 2012
Washington DC is Nothing... but HOT next week!
Next week the Board of Directors of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is descending upon Washington D.C. for a strategic planning meeting. You may have previously seen an announcement on some of the digital volunteer oriented mailing list. The micro-grant provided by the Wilson Center is providing facilitation and support with help from the Meridian Institute to further refine our mission and goals. Along with this high-level meeting we've used the opportunity to speak at other events in the area. We hope to see you at some of them.
May 2nd 7:00pm-? GeoDC - Crisis Mapping Focused May Meet-up
Next week the Board of Directors of the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team is descending upon Washington D.C. for a strategic planning meeting. You may have previously seen an announcement on some of the digital volunteer oriented mailing list. The micro-grant provided by the Wilson Center is providing facilitation and support with help from the Meridian Institute to further refine our mission and goals. Along with this high-level meeting we've used the opportunity to speak at other events in the area. We hope to see you at some of them.
May 2nd 7:00pm-? GeoDC - Crisis Mapping Focused May Meet-up
With the heavy presence of HOT next week many of us are speaking at GeoDC. GeoDC is Washington DC's mapping and GIS related meet-up. Nicolas Chavent, Harry Wood and I will be speaking about topics specifically related to HOT. Nicolas about the current work in Haiti as well as the progression in mapping there since the earthquake. I'll be discussion HOT's pilot work in Indonesia with AusAID to determine the feasibility of using OpenStreetMap data to feed impact models. Once Nicolas and I have everyone excited about the work that HOT is doing then Harry will explain how you can get started helping.
Schuyler Erle and John Crowley are also board members for HOT will be speaking about other projects. Schuyler Erle will be discussing his recent trip to Mexico to assist in a community mapping and reporting program. John will be discussing the recent Camp Roberts exercises and what is happening going forward with the exercises this year. The next one will be in Washington D.C. and at least a few members of HOT will be attending.
May 3rd 9:00-10:30 Crowdsourcing for Disaster and Humanitarian Response Response at the Wilson Center
This event will be a general overview of HOT. We believe that free and open geographic data is vital to effective humanitarian response. How does HOT provide that information during a disaster response? How does crowd-sourced infrastructure information compliment traditional datasources? What preparedness projects are currently happening? These are the types of questions will be answering. If you have any specific ones you'd like covered please let me know and we'll try to touch on them.
For this event we will be trying to UStream Coverage, this is Wifi allowing. If you cannot attend physically you should try joining HOT's channel there.
May 3rd 1:00pm-6:00pm Mapping for Disasters and Development at the World Bank/in conjunction with Interaction
Interaction is a alliance of U.S. based development NGOs, they are having their Members Forum next week which means there are many staff from their member NGOs in Washington DC. With this opportunity they have teamed up with the World Bank to host an event about utilizing maps for disaster response and for development. This event is designed to give an overview of what type of mapping projects are possible, what some of the technology is that is available so when implementing a project individuals have some idea of what is possible.
Mikel Maron will be speaking about community mapping during the plenary, Nicolas Chavent will be giving a lightening talk about HOT in Haiti and I will be providing an introduction to OpenStreetMap during the workshop portion of the event. Abby Baca from the Global Facility for Disaster Reduction and Recovery will be speaking during the plenary as well, GFDRR has been involved in HOT's work in Indonesia and her talk will touch on our partnership. There are other great talks lined up as well. I'm particularly excited to see Linda Raftree talking about "Piloting the use of GPS/digital mapping in transparency, accountability and governance work with youth in Cameroon and Kenya" and Tariq Khokar speaking on "What's the role of open data in development." Unfortunately this event is already sold out, but if you are lucky to already be registered see you there!
Hopefully see you around at one (or all) of these events next week!