As part of the Global Voices Technology for Transparency Network, my fellow researchers and I will be blogging about ICT all over the world. My first post, on a failed ICT for governance project in Sudan and the implications for tech efforts during the upcoming elections, went up today:

In a December 2009 Global Voices article titled “ICT4D: Past mistakes, future wisdom,” Aparna Ray points out that many technology for development projects have “started with a bang and later died with a whimper.” According to a recent article in the Financial Times, such is the fate of a multimillion dollar World Bank plan to supply Juba, the capital of Southern Sudan, with computers and Internet access.

Read the full article »

We’re hoping to get a discussion going over at Global Voices that not only highlights the tremendous power of the Internet and other digital tools, but also explores the challenges and difficulties of using these tools for political development and civic engagement. I welcome your comments here and on the original post.

Posted in ICT, ICT for development, aid and development, global voices, sudan | Leave a comment

A mudslide in eastern Uganda Monday evening left at least 80 people dead and over 300 missing. The mudslide, triggered by a day of heavy rain, has buried three villages in Bududa district and displaced more than 2000 people from their homes. As of Wednesday morning, the search continues for survivors.

Read the full post at Global Voices Online »

Posted in global voices, uganda | Leave a comment

Eight days ago I found out that I would be attending the 2010 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to meet up with the larger GV community again, and I’ve been browsing through old blog posts from the 2008 summit in Budapest.

I helped put out the liveblog for that summit, including the coverage of a session called When the World Listens, about the power of citizen media. Juliana Rotich, Program Director for Ushahidi, spoke during the session about the organization’s role in documenting the post-election violence in Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008.

At the time, the founders of Ushahidi were deciding what to do now that the Kenyan crisis had ebbed. Juliana said the next step would be to create a downloadable tool that could be used by anyone in the world.

Flash forward to this Saturday, when I worked with the rest of The Morningside Post team to host a conference on Policy Making in the Digital Age at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Patrick Meier, SIPA alum and Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships at Ushahidi, came and spoke about “Usha-Haiti,” the instance of Ushahidi developed to respond to the massive earthquake in Haiti in January.

As Patrick writes on the Ushahidi blog, at 7:00am — just a few hours before he spoke at SIPA — he heard that an earthquake of even higher magnitude had just hit Chile. Before leaving for New York, Patrick had already launched the Ushahidi team into action, cloning the earthquake-specific Haiti site and beginning to customize it for Chile.

While speaking at SIPA, Patrick described the Ushahidi Situation Room at Tufts, where student volunteers have been working around the clock to map reports from Haiti. By the time Patrick left Columbia’s campus on Saturday afternoon, a group of students who had attended the conference had already created a Facebook group and begun organizing potential volunteers through a Google group.

Yesterday, Patrick announced that SIPA would be taking the lead Ushahidi – Chile. New York now has its very own Ushahidi Situation Room, and I’m headed to campus in a few hours for a training so I can help out.

I’m trying to figure out how to describe this circle of events. “It’s a small world” doesn’t seem to apply, since it is, in fact, a very big world — from Budapest to Port-au-Prince to New York to Santiago covers a lot of area, and I haven’t even mentioned how some of the students heading the SIPA Sit Room are also putting together an instance of Ushahidi for Iraq.

I’m amazed at how much has happened in this field in two years. After the Global Voices Summit in 2008, I came home and raved to friends and coworkers about Ushahidi, and they looked at me and said, “Usha-what?” Now people are coming up to me in the hallways and asking me if I’ve heard of this new Chile crisis mapping project that’s happening at SIPA.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones in both Haiti and Chile, and I hope that what the SIPA Sit Room does over the coming days and weeks can help.

Posted in ICT, SIPA, global voices, gvsummit2010, new york, the morningside post | Leave a comment

On Wednesday morning I got the chance to Skype with Mikel Maron and Erica Hagen about Map Kibera, their project to collaboratively map a slum in Nairobi, Kenya. The interview was for Global Voices’ Technology for Transparency Network, a project that I’m unspeakably thrilled to be a part of.

My favorite part of the interview? When Mikel explains how Map Kibera is translating online data into real-world action. A hint: “paper’s cool.”

The full case study went up today, along with a podcast of our chat. Check it out, and make sure to browse through the full list of projects around the world that use online tools to push for civic engagement and government transparency.

Posted in ICT, digital activism, global voices, kenya, technology | Leave a comment

I am proud to share a birthday with Global Voices Online (December 11 — mark it in your calendars, ladies and gentlemen). I celebrated my 25th with friends and ungodly amounts of cheese, while GV celebrated its fifth with a series of wonderful retrospectives.

Me?  I’ve been holding off on writing my Global Voices anniversary post for the silliest of reasons:

On the left is me, a bit disheveled after ziplining through the Atitlán Nature Reserve near Panajachel, Guatemala. On the right is Jeremy Clarke, who, in addition to being rather fetching in an orange helmet, happens to be both the first person in years to convince me to publicize my Facebook relationship status and the code and design wizard for Global Voices. (Bonus: the neon green thing in Jer’s right hand is GV Ferret, Global Voices’ unofficial mascot.)

When I posted about WordCamp NYC without mentioning Jer (he spoke at the event), I was promptly called on it by David Sasaki, who happens to be another member of the GV community. It feels wrong for me to slather love on Global Voices (which I’ll do shortly, no worries) without also mentioning Jer.

So: I mentioned him.

The thing is, Jer’s not the only person at Global Voices with whom I’m fallen totally, head over heels in love. GV is full of people who routinely challenge my perceptions of the world, remind me that the rest of the world is both indescribably different and infinitely more the same than I could ever imagine, bring awesome things to my attention and overwhelm me with their creativity and mad dance skills.

I’ve been a part of this beautiful community since May 2007. Over the last two and a half years I’ve had the privilege to meet and become friends with some of the most dedicated citizen journalists in the world. I think Jill puts it well:

These people, once strangers on the Internet, have become some of my closest friends. They are colleagues, people I trust, people I go to with questions, for news.

I’ve also been consistently awed by the scope and power of citizen media, from coverage of Obama’s election to the Beijing Olympics to the death of Michael Jackson.

For Hoa Quach, knowing GV-ers are out there, covering the world’s underreported stories, allows her to breathe easier. For Thiana Bondo, GV gathers the whole word together. For Lina Ben Mhenni, GV is a family and a school.

If GV has been anything for you in the past five years — birthday buddy, matchmaker, friend, news, family, school — please consider showing your support.

Posted in global voices | Tagged: GV5 | 4 Comments