CrisisCamp For Haiti in Cities Around The World

CrisisCommons.org

This Saturday, January 23rd, CrisisCommons is running a “CrisisCamp” to provide support for Haiti in Silicon Valley and elsewhere around the world.

CrisisCamp is a open, collaborative event held in “barcamp” style with CrisisCommons to provide local and international responders, Haitian community leaders and non-governmental organizations an opportunity to engage with operations on the ground in Haiti. Tools and resources created by CrisisCamp volunteers can enhance responders’ decision-making capability, transparency and collaboration.

This weekend and next, CrisisCamps will be happening in 12 Cities across the U.S., Canada, England and Columbia. CrisisCommons.org also has resources to facilitate setting up camps in other areas.

Their projects include The Disaster Accountability Public Database,a Creole Language translation project, and Haiti Hospital Capacity Finder. These projects and others are looking for people to help out in technical and non-technical roles.

If you want to participate or just learn more about the camps, check out the Crisis Commons Haiti blog or follow them on Twitter @CrisisCamp.

The first camps for Haiti occurred last weekend:

The first series of CrisisCamps for Haiti on January 16th, volunteers in four cities launched We Need, We Have a repository of specific technology needs of local Haitians’ response, Volunteers contributed to rich open source maps that track which nonprofit organizations on the ground in Haiti are doing what, where, for more efficient coordination and resource distribution, and built and contributed data to multiple mobile phone, open source applications that enable people on the ground to report vital information such as the location of a hospital or a missing person. After each CrisisCamp, volunteers collaborate remotely to strengthen tools.

Below are a couple videos about the Washington D.C. Haiti CrisisCamp.

Local TV news report

Crisis Camp DC from pic.tv:

mikl-em
Mikl-em

Actor, nerd, poet, producer, writer mikl-em made his name short so you wouldn't have to. In addition to his blog you can find his writing in "Hi Fructose" magazine and witness him almost life-sized in various plays at The Dark Room Theater in SF's Mission district.

He tends to write about theater, humor, San Francisco culture and history, and stuff that's just plain weird. He thanks Scott for sharing the keys to the Laughing Squid virtual HQ and promises to uphold whatever it is that the mirthful cephalopod would prefer to be uplifted.