In Case of Emergency, Read This Blog

In Case Of Emergency, Read Blog

A Citizen’s Eye View of Public Preparedness

Come To CrisisCampDC, Random Hacks Of Kindness In Wash. (& Around The World) This Weekend To Help On Gulf Oil Spill Recovery, Future Disaster Preparedness/Response Tech Solutions

June 2nd, 2010 · 2 Comments

I wanted to highlight two exciting disaster preparedness/response events in Washington, D.C. this weekend, which are open to any interested member of the public – CrisisCampDC and RHoK (Random Hacks of Kindness) 1.0.

CrisisCampDC is a project of CrisisCommons, which according to its website, “is a volunteer technology community dedicated to bringing together technology, innovation and volunteers to help people and communities in times and places of crisis.”

“At CrisisCampDC,” the website continues, “we will create a board of sessions such as CrisisCamp Haiti after action, Oil Spill and Open Data and the development of a local DC chapter of CrisisCommons. In addition, we will take some time to explore development of the agenda for the First International CrisisCongress hosted by CrisisCommons, World Bank and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.”

CrisisCampDC

I was thrilled to attend the inaugural CrisisCampDC, which took place in June. (I wrote a ‘Postcard from Camp’ on the blog.) Since then, the Camp and the Commons have taken off with camps being organized all over the world in the wake of the Haiti earthquake and Gulf oil spill. Already, output from the Commons (such as the Oil Reporter) is having an impact. And in a development that will only broaden the group’s impact, Heather Blanchard — who with Noel Dickover and Andy Carvin [correction: Andrew Turner] helped create CrisisCommons — recently left her position at the U.S. Homeland Security Department to focus full-time on the new organization.

Anyone interested in attending CrisisCampDC on Saturday, go to the EventBrite page here (which also has a list of those already registered). I am hoping to attend if my health allows it.

According to its website, Random Hacks of Kindness “is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster relief experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems.”

The inaugural Random Hackathon took place this past November in Mountain View, California. Some of the Hacks’ hacks, including Tweek The Tweet, are now being used.

Random Hacks of Kindness DC

This weekend’s hackathon is previewed on the RHOK website:

“Random Hacks of Kindness is going global! On June 4th through 6th, 2010 RHoK, in collaboration with the Crisis Commons, is hosting its second hackathon. This event is going to be a global gathering of hackers in many locations around the world, coming together in real time for a marathon weekend of coding around problems relating to natural disaster risk and response.

The Main Stage for RHoK #1.0 will be in Washington D.C., where events will kick off with a June 4, 2010 reception at the Department of State, followed by forty-eight hours of hacking madness at the Microsoft offices in Chevy Chase, MD. Simultaneously, hackers will be coming together on every continent for five global satellite RHoK events in Sydney, Australia; Nairobi, Kenya; London, England; Jakarta, Indonesia and Sao Paolo; Brazil.”

To register for RHok 1.0 or the satellite “RHok-ettes,”click here. If you are unable to attend the events in Washington or other parts of the world, you can follow the @CrisisCamp and @RandomHacks Twitter feeds. The two events will take place at Microsoft’s offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland. (Though Vint Cerf will open the RHok on Friday night at the U.S. State Department.)

These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Technorati

Tags: Preparedness 2.0 · Preparedness Events

2 responses so far ↓

  • 1 andy carvin // Jun 8, 2010 at 10:33 am

    Just wanted to offer a correction – Andrew Turner co-founded CrisisCommons with Heather and Noel. I’ve just been helping them out.

  • 2 admin // Jun 8, 2010 at 10:45 am

    thanks for the correction, andy.
    -john

Leave a Comment