Assigned Post #8 Patrick Meier and Crisis Mapping

Tonight’s class is the last class for the last guest speaker and I have been looking forward to it all last week. I have been interested to see if Patrick Meier can live up to the standards that the rest of the speakers set for him. At the beginning of the class we talked for one hour before we had to Skype the guest speaker for the lecture. During this hour we seemed to accomplish a lot of work. One of the things that we did was chose reading topics for the next few lectures. Another important part of tonight’s class was to choose our groups for the final project and then pick a topic that the group will focus on for the final project. Following the first hour we began our Skype lecture with Patrick Meier.

I feel that this Skype chat was a lot more productive than the last one we had around 3 weeks ago. This one was extremely clear and we could hear everything that the speaker was saying. I also thought that this speaker was the most interesting out of the four we have had. I would have preferred to see him speak in person to ask better questions, but overall the presentation was great. Patrick Meier is quite the expert on crisis mapping. He gave a virtual example of a map of Haiti that I thought was very interesting that showed an explosion to simulate the earthquake. Following this all of the earthquakes appeared slowing on the map to portray all the volunteers that worked on these maps. Patrick also showed us a global map in which the readers could see all over the world of the volunteers who translated Haitian Creole into English in order for rescue teams to be able to help. 

Volunteers have been proven time and time again to be the heart and soul of the humanitarian society. Crisis mapping is a critical step for humanitarian agencies because it makes it possible for them to see what things are like on the ground and what is happening around them without them actually being there. This allows them to find areas that need aid and supplies more than other areas that need less. Without crisis mapping the humanitarian workers on the ground would not know what to do and exactly where to go. By the use of connectivity combined with crisis mapping information is shared in order to save lives.

I thought that this speaker was one of the best that we have seen yet for sure. Following the class period I searched for some interesting videos on YouTube and found this interesting clip. It was titled “The Future of Crisis Mapping in Disaster Response” and can be found at the following link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_NguESRZ4g

The video was by the same speaker that we had in class this week and was very interesting. It reinforced the topics we covered last class and I highly advise watching it. This speaker was very impressive and I would like to hear him speak again someday.   

Assigned Post #7 Edward Granger-Happ and the International Red Cross

May I be the first to say that tonight’s speaker Edward Happ who works with the International Red Cross and also Net Hope was a very interesting speaker and had a variety of knowledge to share with the class. When the class began I found it very interesting that he has had three careers in his life already and he is still in the process of looking for two more careers before he wishes to retire. May I also add that the only disappointing part about this lecture was the lack of pizza. I think the next guest lecture should definitely include pizza. Overall, I think this was the best guest speaker we had thus far due to his massive amounts of experience in the humanitarian world. I think he was also the most famous that we have had the pleasure of hearing thus far. In any case after his introduction to the lecture I was already impressed.

According to Edward, his organization is based on three things; crisis, connections, and collaboration. Crisis in this sense is defined as the world stage getting more challenging. This makes sense because new disasters are always creating new problems to fix all over the world. The connections stage states that responding to crisis with technology is becoming more social. A good example of this is the use of social networking sites for humanitarian efforts such as Twitter and Facebook. Finally, collaboration was defined as different groups working together in order to achieve a common goal. The best example I can think of this was the earthquake in Haiti. Collaboration was at an all-time high during this disaster for government agencies, non-profit organizations, and even the victims themselves because everyone was sharing information.

Another event that I remember fairly well from the presentation was the earthquake in San Francisco, California in 1989. I was just a wee lad during that year and had no idea that it was even going on all the way over on the west coast of the United States. The earthquake conveniently hot at 5:04PM during rush hour, and we all know drivers in California drive fast to begin with. There was mass destruction including buildings being destroyed and many lives were taken. The speaker also brought up an essential point for us as a class; he said that in order for us to remember what his lecture was on he would tell stories to make the information stick. I think that is a genius idea and I will use that in my job in the future whatever that might be. 

Overall, I thought this speaker was the most interesting out of all the speakers thus far. He kept my attention easily and reinforced a lot of topics that we had previously discussed during class lectures. I found a YouTube video after class ended tonight on Edward and his work with Net Hope. It was titled Ed Granger-Happ on the Future of NetHope, and could be found at the following link:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pUKP8qCdupg

This presentation was excellent and I am eager to see how the next speaker turns out.

Assigned Post #6 Andrew Alspach and OCHA

I would like to begin this blog post by thanking Professor Tapia for setting up this opportunity and also for getting us pizza and drinks before the class began. That was a great beginning to the class and we had an awesome introduction for Andrew Alspach. At the beginning of class before the lecture began we had individual discussions with the speaker to find more about his background. It just so happens that he is an Ohio State fan, which was kind of a downside. We quickly got over this fact when he began telling us his life story and all of the different places that he has worked over the years. He grew up on the farm during his younger years as a bee keeper, which surprisingly gave him a reason to get into the Peace Corps. Following this, he eventually became a permanent member in the United Nations and more specifically OCHA. Following this, we went around the room and some of the class introduced themselves and why they are taking this class and major. I believe that this as a great way to get the speaker acclimated to the class and to get us acclimated to him as well for the actual lecture.

                I would have to say that one of the main focuses of the speaker was his work in Haiti and different types of technologies used there. I thought this was pretty interesting considering we have been covering this topic for the last three weeks in class. He spoke of the reading Disaster Relief 2.0 describing the events in Haiti and how the events woke up the people in the United Nations. This was cool because we earlier read this reading for class a few weeks ago and this reinforced the topics of tonight’s lecture. Another topic that I enjoyed was innovation. Andrew played a video on innovation that basically explained that if people open up their minds and share ideas, the better ideas come out in order to form breakthroughs. This reinforced topics that had also been previously discussed in class in some of the past weeks. Haiti was a prime example of people from different organizations coming together to solve a common problem. Many new technologies were invented and implemented through civilians using their expert skills for the better of mankind and to help one another in times of crisis. The last thing that sparked my interest during the discussion was Relief Web. This is a website that is very good for finding crisis relief jobs and other careers of that sort.

            I thought that this class this evening was very interesting and productive. I learned a lot of new topics and Andrew reinforced a lot of older topics and made them clearer to me. Following the presentation I found an interesting video on the United Nations and how they helped to cope with the earthquake in general. The You Tube clip is titled UN Copes with Haiti Earthquake and can be found at the following link below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5LjfwMnWxCo&feature=fvst

Overall, this was an awesome class and I hope that the next guest speaker can live up to the expectations of Andrew Alspach; he left a very hard presentation to beat. 

Assigned Post #5 Gisli Olafsson and Net Hope

Tonight’s class was probably the most interesting class we have had all year. It was a nice change of pace and scenery as well instead of being locked up in that little corner back room. As for our first speaker, Gisli Olafsson of Net Hope was a very intelligent man who cared a lot about connectivity. I actually thought he was pretty funny when we either had some down time during the question and answer period or whether the sound was messing up between our class and him. I believe that most of the topics the speaker went over were very relevant to most of the topics we have been going over since the beginning of this class. There are many different aspects of his lecture that I would like to go over, but I will simply cover a few for this blog.

To begin the class, Olafsson defined Humanitarian Reform as old models of collaboration no longer working so they designed a new way to deal with large scale disasters. An example where this was implemented was the Earthquake in Haiti that we covered in last week’s class. He would also later go on to say during the lecture that the disaster in Haiti was the greatest test of their skills with connectivity. Following this, he went in to speaking on cluster models and the 7 principles that these models following. First, cluster models are defined as putting different organizations together to work towards connectivity in order to improve disaster relief efforts. Now that we know what cluster models are, the 7 principles they follow include innovation, collaboration, openness, interdependence, integrity, self-organization, and finally sustainability. Together these 7 principles make connectivity simple and effective for humanitarian relief efforts.

Another interesting point he made during the presentation was on mass collaboration. He defined this as taking a large number of people and get them to work together in order to meet common goals. This is an essential part of disaster relief that we have been going over for the past few weeks. I thought this was a key point and really wanted to get it up in this blog because this point comes up every week. He also covered another topic we went over in class which stated, “Collaboration does not happen between organizations and they cause a big problem when disaster strikes because they just want media time in order to improve their fame”. I believe it is stupid and pointless that big time relief organizations are sometimes more interested in their money, popularity, and information than suffering people in countries all over the world which require aid immediately.

I wanted to bring up a quote that really hit me during the presentation this evening. It stated, “The best weapon of a dictatorship is secrecy, but the best weapon of a democracy should be the weapon of openness”. This quote reinforces the idea that organizations are much more effective if they collaborate with one another and take advantage of connectivity.

 In the link below I found a very interesting interview on YouTube with Gisli Olafsson:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ak6hMhhycQ0

Overall I thought the night was very interesting, although the volume level over the computer did not work very well. Tonight was a great class and I can’t wait until next week!