WebMapSocial Meetup: Crisis Mapping - Haiti and beyond March 16, 2010

Our group is about sharing, teaching, learning, and networking around current and future web-related geospatial and social networking applications and technology. We meet regularly on the third Tuesday evening of every month at Google in Silicon Valley, California. For two hours we build fellowship around web 2.0, mashups, maps, programming, GIS, entrepreneurship, LBS, imaging, social networks, well-funded and unfunded companies, and other goodies.

Presentations run the gamut of our community: from hardware to web-based applications, hackers to scientists, start-ups to billion-dollar companies. Most of all this Meetup is an opportunity for people who spend a lot of time facing screens to face each other and talk about what flies and fails in tech.

MORE INFORMATION here:
http://www.meetup.com/webmapsocial/

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March’s Meetup is about what happens on the geoweb and beyond when we collectively experience an environmental crisis. The human and digital outreach after the earthquake in Haiti was remarkable and well worth reflection.

Some of the diverse presentations tentatively lined up for this month’s Meetup are:

1) Ushahidi-Haiti: Crowdsourcing Crisis Information - presented by Denise Sewell, Director of Crisis Mapping, Systems Specialist, Ushahidi

2) Samasource,one of the partners in Mission 4636 is helping translate emergency text messages coming out of Port-au-Prince. Samasource has also partnered with 1,000 Jobs in Mirebalais, Haiti to bring those workers paying digital work to help in the rebuilding effort. Presented by Leila Chirayath Janah, Founder and CEO of Samasource.

3) Results on using Natural Language Processing (NLP) to detect and categorize the needs people indicate in their messages – presented by Christie English, Developer

4) Update on CrisisCamp Silicon Valley, Nex
t Event: March 26-28 at CMU / NASA Ames - presented by Jeannie A. Stamberger, Ph.D.

5) CiviGuard Technologies: What if your smartphone could save your life? In the summer of 2009, Singularity University presented its inaugural class with a challenge: "Using accelerating technologies, how would you positively impact 1 billion people in 10 years?" Recognizing the threat that natural and man-made disasters pose to all 6.7 billion of Earth's inhabitants, as well as the computational power and portability of smartphones, a small subset of the class developed new mobile solutions to help civilians and authorities in times of crisis. Based on the positive feedback from emergency personnel from NASA-DART, SF-EMS, LA-EMS, FDNY and disaster medicine physicians, a start-up was born. Presented by Shawna Pandya, CMO & co-founder, CiviGuard Technologies.

6) How Google Helps: Since Hurricane Katrina, Google has been asked to assist with mapping and imagery during almost every major crisis. Geo Developer Advocate Mano Marks will share how we've helped out, and some of the lessons we've learned along the way.

MORE INFORMATION here: http://www.meetup.com/webmapsocial/calendar/12356049/

Official Website: http://www.meetup.com/webmapsocial/calendar/12356049/