Mighty Lessons from Mighty Mo

Ushahidi
Sep 15, 2011

The MightyMoRiver team, lead by Chris Augeri and Bill Sousan, worked throughout the summer of 2011 to tell the story of water levels and flooding around the Missouri River. Collaborating closely with Brian Hebert, Director of Crowdmap, they also provided valuable feedback (including bug reports, feature requests and use case detail) to improve the core Crowdmap software for other deployers. Chris's presentation at the Silicon Prairie News Start-up Demo Night Some of the best practices of the MightyMo team included their detailed data workflow using map overlays, granular report forms combining both traditional governmental and social media reports, and multiple verification methods. In addition, twice daily they curated a MightyMo River Gazette page using the free tool paper.li. This page enabled them to provide headline news. Framing and analyzing the map content is a critical deployment best practice for outreach. The MightyMo "About" page should be a standard template for Crowdmap deployers as it clearly explains the project mission, contact information, toolset descriptions and a basic project plan. The clear Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) could also be modified for other deployments as they explain the project plan/workflow, including answering the essential question: "how to help". To learn more on architecture of the MightyMo project and their best practices, see Chris's Knowledge Discovery / Modeling & Simulation Workshop MightyMoRiver presentation (PDF). And, learn about the project origins. The Ushahidi team is always happy to improve the deployer maperience. Also, it is gift to have people like Chris mentor and share knowledge with fellow community members. Thanks!