The NTEN conference went very well – tremendous interest in the idea of Humanitarian Open Source, particularly the Sahana experience. I delivered a short panel address (I’ll post the notes as soon as I have time to type them up) and participated in a workshop with some really interesting people who’d been involved in the Hurricane Katrina response. The keynote speech was delivered by Mike Hess of USAID, who provided an interesting overview of his involvement in humanitarian and reconstruction work over the last 15 years. He’s one of the people inside the US administration who gets it, from a humanitarian perspective, and it was interesting to hear him link the US experience in civilian and military response in a way that made sense.
As always, the offline discussions were just as illuminating as the main events – it was good to catch up with Ted Okada from Groove (now Microsoft/Groove, of course, or possibly Groove/Microsoft), as well as sharing the platform with casual visionary Paul Meyer of Voxiva. Conference details are on N-TEN’s website, agenda and workshops and so forth, here. You can find a nice article from the Chronicle of Philanthropy Relief Groups Say 2005 Disasters Point Out Vital Technology Needs.
Related posts: