Happy Holidays from Ushahidi!

Juliana Rotich
Dec 21, 2012

First, just in time for the holidays, we have the free Ushahidi iOS app now available for download in the itunes store. Dale Zak put a lot of time and love into the app, releasing the SDK and integrating the fantastic work of The OpenGeoSMS team. Why OpenGeoSMS? So you can collect reports when the internet is not available, for example during a disaster situation or have intermittent connectivity. UshWorldwideView Second, on behalf of the Ushahidi team, I would like to send holiday greetings to our community who have done amazing things with the platform, making it beautiful, appropriate for their needs and sharing their experiences. It has been incredible to see technology being leveraged for transparency, accountability and openness. We are continually inspired by all the mappers doing work in Crisis Mapping (The Standby Taskforce Network), Corruption Mapping, Elections work and all other generative ways that play a role in impacting communities and lending voice. Our funding partners this year have been amazing. Omidyar Network, MacArthur Foundation, Ford Foundation, Humanity United, Google, Hivos and OSI. Your support means that our global team can continue its work and have an impact globally. 2012 saw us do the following:

Solidify the Ushahidi platform to a state where it’s a serious app that can stand up to serious uses. And it does. We should all be proud of 2.x.

Rebuild SwiftRiver, getting it to a beta stage with 2 major clients, with one in Kenya (our African roots are still strong!).

Start Ushahidi v3 – through feedback and study we’re re-envisioning our platform. Choosing not to kill a sacred cow in order to maintain our position on the cutting edge.

Disrupt ourselves by daring to break the mold with a new and rebuilt Crowdmap.

Take on the challenge of Kenya’s election process, at a deployment level, and timespan that we’ve never been involved at before.

Continued our legacy of R&D projects started by SMSsync, but now with cool new hardware based projects to be released in 2013.

Create an external projects team that focuses on client work and brings in revenue, assuring sustainability of Ushahidi Inc.

Increase our localization footprint with the platform now available in more than 30 languages.

Continue to catalyze and support initiatives in Kenya like the iHub and its growing community

This is but a brief summary, all you have to do is browse this blog for numerous posts from not just the team but our community. We still see our journey as having scratched the surface of what is possible. We keep learning and iterating. We are looking forward to 2013 with lots of optimism and appreciation the hard task of leveraging technology in service of citizens and of course, to changing how information flows in the world. Thank you for your support and happy holidays! If you do holiday giving, consider supporting us via this link and also supporting Global Voices Online PS: The team will be offline till January 4th, we will monitor our contact points intermittently.