Monday, October 3, 2011
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!
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I agree that this past Monday’s class was very interesting. One we had a guest speaker, but we had the guest speaker through video conference. This was the part that made it very annoying. The audio was terrible, he spoke to us like we didn’t really know much. I guess that is what you get when your speaker flies for 9 hours from Geneva to Washington DC. Let’s hope that the next speaker is a little better. I do have to say he did have a lot of interesting points he brought up during the presentation.
ReplyDeleteI think there was an overall consensus with the class that cluster models were a huge hit. People seemed to take a large interest in them. However, I found that the innovation part was one of the main and biggest parts of these systems to emergency response on a large scale disaster. Innovation, coming up with new ways to do things more effectively, but being able to get rid of the old technology that worked maybe 2 years ago for something unknown. There needs to be some gutsy people in the humanitarian world if they ever want to make things more efficient for relief aid.
You did not mention what I find to be one of the biggest and coolest things NetHope does for third world countries. NetHope Academies, yes these academies are influential to the future of disaster relief. At these academies they teach students and computer science students more about technology and how it can be used in emergency situations. If you look at my post class blog post after the NetHope Speaker, Gisli Olafsson you will find a Youtube embedded in my post. Take a look at it, I believe this will help change the playing field for disaster relief.
Monday's class was good. I enjoyed the speaker and I also enjoyed the fact that he seemed interested in how interested we were.
ReplyDeleteI really enjoyed his views on cluster models but I do not believe they will become a staple in disaster relief anytime soon. I mean the people within the relief community all want to help and work together but the higher ups seem to be more concerned about the glory to be had by having the highest impact not the really caring about the overall relief effort.
The seven points made a lot of sense to me and they also seemed to be common sensical. Interoperability is a huge part of our class I feel and I feel like Gisli couldn't emphasize the point enough. We need these agencies to work together and we need to figure out a way for it to work in a matter beneficial to all. We need the collaboration it's really important and hopefully a goal that everyone will want to achieve wholeheartedly soon enough.
I agree with the best weapon of democracy is openness but I really don't see that happening. Call me cynical but as much as I would love for the information to be out there I don't think it will be. But if ever there was a time when it should be it should be when it comes to emergency response and disaster relief.
I really enjoyed your post and it hit on a lot of points that really struck me during the talk.
The class we had on monday was very interesting, i agree. The only fault was that the video quality was mediocre at best. it was freeze frequently and becuase of that i found that i lost what he was saying every once in awhile. But other than that, the talk was very good. I liked the cluster topic(along with everyone else in the class) it made me think about things that i once never thought about, just like when he said the the thing that he wants the most in a place or a system were whenever people arrive at the disaster sight they should check in so that everyone else knows that they are there. This to me seems like a simple problem to fix. it also seems that me that this should have never been a problem at all. I mean even in the most basic and elementary of events people check in. For example, teachers in a middle school class check their students in when they arrive to class. I would think that this would be an automatic reaction to most people. but apparently not. maybe in our final project at the end of the semester we can draw up something that would fix this issue that seems to be troubling him. One of this things that did bother me was the i felt like he spoke to us as if we did not know anything about what he was saying. We are a IST major, so you would think that he would be able to talk to us about technical stuff instead of holding back from the details. If he did not do that, i fell like i would have gotten alot more out of his talk. But other than that, i feel like i learned alot and i am looking forward to our next speaker on Monday.
ReplyDeleteClass was interesting last Monday I really enjoyed the guest speaker. Even though the video quality was poor, it was pretty clear to understand his points. I liked the last point he brought up about sustainability. I couldn’t agree with him more, people need to be educated after they have been affected by a crises or disaster. Continuously providing help is great, if people are educated about the situation, then maybe they can help themselves. Another good point Mr. Ollafssonn mentioned was the use of technologies that aren’t being used when humanitarian organizations respond to disasters. He gave a couple of examples, one of them being the good vouchers used in Kenya. He said these vouchers cost somewhere around $1.60 to print. Sixty-three percent of Kenya’s population owned or used mobile phones. Mr. Ollafsson they could use mobile transaction that would only cost around six cents, rather than the paper vouchers. Another example he gave about technologies that could be used was related to assessing disasters. A team of people would go out and interview people after a disaster. These people would ask a series of questions and note the answers on paper. Mr. Ollafsson said the assessment questions could be noted on mobile devices rather than using paper.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, one of the most important terms he mentions was collaborations. The major humanitarian organizations are too busy battling each other for publicity, when they could be out helping people. Basically it sounded like the only time these humanitarian organizations wanted to help were when camera were watching. If they knew nobody was watching then they didn’t want to help out, only because they want publicity. It’s a shame and something should be done.