development

Liberia Mapped

During my first few weeks in Liberia, I found myself at the mercy of my driver.  The lack of street signs and numbered addresses meant that finding an office inevitably involved stopping to ask a woman selling bananas, or going up and down nearby streets until we’d eyed each nook and cranny of the concrete honeycomb.  This isn’t how two mapping consultants go about their business, John and I thought; we had the power to do something, however small, about the disorder of Liberia’s capital.  So we set out on in John’s surfboard-adorned jeep with GPS unit in hand.

Tue, 10 Aug 2010 10:34:28 -0700

Introducing Crowdmap

Crowdmap_Logo
When the Ushahidi platform was written as an open source project in 2008, the vision was to have a platform that any individual or organization could easily deploy in any situation. While providing the software for free to anyone to install on their own servers has worked well so far, we have realized that there was a need to rapidly deploy Ushahidi without any required technical acumen in the shortest amount of time possible. The answer to this challenge has been Crowdmap.

Mon, 09 Aug 2010 11:07:32 -0700

Orgasmatron moments

I taught English in El Salvador when I was 24. A few of the students liked to talk with me about music. One day they wanted me to hear ‘this great song by Sepultura’, and I was like ‘Cool! That’s Orgasmatron!‘ and mentioned that I knew the Motorhead version. I don’t know what shocked them more: that I knew that particular song, or that their Sepultura version wasn’t the original.

Sat, 07 Aug 2010 17:00:07 -0700

mGESA: mobile GEographical Services for Africa


mGESA mobile mapping application

I wrote about a mobile mapping tool called mGEOS a few months ago, mentioning that I’d probably get a chance to try it myself in late July. Well that is just what happened.

Fri, 06 Aug 2010 06:36:32 -0700

On trust and disempowerment

I had a doctor’s appointment a couple months ago, and my doctor asked me if it was OK for a student to do the prep work, you know, the usual: height, weight, temperature, blood pressure, the like. I said sure.
What I didn’t expect though, was that the student intern was going to read through a list of health questions to try to find out if I was menopausal. Nothing against menopause – it’s a natural thing and I think some women even look forward to it. But I just turned 42, and no, I’m not having hot flashes quite yet.

Wed, 04 Aug 2010 21:21:50 -0700

Salim’s ICT4D advice part 2: innovate, but keep it real

Salim (left) with Solomon in Kinango community.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Plan’s Kwale District office in Kenya has been a role model for Plan on how to integrate ICTs into community-led programming to help reach development goals and improve access to children’s rights.

Sun, 01 Aug 2010 09:31:30 -0700

Liberianizing the platform

A little over two weeks after beginning this Ushahidi deployment, John and I arrived at the Rights and Rice Foundation for our first hands-on training.  We’ve met with over a dozen organizations that have expressed an interest in having customized Ushahidi instances, yet it was the small staff at Rights and Rice (affectionately known as R&R) who were the first to quickly organized themselves for a software tutorial.  Musu, Patience and Anthony were waiting for us in their shared office, desks spread to the corners and several fans whirring in the center of the room.

Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:52:16 -0700
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