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Ushahidi Weekly Update (#29)

We are a growing community. This weekly report is for the whole community and team to share what you are working on and what you need help with. Highlight your presentations, events, code and more. These reports will go out mid-week

Date: October 24 - 30, 2012

Community and Deployers:

About: What are you working on? What do you need help with?

Deployments of the Week (Shared): Hurricane Sandy Mappers - All of you. From the groups and individuals with a full plan, to those of you who tinkered with a deployment and to those who also contacted us but chose not to deployment. Each iteration builds on itself. Most of all, you have focused on Citizens helping citizens for the low-hanging fruit to support your communities and neighbours. We know that recovery is a long task. Our thoughts are with the citizens and responders.

We hope that maps of all varieties can aid you in a few key learnings that we have observed:

The Crisismapping community has created a directory of maps. I've updated it with all the active maps as of today. You can see the wide variety of initiatives and locations.
The Hurricane Hacking community created resources and ideas for folks to collaborate.
Many of you changed categories, collaborated and moved from response to recovery maps.
The types of maps and various uses show a potential preparedness model. What should communities plan for maps in case of emergency?

Updates on the most active Hurricane Sandy Maps:

State of NYC

Catskills Hurricane Sandy
Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > Hurricane Sandy in the Catskills.png
NYC

Sandy Coworking: Contact
Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > sandy coworking.png

Transit after Sandy

Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > Transit After Sandy - @NYCTAS .png

The Brooklyn Sandy

Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > The Brooklyn Sandy 2012-10-31 10-17-38.png

DC:

CrisisCamp DC
Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > SandyDC .png

Fairfax County (beta)
Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > Fairfax County Reporting Map (beta).png

National:

Huffington Post
Community Wiki > Weekly 29 - October 24 - 30, 2012 > Huffington Post Sandy Stormwatch 2012-10-31 10-18-20.png

Code:

About: What code are your working on? What needs help?

Congratulations and thanks go out to Community members - Seth Kigen for master coding and Robert Buckley for helping test. Seth has released a WMS Layers plugin, It supports Ushahidi versions 2.5/2.6. (Currently, this plugin is not available on crowdmap.) This functionality has long been a community need. Already folks are chatting on our Ushahidi community developer chat room about testing and future deployments.

Our Next Community Developer call is Monday, November 26th. Details: Developer Community Meetings

Events:

About: Events, presentations and hosting by Ushahidi Core, Community. Share your presentations, your videos etc.

This is a great summary from Tech Change on why online and in person events need to be connected: Online First Event Planning Leave the Bagels, Keep the Community.

A few weeks ago, Nick Werby of the Cost of Chicken Project presented at the California Science Teachers Conference.

Upcoming

Our friends at Geeks without Bounds and CrisisCommons are holding Hackathon events throughout the weekend. If you are US-based, maybe you can join in. There are likely to be mapping projects.

Calling all IDEO Fans and Ushahidi Bay Area Community folks:

We are running a hackathon in partnership with IDEO.org and Social Coding for Good on November 2nd and 9th.

Logistics, project overview and Registration:

They are looking to build a sanitation map in Ghana using Ushahidi core and doing some interesting stuff with the IDEO front-end designers. We are looking for a trusted Ushahidi developer who is interested in leading a team at this hackathon by being the Ushahidi representative and managing the Ushahidi backend work. Please let us know if you are interested in attending and working with on an Ushahidi deployment with the IDEO team.

And more....

Brasilia, Brazil (Casual Meet-up): November 6, 2012
London, UK (Casual Meet-up): November 12, 2012

Wellington, NZ (Casual Meet-up): November 20, 2012