Author: Devin

  • Cities Can Prepare for Trump by Establishing Digital Service Organizations and Mobilizing Civic Tech Communities

    Cities Can Prepare for Trump by Establishing Digital Service Organizations and Mobilizing Civic Tech Communities

    Originally posted at municipalist.org Within a few weeks of Trump’s victory, mayors of big “sanctuary cities” throughout America, including New York, Chicago and Los Angeles declared that they wouldn’t collaborate with a Trump administration order to deport peaceful, law-abiding resident. Trump is now threatening that he will deny these cities federal funding unless they comply. The amount…

  • Occupy Sandy and the Rise of Open Aid at AIANY on 9/10/16

    Occupy Sandy and the Rise of Open Aid at AIANY on 9/10/16

    The AIANY invited me to present my perspective on Occupy Sandy at their event “Stand Up! How to be Part of the Solution after a Disaster.” My presentation argues that Occupy Sandy, and the mutual aid work of its predecessor Occupy Wall Street, were physical-world manifestations of the “Open Aid” trend taking place in the disaster relief…

  • Sahana Software Foundation Overview at the 2016 Global  CAP Implementation Workshops on 8/22/2016

    Sahana Software Foundation Overview at the 2016 Global CAP Implementation Workshops on 8/22/2016

    As president of the Sahana Software Foundation, I had the privilege of delivering a brief overview describing Sahana to the 2016 Global CAP Implementation Workshops held at the Asian Institute of Technology near Bangkok, Thailand. Slides are embedded below. This conference was my first time engaging, in-person, with the disaster relief community outside the United States and I was extremely…

  • Introducing Data Models for Human(itarian) Services

    Introducing Data Models for Human(itarian) Services

    This was originally posted at Sarapis Immediately after a disaster, information managers collect information about who is doing what, where, and turn it into “3W Reports.” While some groups have custom software for collecting this information, the most popular software tool for this work is the spreadsheet. Indeed, the spreadsheet is still the “lingua franca”…