Open Source in Humanitarian and Philanthropic Causes Panel
Are you interested in community service? Are you wondering how Open Source can be used as a tool for good? This session is in a panel format and will concentrate on how Open Source has been successfully used to aid in global relief efforts.
Community based organizations and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) have utilized Open Source development as a means of creating applications for disaster relief and humanitarian efforts. This session gives an overview of how community-based organizations have collaborated with academia and the private sector to develop applications for humanitarian purposes. Panelists from various organizations will share their experiences with developing Open Source collaboration applications that have been used to manage disaster relief efforts in countries like Haiti and Sri Lanka. Panelists will present technical and non-technical viewpoints on how to get involved in humanitarian Open Source efforts. Come discuss questions like: • Lessons learned from collaboration experiences. • What was your motivation to get involved in developing applications for humanitarian efforts? • What was the most challenging step in developing applications for humanitarian relief efforts? • What are the difficulties faced in working with governmental entities? The audience will have an opportunity to ask question and share their experiences.
Moderator: Sandra Covington Co-champions : Natalia Vinnik and Sara Ford
We will need a room and microphones for each panelist. Other than that, we should not have any other physical space or A/V needs.
Jamie Lockwood is an Academic Relations Manager at Yahoo! Labs and works with the scientists, engineers and universities to develop mutually beneficial programs. She manages University Hack events, Key Scientific Challenges and Technology for Good programs along with various other global curriculum development initiatives. Currently she is working on a socially motivated developer program designed to stimulate and support thinking about how to better utilize information and open technology to address the major social, economic and environmental challenges that we face in the world today.
Alice Bonhomme-Biais is a Senior Software Engineer at Google. After working on Google Maps for a couple of years, she joined the Google Crisis Response Team in 2010 and participated in the Person Finder project developed for the Haiti Earthquake, now an open source project. In June 2010, she took part in the 2nd Random Hacks Of Kindness (RHoK). Alice received her master and doctorate degrees in CS from ENS Lyon, France.
Louiqa Raschid is a professor at the University of Maryland. Her research has made significant contributions towards solving the challenges of data management, data integration, and performance for applications in the life sciences, Web data delivery, health information systems, humanitarian IT applications, financial information systems and Grid computing. She is member of the Board of Directors (and Founding Chair) of the Sahana Software Foundation.
Jennifer Marsman,Developer Evangelist in Microsoft's Developer and Platform Evangelism group. We are still trying to contact her. Sara, any updates on that? – need more info
Leila Chirayath Janah, Founder and CEO of Samasource. Shannon has contacts with Ushahidi-Haiti (Crowdsourcing Crisis Information) - Denise Sewell, Director of Crisis Mapping
| Task | Status | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Update google docs | ||
| Create a twiki | Done | |
| Confirm with Jamie Lockwood | Done | |
| Follow up with Lauiqa from Sahana | Done | Louiqa Raschid has confirmed |
| Get a proposal from Shannon | ||
| Get contacts from Shannon for Ushahidi-Haiti about potential panelist. | Shannon mentioned that they are interested. | |
| Follow up on potential panelist from MS - Jennifer Marsman | ||
| Come up with the description of the panel | ||
| Program Materials for confirmed panelists including 100-word bio, picture (optional), abstract and summary | Got the material, but confirming the panelists |