Data and Info Sharing with No Power or Internet? - Meet LDLN

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Data and Info Sharing with No Power or Internet? - Meet LDLN

There is an organization that I have wanted to introduce people to for a while.  It is a game changer, provided it can be applied more and baked into operations and various technologies. 

In disaster operations, the Internet is the predominate way to share data and information across people, organizations, and geographies--when it is available.  It is a critical failure point to inter-organizational and region-wide operations that need to share across wireless networks.  When access to the Internet is compromised, cascading effects occur such as having to reconcile what the latest data and information is. In fact, data and information sharing is often reduced to files on USB sticks that are physically traded.  Version control becomes essential, but hard to maintain.

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Curate Dashboards NOT Documents in Disasters

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Curate Dashboards NOT Documents in Disasters

The goal of any information or intelligence unit  in a disaster is to produce information useful for decision makers.  Information managers, though, curate and analyze information into static and overly-standardized reports that are hard to interact with and update with new and different data and information.  

Instead, information managers should focus on publishing information into dynamic dashboards that can be further manipulated by disaster decision makers at their convenience.  This is because decision makers may want to quickly...

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Tech Trends for Digital Volunteerism - An Introduction

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Tech Trends for Digital Volunteerism - An Introduction

Recently, there has been a surge of groups and tools supporting digital volunteerism.  Digital volunteers are "a new breed of people willing and able to respond is emerging — ones with technical skills. These are digital humanitarians who, whether they can code or simply use a computer or mobile device, are saying "I want to help, so help me help!" They generally fall into two categories: 1) I have a technical skill [novice to advanced] that could help, or 2) I am not near the disaster and can't be there in person, but I want to help. They are not mutually exclusive." 

In the spirit of pushing this concept forward, I was recently asked to present on this topic to a number of non-profits that support disaster relief efforts.  Below is the presentation that outlines existing digital volunteer groups as well as some common tools.  There are of course many more tools, but this should provide a brief introduction.  

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To Make Better Decisions, Combine Datasets

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To Make Better Decisions, Combine Datasets

The Harvard Business Review just published this excellent article about decision making and data.  The key point it makes is that value and insights come from the ability to combine datasets.  Two thoughts emerge:

First, when purchasing and using technology, ensure that data can be shared in real-time (if not, at least exportable in a non-proprietary format!).  Otherwise, all you have is a fancy application that is good only for 

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