Crisiscamp Ireland is an event organised by Haiti Connect taking place in the Information Technology Building on the NUI Galway campus on February 26th from 10 am until 7 pm.
Through this event we hope to create an awareness amongst crisis response organizations, government agencies, and citizens on how open source software & hardware can be used to build and use technology tools to help respond to disasters and improve resiliency and response before a crisis.
Having witnessed first-hand the benefits of technology and social media in disaster response & rebuilding scenarios we want to share our passion and hope to spark the interest & participation of others.
A Crisiscamp is based on the BarCamp model of “unconference“. There is a very loose and informal approach to the day with as aim to create opportunities for everyone to voice their idea and provide input. The ultimate goal is to come up with new & innovative ideas and project.
if you are interested in attending or want to volunteer to assist in organising it you can email us.
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Hi Evert and co,
I’d be interested in trying to kickstart my “customer as service provider” Open Telecomms Network Project – by recruiting interested hackers to join in an open source project to create apps to run on smart phones.
The idea is to share part of your phones bandwidth with other phones, to route calls via handsets in range, so that when the network is down (as when a disaster has destroyed the infrastructure) or unreachable (due to over-contention – as happened on Sept 11 in NY when the network locked up due to everyone trying to phone at the same time), calls are routed via handsets, and can hop from caller to destination directly, or caller to network provider (possibly easier).
One of the applications fo the open telecomms idea would be an SOS that would alert all nearby phones of the location (if GPS enabled) of the victims handset. Even without GPS location, if you are alive but buried in rubble after an earthquake, and your phone is working, signal strength alone would aid in finding you.
This project would have further applications in wifi sharing from computers – to extend the open telecomm network via the internet, and to share the internet via the Open Telecomm Network Project. Using existing protocols and algorithms for routing, caching, encryption and efficient file distribution (eg.bittorrent) will put the infrastructure of the internet into the hands of the consumer. This will ultimately lead to removal of control by any government or corporate entities, thus circumventing censorship, restricted communications, or other forms of control and/or oppression/suppression. The recent upheaval in the middle east shows the value of people being able to communicate with each other and the world via mobile phones and the internet, but this will prompt more attempts to lock down and control these communications in future.
On a different level, SOPA and similar attempts to control the use of the internet with draconian laws will become a waste of paper if the technology started here spreads as simple apps that can be downloaded to phones and added to browsers – using the existing network topology to spread the new network topology – that will be owned by it’s users, and therefore forever free of being owned or controlled.
Regards,
Sal
Sal, sounds good and you know how much I like the idea. I suggest that you register for the event. I am also completing the Wiki page for the event and when this is ready you can put details of your idea on there.
I would be interested in attending, thanks
Niamh, Great to hear that. Can I ask you to register on this page: http://crisiscampireland.com/registration/ ?
Thanks, Evert.
What time does the event start?
Tim, just updated this page. The event is on from 10 am until 7pm. Hope to see you there.