Weekly: Community Leaders, IDEO hackathon

Ushahidi
Oct 25, 2012

Community and code - can this week be any better! In the weekly, we are proud to recognize some amazing community leaders, announcing even more new code (who needs sleep?) and, finally, share some upcoming events including an IDEO hackathon.

From the Community

Announcing Community Leaders

Our community is growing globally. We want to talk a moment to extend our thanks to the some of the community leaders who continue to make this possible. Here are some of the ways they contribute:

Deployment experience

Community mentorship

Documentation

Feedback/Championing Software Development improvements

Speaking, training, blogging

Translation/Localization

Please join us in recognizing these amazing individuals: CommunityLeader October 2012 Luis Hernando Aguilar (Colombia). Luis has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world and in Colombia. Leesa Astredo (USA). Leesa is in the Standby Task Force and Info4Disaster community. She has provided extensive feedback for Ushahidi v3. Engy Ghozian (Egypt). Engy co-leads HarassMap, one of the most important civil society Ushahidi instances. Rebecca Chiao (Egypt) Rebecca co-leads HarassMap, one of the most important civil society Ushahidi instances. Carter Draper (Liberia). Carter leads training and use of Ushahidi in Liberia. Melissa Elliott (Canada). Melissa is a core team lead for the Standby Task Force. She has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world Anahi Ayala Iaccuci (Global) Anahi has provided extensive feedback for software development and our Ushahidi v3. Anahi wrote Ushahidi's first user manual and provides extensive user training and mentorship within the community. She has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world. Luther Jeke (Liberia). Luther leads training and use of Ushahidi in Liberia. Dave Leng (Samoa): Dave lead a Samoa simulation with Ushahidi. In addition, his feedback on how to evolve Ushahidi with Dynamic forms has helped planning for Ushahidi v3 Justine MacKinnon (UK) Justine has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world and in UK. Kirk Morris (USA) Kirk has provided extensive feedback for software development and our Ushahidi v3. He has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world. Kirk is a master distiller and doer. Shemeer P. (India). Shemeer created and inspired many with this Maps4aid.org deployment. He providesextensive community feedback. Jaroslav Valuch (Czech) Jaro provides extensive user training and mentorship within the community. He has lead and supported a number of Ushahidi deployments around the world. Olga Werby, Timothy Werby and Nicholas Werby (USA). As leaders, they created the first Crowdmap to be used by children. Each leads in training, design feedback and community support. Hao Xin (China). He has lead and supported deployments in China. In addition, he has become a leader sharing and training. We'll recognize more leaders in the coming months. Your input is most welcome.

Deployment of the Week

Congratulations to I paid a Bribe! As we prepare for the International Anti-Corruption Conference, we are looking around the world to compare corruption and crime mapping. This is a growing use case for Ushahidi. See this example from Zimbabwe. We'll be asking some big questions about corruption mapping in the coming week. Stay Tuned! I Paid A Bribe

Tavanna Case study

Thank you to Tavaana for their Ushahidi Case study: From CrisisMapping Kenya to Mapping the Globe. About Tavaana--meaning ‘empowered’ and ‘capable’ in Persian--is an e-learning space for Iranian civil society. Through partnerships with international universities and civic training organizations, and in collaboration with leading Iranian scholars and civic leaders, Tavaana leverages the Internet to empower Iranian civil society.

Into the Code

You would think with 2.6 shipped this week that we would be quiet on the new code releases. Instead, we are ramping up!

Android (Minor release)

We've got a minor update for Android. Hit up the Google Play store to refresh your code. Feature:

Resizable widgets to fit on most screens.

Upgraded ABS library to 4.2.2.

Added Korean translation

Crushed Bugs:

Fixed an issue with pending messages. See issue #44

Removed screen restriction support from manifest file. This is to allows it to show up on the Google play store for most devices.

Community Developer call: Ushahidi 3.0, Swift and more

We held our monthly Community developer call this week. Some of the highlights included discussing Ushahidi 3.0 (Wiki and designs) as well as some Swift to Ushahidi code: Swiftriver Plugin for Ushahidi Ushahidi Plugin for SwiftRiver Listen to the audio recording (1 hour)

Upcoming Events

Calling all IDEO Fans and Ushahidi Bay Area Community folks: We are running a hackathon in partnership with IDEO.org and Social Coding for Good on November 2nd and 9th. Logistics, project overview and Registration: They are looking to build a sanitation map in Ghana using Ushahidi core and doing some interesting stuff with the IDEO front-end designers. We are looking for a trusted Ushahidi developer who is interested in leading a team at this hackathon by being the Ushahidi representative and managing the Ushahidi backend work. Please let us know if you are interested in attending and working with on an Ushahidi deployment with the IDEO team.

More Upcoming meetups

Brasilia, Brazil (Casual Meet-up): November 6, 2012 London, UK (Casual Meet-up): November 12, 2012 Wellington, NZ (Casual Meet-up): November 20, 2012 Happy Week, Heather