The ideas behind decentralized, bottom-up style communication mechanisms are both intriguing and disruptive. Due to that decentralization it seems difficult to measure impact. The power behind blogging on Global Voices and anonymous reports/messaging for Ushahidi is the fact that it’s open to anyone. How do you measure impact in an ongoing way?

I agree that it’s difficult to measure impact, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not important to measure impact. You guys started Ushaidi because you wanted to have an impact – what impact did you want to have? Do you feel you’ve achieved that impact? What evidence do you have that you’ve achieved that impact? There’s a trail of questions that we can follow to get to a point where we can start to measure impact – although it’s likely we’ll never be as certain as we would like about these things.

One of my thoughts is this; we don’t have the answers, but what if we can build a platform that allows those with answers to tweak it in a way that works for them? Let’s use plugins and extensions to allow customization of a core system. The best get baked into the platform in future iterations.

This is exactly the development process that Sahana has followed, so I agree with the approach completely. However one of the things to be aware of is that the platform must necessarily contain its own parameters, and by its very nature those parameters will define what questions will be asked, let alone what answers will be found. In the context of Sahana, I see a tension between what I would like (a tool for empowering communities in disaster management) versus what we actually have (a largely government-deployed disaster co-ordination platform); but we can’t have both, and the development process and the platform will reinforce each other down one path (or fork, but I find that less likely).

Another thought is that I continue to wonder if the lack of technology use by organizations in disaster /crisis /humanitarian situations is due to lack of simple tools to use, or if it’s that technology is not the answer. I’m not sure on this yet, but the technologist in me would like to believe that it’s due to not having the right tools available in the simplest format.

I believe that technology is not the answer. The problem is the lack of processes within these organisations to adopt and adapt technology for their own uses, particularly in the field. This is changing (slowly) and it doesn’t mean that developing new technology has no place – we should encourage and enable more projects to get started and see which of them survive.

Lastly, I wonder how so many early warning organizations and experts have not utilized the power and intelligence of the people.

I think it’s mainly because you can’t trust people. Nobody is independent in a conflict situation (or incipient conflict), there are soooooooo many reasons for people to misrepresent the situation, and humans are frequently just plain wrong. The role of experts should be to adjust for bias and filter out the signal from the noise; frequently of course they don’t do that, partly because they have interests of their own.

As I’ve begun to read more and understand this space a little better, it seems that people think only established organizations can really help with early warning or disaster recovery. Why?

I’ll limit my answer to disaster response, which is what I know most about and in which the answer is simple. Organisations provide economies of scale; they provide a framework for skill matching; they act as a broker between those with needs and those with resources; they provide continuity of purpose that goes beyond individual intent. Remember, people don’t form organisations just for fun; if organisations didn’t serve a useful purpose, people wouldn’t form them at all.

The big disaster response NGOs, for example – the Oxfams and CAREs of this world – came out of exactly the same process as you’re undergoing now – people coming together to take collective action. The main difference now is that the internet provides a wider range of tools and a wider scope for this collective action, at a lower cost. However if that collective action is limited to the web, then what is the impact in the real world – where the problems are actually located?

I don’t think it’s fair to say that people think only those organisations can help, however; there’s a clear acknowledgement in the sector that most of the heavy lifting in a disaster is done by the individuals and communities affected. In addition, many of those organisations do have grassroots networks in the forms of their ongoing country programmes.

Why can’t tools be built to help in using, organizing and informing people on the ground, and those distributed around the world, who care about a particular situation? We’re seeing bloggers step up to say something, actively organize and document events during crisis/disaster scenarios. What happens when you empower everyone else to do the same?

They can be built, and they should be built, and they will be built – because the demand is there. Yet the questions remain for me – how are projects like Ushaidi organising people on the ground? Who has access to the information provided by Ushaidi? What is the goal of documenting those events, and documenting them in this particular way? These are the questions that come to my mind, and I know they come to yours as well.

As to what happens when you empower everyone else – I simply don’t know. The question is, what are you really empowering them to do?

Okay, here are the rambling thoughts that this post, and Patrick’s, triggered…

A couple thoughts on GVO and Ushahidi. The ideas behind decentralized, bottom-up style communication mechanisms are both intriguing and disruptive. Due to that decentralization it seems difficult to measure impact. The power behind blogging on Global Voices and anonymous reports/messaging for Ushahidi is the fact that it’s open to anyone. How do you measure impact in an ongoing way? Sometimes you get anecdotal stories of connections and sometimes you don’t get anything. Part of that is due to not baking in the right follow-up mechanisms, and some of it is due to the free-for-all systems that they’re built on.

Is the power also in “letting go” of the system? Letting people use the platforms for a number of different things and seeing what happens. Isn’t that where Wikipedia took off? The first iteration of their idea stunk because of rigid control mechanisms and an older way of thinking about who should have the right to say something.

As we’re building the Ushahidi engine into a platform, I think a lot about what you said to us way back in February. One of my takeaways was to realize that we’re neophytes in this arena. Our goal since then has been to recreate the engine as a free and open source tool, with a goal of releasing that to the world with the ability to customize and adjust it as needed in different situations.

One of my thoughts is this; we don’t have the answers, but what if we can build a platform that allows those with answers to tweak it in a way that works for them? Let’s use plugins and extensions to allow customization of a core system. The best get baked into the platform in future iterations. (think WordPress)

Another thought is that I continue to wonder if the lack of technology use by organizations in disaster/crisis/humanitarian situations is due to lack of simple tools to use, or if it’s that technology is not the answer. I’m not sure on this yet, but the technologist in me would like to believe that it’s due to not having the right tools available in the simplest format.

As Clay Shirky says in his book, only when technology becomes boring to technologists does it become widespread in society. (my paraphrase) Is that the problem here? Are many of the technologies that we see as useful just too new to this particular space?

Lastly, I wonder how so many early warning organizations and experts have not utilized the power and intelligence of the people. As I’ve begun to read more and understand this space a little better, it seems that people think only established organizations can really help with early warning or disaster recovery. Why? Why can’t tools be built to help in using, organizing and informing people on the ground, and those distributed around the world, who care about a particular situation?

We’re seeing bloggers step up to say something, actively organize and document events during crisis/disaster scenarios. What happens when you empower everyone else to do the same?