Download - 2011 Random Hacks of Kindness: Montreal
What to expect at Random Hacks of Kindness?
Montréal Canada
Dec 2 – 4, 2011
@rhokMtlhttp://www.rhok.org/event/montréal-canada
How to get the latest Info
Register yourself for the event so we know you are coming.
http://www.rhok.org/event/montréal-canada
If you registered and can’t attend please email us:
[email protected] so we can give your spot to someone else.
Signup for a RHoK account on the www.rhok.org website so you can join
the problems you will work on and stay in contact with rest of the community.
Register and Set Up An Account
Some Problem Definitions We are Working on:
Security Alert App for Humanitarian Workers in Haiti.
Crowdsourcing for Open Learning.
First Nation Access to Water and Sanitation.
Peer learning & peer networking for pineapple farmers, Sri Lanka
More to be added before the event.
You can also work on any of the problems documented here:
http://www.rhok.org/problems
Send an email to [email protected] so we can add it to our event page.
Problem Definitions
Ushahidi-Haiti: Hacking for Humanity at its Best
Ushahidi-Haiti: Hacking for Humanity at its Best
http://haiti.ushahidi.com/ Ushahidi open source platform provides a way for volunteers to collect information from
sources like text messages, blog posts, videos, phone calls, and pictures, which are then mapped in near real time. It can be used to plot everything from disasters to wars.
Information about the Haiti earthquake crisis was quickly and easily available to Haitians (those inside and outside the country), the press, humanitarian relief workers, governments, and concerned people worldwide.
Ushahidi in collaboration with The Fletcher School at Tufts University set up the site within 2 hours of the earthquake, and hundreds of volunteers worked to keep it running 24/7.
Not a typical approach used by humanitarian organizations but there was a very positive response in the media and among stakeholders, largely attributed to its relevance in early response to emergencies.
However, there were some significant barriers to its widespread adoption https://sites.google.com/site/haitiushahidieval/news/finalreportindependentevaluationoftheushahidihaitiproject
In Haiti Now…Problem Def #1: Security Alert App
for Humanitarian Workers Receiving accurate and timely information about safe and unsafe areas
within Haiti is still a challenge for humanitarian workers.
Many humanitarian organizations have their own codification systems and requirements for determining safe zones.
Information is not necessarily consistent or shared between different humanitarian organizations.
There is a need to coordinate information about security incidences amongst humanitarian organizations, so that an incident reported by one organization is communicated to other organizations in a timely fashion.
More details to be posted to the rhok.org site soon.
Problem Def #2: Crowdsourcingfor Open Education
Leverage open content, mobile technologies and crowd-sourcing to create language resources for the underserved languages.
Use existing open text (such as Wikipedia) in languages such as Swahili, Arabic and Urdu, and create a crowd-sourcing mechanism for developing these text repositories into language corpora.
This could include tagging the words in the corpus based on part of speech (a process known as Part of Speech Tagging).
Send a part of speech to a group of contributors through text messages. Each contributor can examine the sentence and determine the tag for each word in the sentence (verb, noun, adjective, etc.) and send it back to the platform.
Participation in the platform can be encouraged through several means. For example, contributors may be rewarded for their participation with mobile credit they can use on their phones. The participation process can also be possibly structured in a game-like style.
More details to be posted to the rhok.org site soon.
Problem Def #3: First Nation Access to Water and Sanitation.
Force Provincial and Federal governments to take action and address the water quality issues in First Nation Communities...
Provide geo-tagged text tweets to government accounts forcing the issue to light...
"There are 231 drinking water advisories (DWAs) in 105 of 630 First Nations communities, many communities have multiple DWAs and some have been under these advisories for more than 5 years. 80% have been in place for more than one year, an occurrence that would simply not take place in other communities.
Integrate the data from http://www.water.ca/map-graphic.asp with this list http://politwitter.ca/canadian-government
Anytime a person in one of these communities has to boil water for a simple task they send a messsage that is geotagged and tweets at the appropriate government representatives
Collaborate with RHoK Toronto and build on http://www.rhok.org/solutions/watervoices
More details to be posted to the rhok.org site soon.
RHoK Repository: http://www.rhok.org/solutions First Nation Access to Water:
http://www.rhok.org/problems/first-nation-access-water-and-sanitation-canada
Ushahidi: http://ushahidi.com/ Frontline SMS: http://www.frontlinesms.com/ Nokia Data Gathering: http://projects.developer.nokia.com/ndg Github OpenStreetMap Google Fusion tables Scribblelive, coveritlive, storify
Tools/Resources
It is free!
Check Eventbrite or Rhok event page for the most up to date schedule.
http://www.rhok.org/event/montr%C3%A9al-canada
http://mtlrhok.eventbrite.com/
The Main event
Your Laptop, power bar, power cords, demo equipment, dongle
Camera, webcam, headphones
Smile and an open mind
Coffee mug
What to bring?
Notman House
51 sherbrooke west. Metro: Saint-Laurent, Place-des-Arts. Bus: 24, 5
Questions? [email protected]
Where is RHoK Montreal?
For RHoK events we recommend the following criteria when local judges assess and rank projects presented at their event creativity / innovative / unique: utility, can it be used in the field? applicable, does it solve a problem impact, local or global progress (on existing work, or starting from nothing) usability other...Stay tuned for updates on who the judges are.
How does Judging Work?
Prizes include Nokia cellphones: Lumia 800, N9.
What are the prizes?
UStream: Username: rhokMtlTwitter: @rhokMtlYoutube: rhokMtlFlickr: rhokMtl, RHOK, Randomhacks
Ping us on twitter.
Follow the Event!