Occupy Sandy Presentation for Yoxi / #OperationSandy @NYU
1. Offline to Online Data Management & Process after Hurricane sandy
Sougwen Chung, Interactive art director / Interoccupy
2. Where to begin?
Information re: volunteer locations / needs found in Occupy sandy mobilized faster
- news (sources: red cross, fema, etc) Mutual aid
- Word of mouth -> local drop off in my neighbourhood Communities helping communities
- Unreliable information via youtube re local drop off points
- Finding a comprehensive resource in OccupySandy.org - Organic entity’s burgeoning process
- communication flow gaps
3. Occupy Sandy V1
Built on the Interoccupy Network -> Publishing platform for Occupy
System not built for the breadth of information that would come
4. Volunteer submitted map
manually updated
1 map of dozens
volunteer commitment to maintenance
duplication / inconsistencies impact authority of
information
5. Inefficiencies encountered:
- SYNCING ISSUES
multiple places where information needs to be
updated
- COMMUNICATION ISSUES
Urgent requests are made but seldom is there
follow up for when request has been fulfilled
- SO MUCH LAG
crazy bottlenecking makes information updates
slow
- Pushing the cart before the horse
the nature of rapid response?
6. Occupy Sandy
Process: Week 1 Overview
- Email / on-site spreadsheet
(120+ person collab doc)
- Wordpress
- Google Maps
- To do list spreadsheet
- manual updates, closed system
9. Occupy Sandy
Process: Present Overview
DATA SOLUTION:
Google Fusion Tables
- Consolidated data
- leverage existing product
- low barrier to entry across teams
- map visualization + publishing to website via
Fusion Table API
UPDATE SOLUTION:
10. Using existing tools....
- Google Fusion tables
were made for data
management and
visualization.
- Twitter was made for
short, timely, updates
and communication
11. The Obvious Solution
- Insight: It isn’t the most elegant solution, it was the easiest to implement with limited time / resources
12. THE RESULT
Built in less than 6 days, small team...
Using existing Occupy network / circle of trust...
Erica Heinz, Greg Osofsky, Charles(Radgeek),
Michael Badger, Andrea Ciannavei,
Sougwen Chung
Updates via twitter
Timely posts, hashtags, facilitates
communication between major on-site relief
efforts and individuals for needs fulfillment
13. THE RESULT
Built in less than 6 days, small team...
Using existing Occupy network / circle of trust...
Erica Heinz, Greg Osofsky, Charles(Radgeek),
Michael Badger, Andrea Ciannavei,
Sougwen Chung
- Locations can be filtered by type & Location
- improved information design
- Colour coded
- Community pages are filtered embeds of the
same data set (Whee)
14. THE RESULT
Built in less than 6 days, small team...
Using existing Occupy network / circle of trust...
Erica Heinz, Greg Osofsky, Charles(Radgeek),
Michael Badger, Andrea Ciannavei,
Sougwen Chung
- Locations can be filtered by type & Location
- improved information design
- Colour coded
- Community pages are filtered embeds of the
same data set (Whee)
16. Next steps: TECH
In talks with Google re: how to improve
fusion tables
Integration with Sahana, software made
specifically for on-site disaster
response. Sahana updates to FT
(dreamworld)
17.
18. Next steps: Process / Communication / Narrative
Documenting lessons learned this time around for future
response efforts
improving communication between On-site and Online
(still a lot of gaps and redundancy)
Creating narrative through collaborations to educate,
raise awareness, sustain interest
19. Relevant questions Recap
1) Don’t reinvent the wheel
! - What don’t I know that I NEED to know to
help? 2) Support systems already in place and offer
- does it already exist? Can I improve / another perspective
leverage existing product if it does?
3) The silver lining in data entry
Understanding more about whats needed by doing
unfun stuff / gaining trust / asking questions
20. - IMMEDIATE: MEDIUM TERM
Assisting in designing Workflows for volunteers 1) How to collaborate with the Fusion Table team,
! - placement, education, coordination, get the right contacts, to share what we’ve learned.
scheduling, TRUST Help them improve their product.
-- First meeting on Monday
- Long term commitment
! - Creating content that initiates / 2) How to document processes for initial
encourages people to get involved after the collaboration -- easy to implement in a small team
initial shock of crisis has worn off, sustained but the issue of getting people to work together is
engagement still a huge issue
-- fragmented processes
- Improving communicating between Online and -- distance is a factor
Onsite -- i know what i know, you know what you know
! - currently onsite is testing this proprietary
software called Sahana 3) First responders starter kit. Formalizing the
! - inking their information with interoccupy systems started at Interoccupy.
The resources ARE out there in many forms but AWARENESS is
limited. Doing more research and documenting / sharing... resulting in
hopefully a reduced barrier to entry.. look into
(Hurricane Hackers, Sahana, Spark Relief maps, Need Supply, more..)
