haiti codes
Chris Blow
just saw this and was thinking about the project --
> @acarvin: To Brainstorm Further: Matrix Codes for Haiti? http://post.ly/Lg8m
It's a compatible ides and worth the consideration of the people on
this list.
Any thoughts on deployments? I think it is important that we
establish the full data cycle, and that we can show some synching
based on the codes.
Also, I found a project in drupal that is building a form builder:
http://drupal.org/project/form_builder
Which is both incomplete and outdated, but may serve as a reference
for the formbuilder UI.
best,
c
Chris Blow
Robert Kirkpatrick
My apologies for the hiatus in communications. Things have been a bit
complex on this end, between relocating to the East Coast, starting a
new job, and dealing with a back injury. I know Haiti has been a
focus for many on this list as well. I just posted a response to
Kuang's thoughtful comments, which I'm embarrassed to note date back
to December.
We're getting interest from others in seeing this project move forward
as soon as possible. I'll direct their comments here.
Chris, the matrix codes idea is indeed interesting. How might you
imagine such codes would be used? As I recall, these codes are
designed to contain a reference such as a URL, vs the data itself.
Might such a code be useful to refer to an online copy of the schema,
from which the schema in the paper form might or might not diverge?
What if a matrix code (printed as a flyer? laminated?) could be
attached to a site or facility AFTER a Talking Papers / Walking
Paper's form were completed, containing a unique, randomly URL pre-
encoded into the blank Talking Paper's form at the time of generation,
that would always point to the data collection where a copy of the
data should eventually reside?
In terms of deployments, isn't Walking Paper's already being deployed
there?
Edouard, you had a few ideas for deployment as well, no?
Yes, the drupal form-builder in interesting in its approach. I think
the principles of doing one thing only, doing it simply, and doing it
well are important. As with so many aspects of a project like Talking
Papers, there are many pre-existing systems with components that could
be customized to address an aspect of the requirements, but they each
come with baggage. If we do choose to go the route of building our
own formsbuilder -- which I personally favor -- the approach Nathan
took with this drupal module makes sense for our forms-builder as well
(aside from the dependency on drupal, that is).
I'll talk to some of my former colleagues in the disaster relief
world who are now working in Haiti and brainstorm about ways Talking
Papers could help.
Robert
Chris Blow
Yikes, hope you are feeling better Robert! And congratulations on the
new position.
Thanks for the update.
I am also in the process of moving -- back to the Bay Area, if anyone
can get together. I'm likely going to be unavailable for work on
talkingpapers until I get settled in early March. If anyone can meet
in San Francisco, I think it would be great to work on this in person.
c
Chris Blow
Edouard Legoupil
Hi Patrick,
As said since the start, I believe that concept such as talking papers would really fill a gap in terms of data collection the field.
The few colleagues, data manager in the field, I told about this project were all enthusiastic. I hope we will soon be able to take the opportunity of such momentum.
From a field perspective, we would have roughly three situations were we could use such system:
- Site assessment: (some examples from the field here: http://www.humanitarianinfo.org/IMToolBox/web/05_Asmt.html )
- Peoples of concerns / beneficiary registration
- Household survey
I am currently looking at building a xsd for each of those contexts. There area already a lot of lessons learnt. The question is how to ensure that forms will benefit from the de facto standards without becoming too rigid at the same time. It is extremely difficult to get diverse organizations to agree on a common schema and It is counterproductive for a central authority to impose arbitrary standards by fiat. Keeping a balance between the need for standard and the need of the real world imply to find a way to integrate all forms without having central authority (a kind of pipeline that would be enrich directly the main schema). That might be one of the big challenges of this form designer...
A few years ago, an interesting project, the IDML, International Development Markup Language, has been aimed at building an xsd for project directory and reporting:
- http://www.huesemann.org/XML/Schema/IDML/SimpleActivitySchema/IDML_091.xsd
- http://www.huesemann.org/XML/Schema/IDML/Reporting/idmlReporting.xsd
It failed to become a standard for the "who's doing what where" directory but the technology, at that time, was not as mature as it is nowadays. The “People Finder Interchange Format” (http://zesty.ca/pfif/ ) is a good example of the new opportunities: http://wiki.crisiscommons.org/wiki/Person_Finder
What has changed is that the Xforms, build out of those XSD, would be then deployable in a variety of context:
- Webform with http://www.agencexml.com/xsltforms that sounds more portable than the Mozilla addon https://addons.mozilla.org/de/firefox/addon/824
- Android form via ODK http://code.google.com/p/open-data-kit/
- JavaME / JavaROSA form, etc.
I have not looked yet very precisely, but taking in account that Talking papers would be based on Xforms, in addition of those already mentioned, some tools already available would be:
- Open Office writer: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOo3_User_Guides/Writer_Guide/XForms This one do work offline, maybe an “Talking papers” addon in Openoffice could be a good option…
- Oryx is browser based: http://bpt.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/Oryx/XForms / http://code.google.com/p/oryx-editor/
I am looking forward to see soon a prototype that we could test & pilot somewhere in the field.
Best regards,
Edouard
Edouard Legoupil
Michal Migurski
Nice to hear from you again! Just a couple things from me personally
since I last posted here. I've not worked on Talking Papers overmuch
since the initial scan / mech. turk demos, but I've been seeing
increased interest in Walking Papers for purely map printing reasons.
I've added optional UTM and USNG grid references to the prints to help
make them more useful as an output form, and I've got a test version
of ISO paper sizes as well.
I'm actually not sure how or whether W-P has been used in Haiti; I
included aerial imagery from shortly after the disaster in the list of
available layers, but my impression is that people prefer to install
their own separate copies of the application, even while it's still
technically a hassle to do so. I'm trying to carve out a bit of time
devoted to streamlining an installation process, maybe in an
environment like the Sheeva Plug just out of raw curiosity.
-mike.
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michal migurski- mi...@stamen.com
415.558.1610
Robert Kirkpatrick
Moves are no fun, though finally being moved in is almost -- almost
-- worth the hassle. Getting together in person sounds like a very
good idea. I know I'll be out there this Spring, though I don't have a
timeframe yet. I'd love to sit down with you for an afternoon and
sketch out some ideas. Please ping me when you're settled in. I'm
getting the impression that no one has really build a simple,
mashable, flexible open source form builder such as we've been
imagining. That piece alone would be quite useful. You know my bias,
too -- I'll be wanting to wire it up to sync schema and data
repositories via something like Mesh4X....
Cheers,
Robert
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Mark Prutsalis
Welcome to New York and congratulations on the new post at the UN.
I'd like to discuss with you (and the group) the potential for Sahana to
serve as *a* repository of Talking Papers data. As you saw at RELIEF
10-1 at Camp Roberts, Sahana has already developed some of these
capabilities for printing forms and doing OCR on marked up forms. We
also have plans to extend these capabilities and merge them with the
mobile platform data collection (Android phone, iPhone, blackberry,
Xforms/javarosa).... so it seems to make sense to coordinate on
standards, field names, schema, etc. We could add a lot of value to the
data collected in Talking Papers by being able to integrate it easily
with other data sources, and then re-serve it up in multiple formats and
open standards.
We certainly have baggage too... that's why I'm suggesting serving as
*a* and not *the* repository.... but I don't think anything is
insurmountable.
Sushi sometime next week?
I'm copying Chamindra... I don't think he is a member of this group.
Best regards,
Mark