Fun with Ushahidi! A proposal for a BarCampLondon Treasure Hunt...
Sara Farmer
The idea is: use a copy of Ushahidi for something fun at a popular
techie event. The next big event is BarCampLondon8 on 13th and 14th
November.
Why? a) it's fun, and b) we need to get UK people used to crisis mapping
software - both running it and sending inputs to it in a crisis. Spike
and Harry have already run an OpenStreetMap training evening, and the
Beyond2010 Hackathon team set up a FrontlineSMS last week. We learnt
from both of those, but there are also Sahana, CrisisWiki, Ushahidi,
PeopleFinder and TweakTheTweet to get people used to.
What? Ushahidi is a standalone tool with geek-friendly inputs (SMS and
Twitter). It puts these inputs onto a map - which could easily be
adapted into a geographically-based game.
How? What we need from everyone is:
a) Game ideas. BarCampLondon is near Angel Tube Station - the first
idea is to hold a treasure hunt around this area, perhaps based on
easily-found London landmarks like blue plaques, pubs and bus stops,
with verification by photo with BCL8 badge in shot. This needs a bit of
working on...
b) Tech help. Ushahidi was surprisingly easy to install on GoDaddy, but
there are likely to be things we want to do that need thinking about
(how to show those photos, for a start). The site is at
http://opencrisis.net/ushahidi - it's currently in its default state of
'election in Nairobi'. There's also a google group at
http://groups.google.com/group/ushahidigame, to catch emails sent to the
tool.
c) People to man the Ushahidi feed over the weekend (although there
might be some passthrough stuff we could use).
Hopefully this will grow into a cool thing to do at camps, that sneakily
gets people used to working with Ushahidi feeds, and gets new ideas into
Ushahidi too. It's an idea anyways: what does everyone think?
S & S.
ps. Ushahidi is starting to be used more in the UK (London tube strikes
and post-cut local governments). The BBC strikes instance is at:
http://onlinejournalismblog.com/2010/09/08/lessons-in-crowdsourcing-claire-wardle-on-using-ushahidi-for-the-tube-strike/
Spike
Sounds like a great idea Sara!
OSM http://osm.org/go/euu44e@N?layers=C shows about two dozen pubs in
the area of the venue - how about that? Or geographical references
from the song "Pop Goes The Weasel"? ;-)
Spike
On Oct 24, 12:28 pm, Sara Farmer <sara.far...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> Hello everyone,
>
> The idea is: use a copy of Ushahidi for something fun at a popular
> techie event. The next big event is BarCampLondon8 on 13th and 14th
> November.
>
> Why? a) it's fun, and b) we need to get UK people used to crisis mapping
> software - both running it and sending inputs to it in a crisis. Spike
> and Harry have already run an OpenStreetMap training evening, and the
> Beyond2010 Hackathon team set up a FrontlineSMS last week. We learnt
> from both of those, but there are also Sahana, CrisisWiki, Ushahidi,
> PeopleFinder and TweakTheTweet to get people used to.
>
> What? Ushahidi is a standalone tool with geek-friendly inputs (SMS and
> Twitter). It puts these inputs onto a map - which could easily be
> adapted into a geographically-based game.
>
> How? What we need from everyone is:
>
> a) Game ideas. BarCampLondon is near Angel Tube Station - the first
> idea is to hold a treasure hunt around this area, perhaps based on
> easily-found London landmarks like blue plaques, pubs and bus stops,
> with verification by photo with BCL8 badge in shot. This needs a bit of
> working on...
>
> b) Tech help. Ushahidi was surprisingly easy to install on GoDaddy, but
> there are likely to be things we want to do that need thinking about
> 'election in Nairobi'. There's also a google group athttp://groups.google.com/group/ushahidigame, to catch emails sent to the
>
> c) People to man the Ushahidi feed over the weekend (although there
> might be some passthrough stuff we could use).
>
> Hopefully this will grow into a cool thing to do at camps, that sneakily
> gets people used to working with Ushahidi feeds, and gets new ideas into
> Ushahidi too. It's an idea anyways: what does everyone think?
>
> S & S.
> ps. Ushahidi is starting to be used more in the UK (London tube strikes
Cristiano Betta
Cristiano
Daniel Williams
Sara Farmer
tool that plots reports sent in by the public (via sms, twitter, email,
ham radio etc) onto a map and a timeline, organised into categories to
give a user an instant picture of when and what is going on across an area.
It was originally designed for monitoring elections (violence, polling
irregularities etc). This year, it's been used as part of a linked set
(tweakTheTweet, OpenStreetMap, Ushahidi, Sahana) of disaster
applications (in Haiti, Pakistan floods, Chile earthquake), and it's
also starting to be used in the UK for plotting local authority issues
after the recent government cuts, and for one-off incidents like the
London tube strikes (see http://tubestrike.crowdmap.com/main)
Ushahidi is very useful but it isn't perfect yet - and the best way to
make it so is to use it and report back to the development team. Hence
the suggestion to use it for a 'fun' application with a bunch of people
who are very technically savvy. On reflection, my offer to create an
instance for the travel problems was indeed over-complex, but I'd still
like to think through ways to use it for something less serious than
saving lives and plotting rubbish collection problems.
Sj.
>>>> S& S.