May 5th, 2008
For many people, visits to the field represent a chance to meet the beneficiaries of our programs and really get a feel for the difference which we’re making. Unfortunately I’ve chosen the wrong sector for this. Working in supply chain management means that a field trip only involves going to another office, in a remote area. The main difference is that the problems tend to be more complicated, and I’m more powerless to solve them!
March 1st, 2008
On the final day, we presented our Information Management track project. It was decided that our project would look into social networking at the camp, so a questionnaire was prepared and distributed, asking various questions about the number of friendship people had before during and after the camp, and the best activities for making new friends.
I made a simple Access database to enter the data, while a number of others started planning the project presentation. As the presentation started becoming more of a performance (before the results of the questionnaire were finished), I began to worry that the medium would become the message - but isn’t that always the case?
February 29th, 2008
On the fourth day I ran my session on Database Design. As I was only asked to present this session three days previously, I hadn’t had any spare time to put together anything other than an outline and make rough notes. Fortunately this is a topic which I’ve spent far too much time thinking about, so I was fairly well prepared.
February 28th, 2008
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.
February 27th, 2008
I don’t know how people live-blog from conferences and workshops. When I haven’t been in the various sessions, I’m talking interesting people, and when I’m not doing that I’m exhausted. Hence this rest of the posts about the camp are several days late! I have also been trying to get some work sorted out, and have felt guilty whenever I’ve been anti-socially hiding behind a laptop. I’m not convinced that having laptops at Conferences/Workshops/Camps is a good idea.
Never-the-less laptops are a handy resource. A Wiki (website which can be editted by anyone, like Wikipedia) was set up for the camp, which allowed people to created the following report, of all the activities in our track. Read the rest of this entry »
February 25th, 2008
Today was the first day of the Mekong ICT (Information Communication Technology) Camp which I am attending in Thailand. The camp is for people from Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar, and despite that I am neither from this region, nor working in the region, I felt that Indonesia was close enough, and it sounded interesting, so here I am. The camp is along the lines of a BarCamp, which means that it doesnāt have a ridged schedule and participation is encouraged.
October 24th, 2007
I have definitely suffered from the bloggerās paradox ā when times are interesting, thereās no time to blog. And times have been very interesting, which explains why this post is almost a month late.
It actually all started with this blog of mine, through which I managed to attract the attention of Paul Currion, someone who has been working in the field of humanitarian IT since before the field really existed, and writes a blog on the topic. Through this contact I found myself invited to the Global Symposium +5 āInformation for Humanitarian Actionā, which was being held by the UN in Geneva. (Obviously there arenāt so many computer programmers working in the humanitarian sector.)
September 12th, 2007
This Wednesday was the day before the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan. This makes a huge difference in an Islamic area such as Banda Aceh. From the hours of sunrise to sunset, Muslims must abstain from food, drink, smoking and sex. Typically people will wake up around 4am, before the morning prayers, and take a large meal together as a family before sunrise, and then go back to bed. When the sunsets around 6.40pm, people will immediately have a drink (usually a cigarette too), take some small sweets, or sometimes dates, and then perform their evening prayers before having their Puasa Buka (Open Fast) meal with the family.
The atmosphere has totally changed around town during Ramadan.
The pace at work slows down, as people are having to go through the whole day without eating or drinking, plus they are getting less sleep (the mosque will often broadcast readings from their speakers all night, which also effects the amount of sleep I get).
Also, there are no food shops open during the day, which means that I sadly miss my breakfast of rice and coffee Aceh, and my lunch of Gado Gado. I need to be conscious about not eating or drinking in front of people during the day, and even when I do in private, it makes me feel like more of an āinfidelā as usual (Which is silly of me, because the locals are actually really tolerant).
Toward the end of the day the streets come alive, with an assortment of stall selling sweets and drinks for people to break their fast with. The traffic is crazy until about 6.30pm, at which point the streets are empty, as everyone has gone indoors, awaiting the siren which indicates that they can end their fast.
I do admire the discipline, faith and tradition which is displayed during Ramadan. I canāt imagine it being the easiest thing to go all day without eating, and especially drinking. I have aspired to experiment with trying to fast myself, but unfortunately with everything else going on (especially work), I just havenāt had the spare energy.
Being the day before Ramadan, the office closed at midday, however being a consultant I only get paid for the days I work, so I was still stuck working in the deserted office (queue tumble weeds). At about 6pm my boss came into my office asking, āDid you feel that?ā. I looked up puzzled, and then realized that I probably just missed another earthquake.
August 30th, 2007
There is some debate between the merits of Web based āOnlineā databases verse stand alone āOfflineā databases for International NGOs. Online databases store all their information on a central server, while Offline databases store all of their information on the computer of the person using the database. I agree that online databases have a number of distinct advantages:
As a colleague of mine pointed out, Online databases are the āFutureā. However they also have one very major constraint ā they rely on an Internet connection. Considering this constraint, in the developing world they are still āThe Futureā and not yet āThe Presentā.
August 26th, 2007
Iāve been struggling to find time to update my blog in the aftermath of my trip to China, but Iāve finally got a spare moment. This will be the first post of hopefully many.
The main reason/excuse for this trip was to attend the ISCRAM (Information Systems for Crisis Response and Management) ā China Workshop, where I was presenting my paper in Developing Databases for Disasters in Developing Countries. The workshop was held the in Harbin Engineering University. Unfortunately I suffered from the same communication difficulties at the conference as I found during the rest of my time in China (despite the language of the conference being English). This meant I didnāt have many good conversations with the (majority) Chinese attendants. However this did give me the chance to talk to some of the foreign keynote speakers, which was very interesting and useful.
One person I met was Chamindra de Silva, who works on Sahana, an Open-Source Disaster Management Software system. Although Iāve been aware of this project for some time, it was good to finally met him in person, and have him show me through the software. Although I think that there are a number of usability features which they need to address (the Online vs Offline issue for example), I believe that open source-software is a very good approach in this field, and hope to get involved in the project ā Iāve just got to find the time!
Other points of note include the Chinese keynote speakers, who were translated into English. The non-Chinese attendees received the translation from an earpiece via a radio broadcast. Unfortunately during the first half of one of these speeches, the broadcast didnāt work. I found this a slightly amusing example of how we canāt afford to be too over-reliant on technology, let alone during a crisis!
I had some more conversations about what technology is appropriate in emergency response. Nuwan, one of the attendees working for LIRNEasia in Sri Lanka, told a story about a woman in Sri Lanka who just used a whiteboard to coordinate the relief effort to the 2004 Tsunami. I pointed out that a whiteboard is still technology (high tech when compared with stone tablets), and that in emergencies people will tend to just use the technology which they are familiar with.
I also found myself chairing a session on Mathematical Modeling. The presentations discussed predicting financial crisisās, which was a slight change from my perception of crises as tsunamis and earthquakes. I did point out to the session that the same techniques might be able to be used for predicting complex emergencies too. It was interesting to be the only non-Chinese in the session, yet have the speakers deliver their presentation in English. After all, it was the language of the conference. Never-the-less when it came time for questions a few people did slip back into Chinese.