Event: Fortune Brainstorm: TECH 2010

Location: Aspen, CO, USA

Dates: 22 – 24 July 2010

Speaking: Steve Bratt, CEO, Web Foundation

Session Details:

• Name: High-Tech Giving – How technology can supercharge a new generation of nonprofits.
• Time: 7:45am – 8:45am Friday, 23 July 2010
• Other Panelists: Eva Chen, Co-founder and CEO, Trend Micro; Krista Donaldson, CEO, D-Rev; James Steyer, CEO and Founder, Common Sense Media; Maynard Webb, Chairman and CEO, LiveOps; and John Wood, Chair, Room to Read
• Moderator: Jessi Hempel, Fortune

Twitter: @brainstormtech

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Event: SpeechTek2010

Location: New York, NY, USA

Dates: 2 – 4 August 2010

Speaking: Max Froumentin, Program Manager, Web Foundation

Session Details:

• Name: SD301 – Speech Technologies for the Developing World
• Time: 8:00am – 8:45am Wednesday, 4 August 2010
• About: In much of the developing world, access to the internet via personal computers remains quite low, while mobile phone use is widespread. Unlike developed countries, in which individuals rely on the personal computers for access to information and self-service transactions, in the developing world, mobile phones are the primary means of communication and data access. Join us for a discussion of how speech technologies on mobile phones can be used to improve the lives of millions of people in developing countries.

Twitter: @speechtek/st2010

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Event: tech4africa 2010

Location: Johannesburg, South Africa

Dates: 12 – 13 August 2010

Attending: Stephane Boyera, Program Manager, Web Foundation

Twitter: @tech4africa

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Event: The 6th Caribbean Internet Governance Forum (CIGF) [part of St. Maarten's ICT Week]

Location: St. Maarten

Dates: 16 August 2010

Speaking: Steve Bratt, CEO, Web Foundation

Session Details:

• TBD

Many wonderful Web services have been leveraged to address the Haiti disaster. I’ve listed some below which are having a measurable impact (please add more!). What is clear is that the Web is becoming an incredibly powerful tool to help minimize the suffering that results from situations like this. Flickr, YouTube, CNN’s iReport, and Twitter give a voice to those on the ground and in turn help to raise global awareness. Ushahidi , Sahana, and Openstreetmap use crowd-sourced contributions to aggregate and disseminate real-time information to organizations involved in relief efforts. This data can be matched with updated aerial views from GeoEye on Google Earth to provide up-to-date visual intelligence. Red Cross, Oxfam, Doctors Without Borders and many others use their websites to mobilize global giving and volunteerism. A vast network of blogs, online media channels, and high-traffic websites (like Craigslist, Huffington Post, Global Giving and Facebook’s Disaster Relief page) connect people to relevant resources. Google Groups/Docs, Skype, and wikis are adopted as turnkey solutions that facilitate broad, real-time collaboration and organization among relief groups large and small. Google People Finder and Family News Network of the ICRC help loved ones reunite or report missing persons. All of this translates to a much broader, more integrated, and less redundant response that more effectively matches support to the needs of the victims.

As Gordon Brown said in a recent TED talk, “I think what’s new is that we now have the capacity to communicate instantaneously across frontiers right across the world. We now have the capacity to find common ground with people we will never meet but who we will meet through the Internet and through all the modern means of communication, that we now have the capacity to organize and take collective action together to deal with the problem or an injustice that we want to deal with, and I believe that this makes this a unique age in human history, and it is the start of what I would call the creation of a truly global society.”

Although there is a great deal being done through the Web, there is so much more value that could be derived from it if we continue to work on several fronts:

1. Governments must work to put all public data available on the open Web, and in machine-readable formats. This is starting to happen in the UK, US, Australia and elsewhere. The benefit will be that organizations involved in relief efforts will be able to access detailed information about the area’s existing infrastructure and demographics before having to respond, and to share and merge data from the many diverse organizations involved during a response to a disaster;

2. Tools like VoiceXML must be developed further and adopted, so that Web services become usable by the billions who have access to simple mobile phones but are unable to use the Web because of barriers like illiteracy; and,

3. NGOs and governments must come together with the technical community to learn about the available Web tools, and to agree on standards such as is happening at the W3C Emergency Information Interoperability Framework Incubator Group

Taking these steps will not stop these kinds of disasters from occurring, but they could greatly improve humanity’s ability to prepare for and respond to them and therefore minimize the amount of suffering.

I invite readers to cite other Websites and tools not mentioned in this article, share stories about how you have seen the Web having an impact in the relief effort going on in Haiti, and what else you feel could be accomplished with the Web in responding to future disasters.

Please also consider donating to the charities active in Haiti if you haven’t already.

The videos are clips from raw footage taken for BBC’s Digital Revolution (working title) project: an open and collaborative documentary about how the web is changing our lives.

Some answers they got:

“During our examinations we have to learn more, so I come here… to do research”

“Some ppl come here to learn, to type, and to have fun, so it’s very good [for the community]”

“To me the Web is my helper, I like it very much. I can do anything I like on the Web.”

“If I need to do something, I can go there are ask ‘Web, can you help me do it?’ and I have my knowledge that I can get from there.”

Sep 2009 Ghana Visit: Experience using Facebook.

Sep 2009 Ghana Visit: What is the Web good for?

Sep 2009 Ghana Visit: Why I use the Web…

Photo by Craig Heintzman

The first of these inspirational people is Freddy Mafira, a priest in a small village outside Vic Falls, Zimbabwe. I met him in an internet cafe in Vic Falls and we quickly became good friends. He invited me to attend church with him the next morning and told me he would be helping with some elderly people in town if I wanted to come along. That next morning, Freddy delivered his first sermon in English and, with the help of the gentleman beside me, I did my best to sing hymns in Shona, their local language. After the service, we visited an old man who had attended church regularly until he’d suffered a severe stroke that left him unable to walk or communicate. Freddy delivered the day’s sermon just as he had each week since the man’s stroke. This willingness to go out of his way to inspire those around him and give hope to those most in need resulted in him having near-celebrity status. Walking through town it was clear that everyone knew Freddy as they waved, smiled, and greeted us at every turn.

After the visit, Freddy took me to his home and introduced me to his family. He had three children – Pride, Princess, and Praise – and took care of his sister who lost her husband years ago. Pride was born without a tibia bone in his right leg so had to be amputated. Then about four years old, he had outgrown his prosthetic limb and used makeshift crutches to assist his movement. I learned that to support his family, Freddy helped local fruit and vegetable producers sell to businesses in Vic Falls and Harare. During the days we spent together he often spoke about his desire to learn new languages (he already spoke about five) and skills. His mentality was that if he could continue to do, know, and communicate more, then he would open up new doors that might result in additional income to provide food and education for his family.

Photo by Craig Heintzman

It was exactly this open-minded determination that made me realize the power that the Web could have for people like Freddy and those around him. By working with partners to enable local leaders to access and publish relevant content, tools, and services on the Web using computers and mobile phones, we can have a much broader and deeper impact in the community. Building on Freddy’s determination to open as many doors as possible, we can help him, and those like him, to create his own doors and then watch as he shows everyone around him how to do the same.

Freddy and I have kept in touch since we met in late 2007. Though his country continues to face many tough problems he remains as passionate as ever about the possibility of change. He recently told me about a new business venture he is planning in order to better support his family and community. He is gathering people together to start a computer center in his village so that they can access the Web, learn how to use email and word processing tools, and build their own websites. His ultimate vision is the same as ours and it can be summed up with one overused and under-appreciated word: empowerment.