Relief 2.0: Agile Crisis Response in Haiti – A Conference

Relief 2.0: Agile Crisis Response in Haiti – A Conference by David

February 18, 2010, 8:47 am
Filed under: Event, Reference

Earlier this week I discovered and then connected to a very interesting conference happening at Stanford University on February 26th entitled Relief 2.0 in Haiti. Their pitch is this:

There’s been quite a bit of tension in the Haiti relief efforts between governments, NGOs and other large organized bodies and the spontaneous efforts of volunteers providing aid on the ground. The general public, fueled by media reporting, are questioning why aid has taking so long to reach victims. Large NGOs and government efforts have been hamstrung by their organizational design, communications silos and in ability to respond rapidly to a dynamic environment.

In contrast, ad-hoc, crowdsourced relief efforts championed by individuals and aided by social media, have been able to play a critical first responder role.

In Relief 2.0 we’ll take an inside look of an emergent phenomenon – Agile Crisis Response made possible by social media and crowdsourced solutions and look at lessons learned and concrete actions that can be applied to Haiti’s reconstruction effort.

From 2005 to 2010 and beyond…

When Katrina hit in 2005, many people in the United States responded to the federal government’s failure to provide aid in a timely fashion with horror.  The take-away from Katrina is that if disaster struck, we were on our own.  Note that in 2005, Facebook was limited to college students and Twitter was yet to be developed.  Mobile fundraising was in its infancy – only $250,000 was raised through mobile donations for Katrina.

This time, there has been an explosion of crowdsourcing assistance to Haiti. Individuals have created ad-hoc teams instantly, identified needs and problems through Twitter, brainstormed through Facebook wall comments, shared the situation on the ground with 30 second videos taken with Flip cameras and so on.

Unlike formal organizations who need to see credentials before they agree to cooperate (what organization are you with? what’s your title?), crowdsourced teams instantly do a reputation check through Google, Facebook profiles and Twitter streams.  In crowdsourced teams what counts is what you can do, not who you are.

These ad-hoc volunteer efforts are not chaotic nor are the volunteers interlopers.  Instead, they’ve taken behaviors and practices from the Agile Product Develoment Movement and applied them to create an emergent Agile Crisis Reponse movement.

Join the discussion and creation of solutions with experts from a diversity of fields, institutions, background and vision in 5 intense experience and theme based panels:

1. Relief Assistance: Field Experience and Lessons Learned.
2. Health Services in Crisis: Patient Data and Delivery of Medical Assistance.
3. Restarting Education: Pre-existing conditions, present and future challenges.
4. Social Entrepreneurship: The role of the enterprise in rebuilding a nation.
5. Housing and Communities: Prospects for actual reconstruction of infrastructure.

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