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- A little nervously dives in at the deep end...
A little nervously dives in at the deep end...
(splash) - well at least the waters not too cold :-)
While packing for this journey I posted a few reservations about bloging in the TechSoup Town Hall (kind of an insurance policy in case I find the water a bit too deep). I tried to put a link here to the TechSoup post but this blog doesn't want to accept standard html tags (? - first lesson when travelling I guess... learn the road rules!)
Marnie kindly moved the post to a new discussion thread - no replies yet but looking forward to reading other people's views and hopefully generating a worthwhile discussion.
Feels kind of strange to be writing just for the heck of it (wonder if anyone will ever read these words?)
Something interesting just happened - I clicked "preview" to see what this post would look like, and was reminded how a summary is provided for "export for syndication" - wonder what this means? (a little road off to the left may be worth exploring later)
Not every journey has a reason, but I'm having a hard time at the moment coming to grips to with the enormity of the technology response to Katrina (web sites and more web sites all trying to help but so many they are just tripping over each other) - need to walk for a few miles and chat with any locals I meet to help clear the mind and think it all through...
The news today was about 30,000 + people killed in the sub-continent earthquake. Last night I watched a documentary on northern India, and could only wonder at a place where on average 1,000 people die, 30,000 are dislocated, and about 1,600 emergency refuge camps are constructed every year just because of monsoon flooding. It's like the death figures from aids in Africa. So overwhelming. I'm presently working with a tech group in Sri Lanka who formed following the death of tens-of-thousands after the Tsunami. Trying to help. Everyone is trying to help.
I like the way the US tech community rallied after Katrina; disapointed and saddened that it took Katrina to make it happen when the emergency community have been trying to rally this support for years. Sometims none of us are very good at looking beyond our own backyards. This is why I want to chat with a few locals. What does everyone else think? Can Net2 (still not sure what that means but I like the catchy acronym), offer any benefits for the few billion people still lacking any form of net connectivity? How fast do we move? (just how far do we want to leave everyone else behind?)
Well, if a blog is a journey I've just taken the first step. It's all new. Hope to stop and have a few chats with interesting people along the way.
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- Nervousness is a glorious response.
7 min ago - I'm glad that you came -
1 hour 13 min ago - Ps.
1 hour 35 min ago
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welcome to the pool
Hi Gina, (would you like to
Hi Gina, (would you like to rest and chat over a coffee?) - Are you another TechSouper? What a wonderful community of fascinating peple we have here!
I've been following the Recovery2 wiki since I first heard of it (?weeks ago?), and like always, stand overwhelmed at the lengths people go to help fellow humans in time of need. It's wonderful stuff.
So I hope I didn't seem too cynical in my last post. I've been a disaster manager for more than 20 years (even wrote a few articles for TechSoup on the subject over the years) and have welcomed this inflood of support after every major disaster. In many ways it's a Tsunami of itself - everyone wants to help during and immediately following a disaster; so much so that coordinating such a massive relief effort, while wonderful in spirit, poses significant challenges. The wave of support usualy ebbs to a trickle after a few months, however during this critical period everyone wants to help but not everyone knows how to (more than once my teams have been called to "rescue the rescuers" when over-zealous helpers get themselves or disaster victims into trouble...)
I guess I have three major concerns about the current influx of home-built web-based emergency and humanitarian support systems... The first being the longevity of these systems should people begin to rely on them (funding, staffing and sustainability type stuff); the second being the appropriateness of these systems and their structures (emergency and human management expertise; comformance to standards like those set by Interpol; privacy issues; interaction with existing emergency and humanitarian systems etc. etc.) - The third and perhaps most important being the value of these systems to our off-line world. I take your point that technology is pervasive and that technologies used by the Red Cross (for example) can help people in Kashmire or elsewhere... but this doesn't help the billions of people not supported by the Red Cross; the people who rely on all the little local NPO's of our planet to help in times of need - these people (as well these NPO's) need off-line tools. Disasters themselves call for offline tools (didn't the hurricane cause a loss of Internet connectivity for more than a million people for more than a month?)
How can we migrate the benefits of Net2 to our offline world?
Proof that somebody read your post
Yes, somebody not only read your post, and found it engaging, but also found it helpful.
You are working with folks in Sri Lanka? So am I but not specifically on IT.
I am working with the tourism industry and the disabled community providing technical support on Universal Design in the reconstruction process. (http://www.rollingrains.com/archives/000485.html) Recently I also received a request to help locate expertise in reclamation of saltwater innundated agricultural lands. That seems to be the plight of many coastal small farmers.
Maybe we can do the "six degrees of separation" thing and multiply our efforts. My email is public so it should post with this comment.
Scott
this is just a testsnd
How can we use this forum (or Net2) to multiple our efforts? - I took the pic at right at Phuket shortly after the Tsunami while trying to grasp the scope of the damage (easy to see in damaged buildings, but far more insidious in damage by saltwater to farmlands).
Don