Community updates have been less regular due to Uchaguzi. I'll get back to Weekly updates finally. Uchaguzi was the largest community participatory project we've worked on both globally and locally. Rich community experiences will inform our work throughout the year! If you haven't taken a look, we've created full documentation on how we did a large deployment. Please take it and remix for your work. Onward!

Upcoming Ushahidi meetups

Environmental Mappers Community Hour March 21st 09:00 am EDT/16:00 EAT: Juliana Rotich host a roundtable for those using Ushahidi for Environmental Mapping. Join us on Google Hangout to share your best practices. (There are only 10 hangout spots to speak, but you can still listen in. We'll record it.) Ushahidi community developer call: March 26th/March 27th 21:00 EAT/ 18:00 GMT: Join our developer team to talk products, testing and APIs. Join the call Take a listen to last month's call Stay tuned for a London UK meetup announcement for April 3, 2013! If you'd like to host a community hour on your favourite topic or a local meetup, please contact Heather to get started. (Hleson at ushahidi dot com)

Deployments of the Week

We're in catch up mode again to give accolades to amazing Ushahidi deployments around the globe. MSF Pastilies Map February 27: Medicine Sans Frontieres Greece created Pastilies Map: Solidarity for the Suffering of Others. March 5: Haruna: Response to the Cyclone in Madagascar March 12: SxtxStories: Journalism students covered SXSW using Ushahidi software. They even ran a hackathon to get ready for their project.

More Community Leaders

We are completely honoured to welcome and recognize the following community leaders. These folks helped bridge global and local communities for Uchaguzi. There were so many rockstars and mapstars during the project, but we wanted to give special thanks to our coleads: Leesa Astredo: Media Monitoring, SBTF community member, second recognition Mark Kamau: SMS Team, local Nairobi Community member Om: SMS team, SBTF community member Anne Salim: Reports team, local Nairobi Community member Jus Mackinnon: Reports team, SBTF community member, second recognition Leonida Mutuku: Analysis & Research Team, local Nairobi Community member Catherine Dempsey: Analysis & Research Team, UK community builder and guest editor for www.ushahidi.com Accadius "Ben" Sabwa, GEO team, local Nairobi Community Developer member Brendan O'Hanrahan, Geo team, SBTF community member Debrah Ojuka, Translation team, local Nairobi Community member Paul Wambura, Translation team, Translators without Borders, local Nairobi Community member Mel Mbugua, Verification team, local Nairobi Community member Nekesa Were, Coordination team, local Nairobi Community member

Community Survey Results

Thanks so much to the folks who responded to the Ushahidi 2012 Community Survey. Your feedback was used to help us plan for 2013. We promised to hear your feedback and make some changes. I'll be sharing more details on feedback and our actions on these topics in the coming weeks.

Top 10 Improvements Required:

1. Installation 2. Mobile 3. Support 4. Upgrades/updates 5. Plugins 6. Documentation 7. SwiftRiver 8. Forms 9. Reports 10. Customization

Top Community needs:

Based on the input, here are the top things you asked us to give you:
  • Office hours/Technical Support
  • Better Documentation
  • More Best Practice Docs, Deployer sessions roundtables
  • Meetups
[caption id="attachment_11602" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Where are you? Where are you?[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11599" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Who are you? Who are you?[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11594" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Products: what you use Products: Which ones do you use?[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11596" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Types of Deployments Types of Deployments[/caption] [caption id="attachment_11595" align="aligncenter" width="500"]Describe Ushahidi Describe your Ushahidi experience[/caption] I'm super excited to keep building on the momentum of Uchaguzi deployment. We've worked hard to increase meetups, improve documentation and provide more support. Here's to addressing the feedback and making your Ushahidi experience fantastic. Happy mapping!