Ushahidi presentation from Internet and 21st Century Revolutions in Madrid on April 5, 2001

2. What is Ushahidi?
Open source software for information collection,
visualization and interactive mapping.
We build tools for democratizing information,
increasing transparency and lowering the barriers for
individuals to share their stories.
Platform Community Movement
ushahidi.com

3. History
"Ushahidi", which means "testimony" in Swahili,
was a website that was initially developed
to map reports of violence in Kenya
after post-election fallout at the beginning of 2008.
legacy.ushahidi.com

4. “If it works in Africa,
it can work anywhere”
- Erik Hersman, co-founder of Ushahidi
whiteafrican.com

5. Election Monitoring
May 2009 - 202 reports, 20,000 views August 2010 - 1525 reports, 20,000 views
Allow citizen reporting during election Monitor Kenya referendum election
votereport.in uchaguzi.co.ke

6. Citizen Journalism
December 2010 - 319 reports, 156,859 views May 2010 - 3397 reports, 406,715 views
Help bring awareness to sexual harassment in Egypt Document human and ecological impact of the oil spill
harassmap.com oillspill.labucketbrigade.org

7. Disaster Response
March 2011 - 4,000+ reports, 144,974 views January 2010 - 3,584 reports, 500,000 views
Monitor fallout of tsunami and nuclear crisis Allowed Haitians to report location and needs
sinsai.info/ushahidi haiti.ushahidi.com

8. Post Haiti
“The 2010 Haiti earthquake response
will be remembered as the moment
when the level of access to mobile and
online communication enabled a kind
of collective intelligence to emerge.”
- Disaster Relief 2.0, the United Nations
“Haiti showed everyone that it is going
to be crucial to adopt and use these
technologies to make humanitarian
work better, faster and more efficient.”
- Adele Waugaman, senior director of technology for United
Nations and Vodafone
bit.ly/disaster_20

9. Crowdmap
Crowdmap allows you to set up your own deployment of Ushahidi
‘in the cloud’ without having to install it on your own web server.
crowdmap.com

10. Plugins
Flexible plugin architecture allowing custom functionality
to be developed independently from the core application.
apps.ushahidi.com

11. SMSSync
SMSSync is a simple SMS to HTTP sync utility, that
turns any Android phone into a local SMS gateway that
sends incoming messages to any Ushahidi deployment.
smssync.ushahidi.com

12. Checkins (CI)
Quick location update which can include an optional
photo and description, sharing “I am here”.
bit.ly/checkins_purpose

13. iPhone / iPad
Ushahidi mobile application for the iPhone and iPad
bit.ly/ushahidi_ios_app

14. Stand-By Task Force (SBTF)
“We are the people who map for three hours at night
instead of watching TV. We are the people who wake up
early before work, log into Skype and add a few reports to
the map. We are the people who may drop everything to
map for four days. We are communications and friends.”
- Heather Leson, SBTF volunteer
standbytaskforce.com

15. Egyptian Revolution
“The use of social media and Facebook in particular is increasingly
enabling the youth to engage in a political scene that normally opts for the
physical elimination of the opposition. Blogs and Facebook groups are
clearly taking the place made empty by the lack of a real political debate in
Egypt, and are more increasingly emerging as an alternative political scene
where a discussion on democracy and human rights is still possible.”
- Development and Institutionalization Support Center (DISC)
u-shahid.org

16. Egypt Election Map
“To monitor the elections by
allowing people to send SMS,
Twitter messages, Facebook
comments, voice mail, e-mail
and web-submission to the
U-Shahid (Anta Shahid –
“You witness” in Arabic) and
by creating a combined
system of bounded and
unbounded crowdsourcing.”
- Development and Institutionalization
Support Center (DISC)
#u_shahid
u-shahid.org/live

17. Civil Resistance Map
“They say that history is written by
the victors. But now, before the
victors win, there is a fresh chance
to scream out, with a text message
that will not vanish. What we would
know about what passed between
Turks and Armenians, between
Germans and Jews — and indeed
would it have happened at all — if
each of them had had a chance to
declare and be heard saying:
ʻI was here, and this is what
happened to me?ʼ”
- Anand Giridharadas, New York Times
journalist
#jan25
u-shahid.org/cr

18. Constitutional Amendments Map
#19mar
u-shahid.org/19mar

19. Other Egypt Maps

20. Libya Crisis
The Libya Crisis Map deployed by request of UN Office
for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)
libyacrisismap.net

21. Libya Information Flow
libyacrisismap.net

22. Lessons
Crowdsourcing
platform must be
easy to deploy,
intuitive to use,
simple to localize
and customize
“A map is only as
useful as the process
and people to make
it happen.”
-George Chamales, Rogue Genius
slidesha.re/ushahidi_lessons

23. Deployments

24. Volunteer
Translators Mappers
Developers Testers
ushahidi.com/contact-us

25. Team

26. Quote
“We are undergoing a major technology paradigm shift.
Citizens that were once only passive recipients of
information, are now contributors to the story.
In the case of crisis mapping, it's the people on the
ground that best know the local situation.
Enabling a two-way conversation between affected
communities and support groups can allow a faster,
more effective response.
The key point is that affected groups have a voice, we
only need to listen.”
-Dale Zak, Ushahidi mobile developer

27. Questions?
ushahidi.com crowdmap.com