FOR AN UPDATE ON THIS POST GO HERE: Tech/Touch Matrix II– See it, feel it, touch it The Tech/Touch Matrix (see below) was put together after my twitter attendance of the International Conference on Crisismapping 2010 and as part of my response to a great summary of the conference by Kim Stephens. The conference was…
Category Archives: Mapping
Part II of Whose Tweet Counts Anyways? A Response to Malcolm Gladwell
“We seem to have forgotten what activism is,” writes Gladwell. If activism is defined only as taking direct action and protesting on the streets, he might be right. But if activism extends to changing the minds of people, to making populations aware of what their governments are doing in their name, to influencing opinion across…
MapAfghan Update: New Maps from Afghanistanelectiondata.org
I decided to do a specific blog on mapping of Afghan data, especially now since Afghanistanelectiondata.org has put together all the open source data that is related to the Afghan elections into one nicely laid out page. I think this is a very nice example of what can be done again with keeping electoral processes…
Usahidi – Mapping the world one SMS at a time
I have been struggling to get my head around Usahidi, the Swahili for “witness” or “testimony.” I knew it was created during the post-election violence in Kenya in early 2008. I had many friends who went through that terrible time, and felt equally horrified and powerless. Did you like this? Share it:Tweet
Steps into Mapping the Unmapped – via Mapping: No Big Deal
No big deal?? Yeah right! This is an excellent and detailed step-by-step process on how to do mapping in remote areas, and for a great purpose as well (the successful referendum held in Kenya. Check out my blog post Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style to see how mapping was used there). Here are…
What it means to "get it" – Mikel Maron on Building Digital Technology for Our Planet
I am going to go out on a limb here and state that I think Mikel Maron and his crew of openstreetmap people are some of the leading experts globally in understanding how technology – specifically spatial technology – can be used in the developing world. Why you ask? Why them? Well, because they aren’t…
From Kodak to the Mobile Phone: Urban Data and the Scientific Life
This is a repost from the Polis blog with my comments (my comments first, polis blog From Kodak to the Mobile Phone below): Thank you for this post. I think that the mobile generation with their ever more powerful mobile technologies are changing how we view, analyze and plan our cities. I work with youth…
Mapping the War in Afghanistan
This is an interesting map visualization of the presence of Taliban activity in Afghanistan from 2007 to August 2009. The maps are based on insurgent activity reports. They give a probable snapshot of “how things are going” in the war (not well me thinks). The use of maps combined with reporting is informative over time,…
Transparency + Accountability = Democracy, Kenya Style
Christabell’s facebook post says it all, a key constitutional referendum in Kenyan is so far violence free, unlike the last trip to the polls a few years ago. In part this is due to citizens (mostly youth!) tweets and posts providing real time monitoring, transparency, accountability … leading to … Democracy. Uchaguzi (which means “election”…
Nairobi Reflection 3: High Touch/Low Tech
Community Mapping has always been quite an amazing tool – it localizes knowledge, draws on the “mappers” personal and community experiences, identifies interconnectedness – all this coming together and increasing social capital (if you are interested in the concepts of social capital read Robert Putnam’s Bowling Alone; to better understand how it relates to mapping,…