from the horizon

Day 3 became more interesting, but also further increased my information overload, not only from all the new material which I was being exposed to, but from all the new ideas which it was spawning!

The first session introduced the Visualizing Information for Advocacy booklet, which covered different ways to design information. The booklet was produced by Tactical Technology Collective who were helping to run the camp, and I would highly recommend it for a clear, simple and short (43 pages) introduction to information design. It can be downloaded for free.

The next session introduce the Martus database software, which is a secure database program for reporting human right violations. I was very impressed with the way it worked, and could upload all the information to a central server. It was also armed with a self destruct mechanism (software only), which erased all data if the organization’s office was being raided.

However when I went online, to see some of the cases being reported, I saw that there was confidential information being displayed, such as names, dates of birth and addresses or orphans and political prisoners (look at the case for yourself).

This was probably because the person entering the information into the database had incorrectly categorized the data as Public (shared on the web) vs. Private (not disclosed). Although this could be regarded as a user error, which the user is responsible for, I personally think that there is no such thing as a poor user, only poorly designed software (which is a big responsibility for me to take as a software programmer!). Especially when many of these users are in developing countries, and may not be that experienced with computers.

I’ve sent Martus an email, and hopefully they respond:

In your search results you are displaying confidential information (Names, Religion, DoB), which violates the privacy of people, and may put their lives in danger.

This seems to be a major problem with your system, which I believe stems from the users not classifying information correctly as Private or Public.

Could I suggest that you add special fields for names, religion, DoB, etc, which are always private?

It would be great if you could let me know how you go with fixing this issue, and I would be more than happy to offer what assistance I can (I have experience implementing databases in a number of developing countries).

Thank you.

Michael Howden

The final session which I managed to absorb, before my brain got too full was on some online Project Management Tools. Bobby from Tactical Technology showed us eGroupWare which is open source software they use for managing their projects, even though the members are scattered throughout the global. He also showed us Basecamp, which has similar functions. I will definitely be looking into some of this software, for help me to organize some of my personal projects, and perhaps coordinating some of the projects I may be working on in Indonesia.

The day was wrapped up with games from each of the Mekong countries that were represented: Thailand, Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

 The games were pretty fun, and the highlights included the Apple, Mango, Lemon, Banana game, which involved a great deal of thrusting, and other game where “Too Much Ink!” became a euphanisism for “Shake Your Arse”.