Just saw this post from Andy Carvin ... where he called for an International Blogging for Disaster Relief Day. Andy says :
Why haven't we see a Katrina-related blog of TsunamiHelp-like
proportions? You would think that the US, the birthplace of blogging,
would have been able to catalyze a who's who of bloggers to coordinate
information sharing, just as TsunamiHelp
did. Instead, we've seen a scattering of blogs pop up here and there,
doing their best to share information. But it's distributed and
dispersed, with no coordination between them.
Meanwhile, I've also noticed that many blogs have gone on with
their daily lives as if Katrina never happened. Sure, they may have
mentioned it once or twice, but have they posted any Katrina resources?
Have they linked to the Red Cross? Have they encouraged people to
donate blood? Some, yes. Most, no. Anti-Bush blogs continue to bash
Bush, while pro-Bush blogs continue to praise him. Travel blogs
continue to talk about travel. Tech blogs talk tech, pet blogs talk
pets. Can't we all just take a break and focus on helping disaster
victims for just a moment?
We now live in an age of tagging, RSS and distributed computing.
Perhaps we don't need to have all of these great bloggers posting to
one site, or have bloggers focused full-time on the disaster. All we
really need is to get as many people as possible using the blogging
tools available of them, posting whatever Katrina-related information
they're comfortable with, then use tags and RSS feeds to bring it all
together.
While I do feel the situation during the tsunamis was a little
different - with news being so scattered and difficult to come by, and
the affected areas more spread-out, hence the relevance of real voices
in real time greater, I can't help being surprised by the absence of a
large blogger community effort to help victims this time round.
Especially when so many of the movers and shakers and developers of
'social tools' and their adaptations and iterations live in the same
country or closeby.
The KatrinaHelp wiki and blog
teams, made up of people across USA, Europe, Bahrain, India and many
more places, are currently also working with some of the developers
around the Skype API and the SkypeJournal team (all independents, and Skype
too has been supportive by offering up free SkypeOut minutes) and have
managed to set up a kind of messaging centre between volunteers on the
ground to connect those needing help with those that have it to offer.
Also, working on sms-Skype-sms transfers of info around aid and relief.
I'm currently manning the calls out and in, sitting in my living room
in Mumbai, and taking and making calls to volunteers close to New
Orleans .. it's just my turn.
Lets see how it emerges. What we could build around blogs and wikis and RSS and tagging and VOIP ! There are so many possibilities.
10:30:35 PM 
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