What an amazing few weeks connecting in person with deployers on two continents! Please consider this a 3-week wrap-up of great projects and people. While traveling, I met deployers ranging from corruption/transparency activists, journalists, data hackers, environmentalists, election hackers, researchers, civil society dynamos and more. There could be academic papers and blog posts on each of the amazing people and projects. So, this will be a longer blog highlighting some of the last few weeks within the community.
November 6th Kallxo!
We've featured Kallxo from Kosovo's work on Anti-Corruption Fighting a few weeks ago. But, we want to recognize them individually for their fantastic leadership. More in their article: "I Paid a Bribe, So what!"
November 13: Harassmap
The Deployment of the Week program started long after the inception of one of the stronger community leaders. We recognize their work on highlighting the rights of women and mentoring others along their journey:
November 20: Palestine CrisisMap: Bindup
The Bindup project is a long-term civil society engagement initiative in Palestine. This week has been a particular timely one as they work to raise voices of people in Gaza.
Apparently, the Obama (US elections) campaign used Ushahidi as an internal tracker. What a meta election moment!
Yo Phily votes won an award during the US election. The project connected the RHOK community and mappers over the past few months focusing on voter rights in Philadelphia.
Geothings (Taiwan), lead by Ushahidi Trusted Developer Kuo-Yu Chuang, developed a free app for people to send their location to facebook or twitter. It was tested in the field in the Eastern US. Here's some background.
The OpenIR team from MIT made an R&D Ushahidi build at the Hurricane Hackathon. More details on their blog.
Transparency Hackers at IACC[/caption]
The International Anti-Corruption Conference hosted our first foray to connect Online Technology and our community of corruption mappers. We excited to have Nathan - Kuhungo (Kenya), Metodi - Transparency Watch (Macedonia) and Tarik - Mamdawrinch (Morocco) join the discussion about What they have learned using Ushahidi as part of their tactics toolkits. Thank you to the folks at Transparency International, Engine Room, Tactical Tech, K-Monitor and Transparency Hackers for all their input and discussions. We know that this is a growth area. At the moment, we're on the hunt to do more research and create tool-kits to support this growing part of our community. To learn more, see an interview I did with BBC Brasil on Corruption Mapping (text in Brasilian Portuguese) and the IACC video below:
Juliana Rotich presenting at the Open Up! event in London, UK[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10595" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
The Ushahidi London Meetup had 35 amazing participants![/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10626" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Braining .ke Election Hacks at Mozfest[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10574" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Linda and I at Mozfest[/caption]
Ushahidi Community Map: Map of You
Ushahidians! Are you on the map? We created this Community map to connect you to each other. I'd love a hand on designing the masthead and building outreach. Be sure to include your wiki account too!
Deployments of the Week
We're playing a bit of catch up to recognize Deployments of the Week. Congratulations and thank you to: Kallxo, Harassmap and Bindup!. Also, thanks to Brandon, we have a new badge for these teams:
November 6th Kallxo!
We've featured Kallxo from Kosovo's work on Anti-Corruption Fighting a few weeks ago. But, we want to recognize them individually for their fantastic leadership. More in their article: "I Paid a Bribe, So what!"
November 13: Harassmap
The Deployment of the Week program started long after the inception of one of the stronger community leaders. We recognize their work on highlighting the rights of women and mentoring others along their journey:
November 20: Palestine CrisisMap: Bindup
The Bindup project is a long-term civil society engagement initiative in Palestine. This week has been a particular timely one as they work to raise voices of people in Gaza.
Into the Code
Our next Community Developer call is November 26th/27th. We'll be talking code, themes, upgrading and design. Plus, major mobile updates! When: November 26: 21:00 EST, 18:00 PST, November 27th 15:00 NZDT Times: This will be in the Asia/North & South America friendly evening timezone. We alternate timezones monthly. Toronto (Canada - Ontario) Monday, November 26, 2012 at 9:00 PM EDT San Francisco (U.S.A. - California) Monday, November 26, 2012 at 6:00 PM PDT Wellington (New Zealand) Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 3:00 PM NZDT Tokyo (Japan) Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 11:00 AM JST Bangalore (India - Karnataka) Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 7:30 AM IST Nairobi (Kenya) Tuesday, November 27, 2012 at 5:00 AM EAT ****** IMPORTANT: The next UPGRADE DAY is Wednesday, December 5th. We want to help you get on the most secure and updated version of Ushahidi. If you are community developer, please join us in helping fellow deployers get updated. Join us online for a day of community mentoring and team upgrading. Also, heads up that we have BIG MOBILE updates coming next week. Our skype developer community has been busy testing SDKs. Join us if you want beta testing.Into the Community
Arabic...so close to 100% translated
We use Transifex to build localization packs for languages. This week we'd like to push for help to get our Arabic translations up to 100%. We are so close at 96%. Can you spare a few phrases and lend a word or two? Details on how to get translating are on our wiki.Global Map Wrap-up
Al Jazeera's In Depth is tracking Social Media in Israel and Gaza using Ushahidi:
Apparently, the Obama (US elections) campaign used Ushahidi as an internal tracker. What a meta election moment!
Yo Phily votes won an award during the US election. The project connected the RHOK community and mappers over the past few months focusing on voter rights in Philadelphia.
Geothings (Taiwan), lead by Ushahidi Trusted Developer Kuo-Yu Chuang, developed a free app for people to send their location to facebook or twitter. It was tested in the field in the Eastern US. Here's some background.
The OpenIR team from MIT made an R&D Ushahidi build at the Hurricane Hackathon. More details on their blog.
Upcoming Events
Random Hacks of Kindness and the Sanitation Hackathon are happening around the world next weekend. The RHOK Banglalore team will be hacking on an Ushahidi specific project with Community Leader Shemeer who created Maps4aid.org last year. Join an event and get braining on how your tech, project and mapping skills could contribute.Previous events
International Anti-Corruption Conference
[caption id="attachment_10577" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Transparency Hackers at IACC[/caption]
The International Anti-Corruption Conference hosted our first foray to connect Online Technology and our community of corruption mappers. We excited to have Nathan - Kuhungo (Kenya), Metodi - Transparency Watch (Macedonia) and Tarik - Mamdawrinch (Morocco) join the discussion about What they have learned using Ushahidi as part of their tactics toolkits. Thank you to the folks at Transparency International, Engine Room, Tactical Tech, K-Monitor and Transparency Hackers for all their input and discussions. We know that this is a growth area. At the moment, we're on the hunt to do more research and create tool-kits to support this growing part of our community. To learn more, see an interview I did with BBC Brasil on Corruption Mapping (text in Brasilian Portuguese) and the IACC video below:
Ushahidi Mapping Tools Power Corruption Fighters from 15 IACC on Vimeo.
******** Mozilla Festival was a sea of hackers and makers. While playing with popcorn.js was fun, our Ushahidi highlight was the Open Election session. Linda worked with a team to think about mobile and offline strategy for Uchaguzi. And, I worked with a team to delve into Trust: what matters to voters and how to engage citizens with HATE MAP. This is a great summary about Election Hacking at Mozfest. Pardon the curse, but we can't help constantly quoting Joi Ito: Fuck it, Ship it!New Research
We've added new papers to the Research part of the Community page:. Guidance for Collaborating with Volunteer and Technical Communities - Capelo, Luis; Chang, Natalie; Verity, Andrej Volunteer Technology Communities: Open Development -Blanchard, Heather; Chapman, Kate et. al. ****** Happy week! I'm closing off with some pictures: [caption id="attachment_10596" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Juliana Rotich presenting at the Open Up! event in London, UK[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10595" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
The Ushahidi London Meetup had 35 amazing participants![/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10626" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Braining .ke Election Hacks at Mozfest[/caption]
[caption id="attachment_10574" align="aligncenter" width="500"]
Linda and I at Mozfest[/caption]