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.
I agree with your post. Most of the stuff that you mentioned in yours, i also posted in my blog. One of the points you brought up about when he told us the story about the san fran earthquake. I also agree that stories are one of the best, if not the best way for people to remember what happen. I know for me, pretty much the only things that i remember are the stories that he told and that is less than a week later. Many studies have shown that most people only remember things that spark their interest, and for the most part stories catch peoples interest. this is because it is just not another bunch of straight forward facts and statistics. They actually convey a meaning that most people can in one way relate to and agree with. Furthermore, before he told the story i looked around the classroom and took notice to the people that were present. although they were paying attention they didnt look very attentive and upbeat. than, as soon as he told the story i saw the students light up in a way. they sat up in their chairs and started to look brighter and really focused on the story. I dont know if this is just because its a story or if Edward was a great story teller. But i think that it is just because the people in this class have some interest in Crisis Informatics and are interested in the story that he told. But either way, this was a great class and a great speaker. I also, would like to thank Edward for coming out to speak with us. It was a great opportunity for our class.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that the speaker from Monday’s class was the most interesting and one that I learned the most from. I found it to be educational and informal to a point. He used stories to get his points across and almost teach lessons but he didn’t really make it concrete in my opinion. I find these speakers to be interesting when they are telling their background when they tell more of how they liked and didn’t like things. I think the speakers need to teach us something instead of repeat things that we already hear time and time again. We hear the same thing over and over in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteI found that his three main points of his presentation was effective because it made you think about them during the course of his lecture. They were crisis, connections, and collaboration. The crisis part is not just natural disasters this could be political uprisings like in the countries of Northern Africa or terrorist plots to blow up a portion of a city.
I feel that some of the examples used should have been ones that we have lived through and might have some memory of them. There have been some very big natural disasters in our days when we might remember, and those should be the ones that we should be learning from because technology used in the 1989 San Francisco is far in superior to technology used even during 9/11.