Quickbits November 2008 at humanitarian.info

Quickbits November 2008

Shelter Centre unleash their new website upon the world. Finally a humanitarian website that’s highly-functional, well-designed and thinks hard about the community – in this case the shelter sector (obviously). Give it a spin, and kudos both to the Centre and to Development Seed for a job well done.
NetHope gets some play in the NYT, in an article entitled Wiring Disaster Areas to the Outside World. Nice enough, but nothing that hasn’t been said before, which leaves me wondering why it’s appearing now?
You’ve read the BBC World Service Trust Report Left in the Dark, and now you can meet the Project Managers at an HPN Event at 12.30-2.00 on 4 December in London. No online links (yes, HPN are that backward) but you can reserve a space by emailing hpn <at> odi <dot> org <dot> uk. Sadly I won’t be attending, so please ask a reasonably informed question on my behalf.
Is the obvious avenue for Aid Workers Network the street called Facebook? I’m not convinced, for a number of reasons, but it’s nice to see the sector trying these things out. However we seem to be back to flogging the old dead horse with debates about the platform… Also worth joining – Humanitarians for Fashion.

Written by Paul Currion

November 15th, 2008 at 4:48 pm

Posted in General

Tagged with ISCRAM

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good question on the NetHope article, was puzzled myself

Patrick Meier

15 Nov 08 at 17:18
“Is the obvious avenue for Aid Workers Network the street called Facebook? I’m not convinced, for a number of reasons, but it’s nice to see the sector trying these things out.”

Why shouldn’t AWN try to outreach to as many aid workers as possible? There are aid workers on FaceBook, and AWN is trying to reach them. So what?

Jayne Cravens

17 Nov 08 at 12:40
Don’t get me wrong – I think it’s a good idea. AWN should be using as many avenues as possible for outreach. My main questions (which perhaps I should have been specific about) are probably about the transaction costs of maintaining a presence on multiple platforms, and about what added value any given platform delivers (beyond the brute number of members). As I said, it’s a good idea, but I’d be interested to hear what you believe Facebook will deliver for AWN?

Paul Currion

17 Nov 08 at 12:47
Patrick – I’m always glad to see more exposure for NetHope in the press – it’s one of those few projects that is an inherently good idea, Maybe it’s my long-dormant journalist side that automatically thinks “why now?”

Paul Currion

17 Nov 08 at 12:48
Isn’t the Shelter Centre site brill? AWN, take some lessons…

Also kudos to Matt Slater, who did the hard part.

Tom Longley

18 Nov 08 at 7:47