Who is Ushahidi

Ushahidi is a non-profit tech company that develops free and open source software for information collection, visualization and interactive mapping.  Our software has been used by media, community capacity builders, storytellers, international development workers, and more to tell a visual story.

Crowdmap is cloud-based and simple to use. You can setup an account. I find it takes about 1 hour to get it all set-up and then to play/learn the tool.
Ushahidi platform allows for more customization of your deployment and does require a server.

SwiftRiver helps people to make sense of large amounts of information in a short amount of time.

Which Tool should you use for your project?

  1. If you do not have the technical expertise, it might be best to consider starting with crowdmap.com. We recommend that you do a simulation (test site) for a common topic before using it for your project. This helps with learning and determining your project's next steps.
  2. With strong technical skills, the Ushahidi platform would be a good place to start. See the Administration Guide.

Getting started:

These pages are good places to get started on your Ushahidi journey:

Community Details:

Some examples of excellence in these types of maps:

Types of Maps

Deployments of the Week

Meeting the community

We have a number of community channels including a mailing list (list.ushahidi.com to join community@list.ushahidi.com) and a skype group for the community (please add heatherleson to be connected)

Some resources to help you:
The International Red Cross/Red Crescent released this recent study on how to manage sensitive data online:
http://www.icrc.org/eng/resources/documents/publication/p0999.htm

We've created some resources to review, including recommending Tactical Tech's Security in a Box:
https://wiki.ushahidi.com/display/WIKI/Security+Technical+Best+Practices


Getting started:
We've created the following toolkits to help people plan their project. I would recommend reviewing them as your prepare your plan.
Ushahidi Toolkits

Additional resources:

Ushahidi Forums

Github: http://github.com/ushahidi

Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/ushahidi
Video channels: http://ushahidi.mirocommunity.org/