There is a lot of discussions these days on Malcom Gladwell’s article in the New Yorker on the role of social media in civic activism. In it he points out that many of the cases mentioned in the press around the use of Twitter are not as accurate as people would think. An example of this is…
This is a first blog post in a series of posts about key skills that crisis managers need to have in order to successfully manage crisis. Two years ago to the date, the prime minister of Iceland made a television address to the country, telling everyone that Iceland was about to go through a very…
When disaster strikes there is an immediate flood of people who want to help out in any way they can. At the same time you have various tasks that need to be done that these people might be able to assist with. In the past there have been systems that focus on matching requests for…
“Noise becomes data when it has a cognitive pattern; data becomes information when its assembled into a coherent whole which can be related to other information; informationbecomes knowledge when its integrated with other information in a form that is useful for making decisions and determining actions; knowledge becomes understanding when related to other knowledge in a manner useful in anticipating, judging and acting; understanding becomes wisdom when its informed by purpose, ethics, principals,…
Many years ago I was a program manager for a technology called Microsoft Repository. It was my first introduction to the world of metadata. Seeing how important it was to companies to create repositories of the enterprise data available within their company was key to enhancing business operations through technologies such as data warehouses and…
A few years ago, under the great leadership of Eric Rasmussen the CEO of InSTEDD a set of exercises were run under the name StrongAngel. Those were a great success, but unfortunately with Eric’s move to InSTEDD they have not been repeated. We all know that trying out new technology during an actual crisis situation is bound to fail and often creates…
It was very interesting to attend the International Crisis Mappers Conference in Boston this weekend. It was especially great to see all the passion in the room, especially from the volunteer grassroots community, but also very important to see key players like UN, OCHA, World Bank, NATO send some key people there to get the conversation going…
The title of this blog post is taken from an IGNITE talk that Akiko Harayma gave at the International Crisis Mappers Conference 2010 in Boston. In her talk she used the analogy of the humanitarian workers and the crowd-based volunteers being from two different planets speaking two different languages. She pointed out in a great way how we need…
In this post I will discuss my mission to Haiti following the Haiti earthquake and the role technology played. Introduction Last January I was the team leader of the Icelandic Urban Search and Rescue team (ICE-SAR) that deployed to Haiti following the devastating earthquake that struck the island on the afternoon of January 12th. Our…
In this post I will discuss the need for closed collaboration groups for disaster coordination During a disaster the sharing of information is crucial. A large portion of that information is and should be publically available to everyone. Certain information, such as information about individual beneficiaries should however receive the appropriate privacy handling such sensitive…