Presented in Yangon the week after Haiti, sharing some personal experience from having done remote support for systems running in Haiti and years of work in technology for Crisis. Be prepared!

1. Crisis HappenWhat can a geek do? BarCamp Yangon, 2010 edjez

2. Preparation {Event} Response Transition New State Too late to prepare!! What should you do? Most relief is provided by… Information is power! Who do you think needs it most? Affected Population Local Institutions Response Agencies You mostly hear about agencies but 90%+ of relief is provided by population/communities to themselves

3. Global Connectivity – but for whom?

4. Balance of Technologies What technologies can be used by the affected people?

5. Up/Down/Horizontal Communications Collecting data… Simplify getting unstructured, semi-structured and structured information Alerting… Of whatever information you think is important Targeted by geography and topics Teams or general population Breaking Silos National – sms chat across the border Organizational – across agencies, institutions Between responders and population Across domains – water, sanitation, rescue experts together

6. Example -InSTEDD GEOCHAT SMS, email, web, twitter Location, unstructured chats, semi/full structure info Open or secure groups Explicit Location (automatic w operator data) SMS-Only interaction possible, low bandwidth views Software as a Service and Free + Open Source 6000+ users, ~35% + SMS only

7. Haiti, January 2010

8. Example – InSTEDD/Thomson Reuters EIS Kreyol OUT-going info Sharing Sifting

9. Haiti Good Rapid response of agencies Easy access to country Energetic external ICT community Crowdsourcing of local knowledge Some technologies open source Bad Some telcos slow to respond No architecture forethought for systems ->spaghetti flow Excited ICT community re-invented existing things Local ICT community missing Overestimation of role of twitter, etc in real response Litte/Hard to find local tech capacity ready to engage

10. Effective collaboration needs trust Trust needs time together Build trust before a crisis!

12. Example: InSTEDD Innovation Lab Since 2008 the lab is a regional resource – Open space for training, mini-barcamps, etc Local staff running full design/build/support cycles Experimenting with tech Appropriate by design… InSTEDD Regional Innovation Lab

13. Local skills and social networks are essential InSTEDD iLab catalyzes both in the Mekong region in an open, innovative environment since 2008

14. Technology during Crisis Your existing skills are useful PHP, Python, .NET, Drupal, Joomla, SMS.. Learn before you build Contribute to what is needed even if it’s not your idea It’s a marathon, not a race Long hours for a long time. Don’t burn out! Round the clock teams and clear status reports Collaboration is key Skype chat, google groups, etc Constantly stop and ask yourself – “how will this help survivors?”

15. Prepare your community! Participate local community for tech for crisis Read & share info about crisis technologies Try them Demo to others Localize to Burmese Learn how to contribute to open source SCC, github, etc. Subscribe to alerts at gdacs.org

16. [Discussion and Demos] How to make communities more resilient when phones go down Responder collaboration tools discussion DUMBO P2P chat, voice (SIP), video Built in Myanmar Groove Now part of MS Office 2007 Ultimate Skype, google groups etc.

17. Thank You! Eduardo Jezierski http://instedd.org http://edjez.instedd.org @edjez edjez@instedd.org “Eduardo Jezierski (InSTEDD)” in Groove public directory