Vic Event: Workshop: Crowdsourcing information for humanitarian disaster responses

ASC Victoria are pleased to present a FREE workshop on Crowdsourcing information for humanitarian disaster responses. The workshop will be run by Cobi Smith who has been intimately involved with the project.

When: Monday, October 6, 6pm, for a 6:15 start – 7:30pm
Where: The Meeting Room at the East Melbourne Library and Community Centre | 122 George Street East Melbourne 3002
NOTE: You will need to bring your own laptop/tablet device for the workshop. The library has wifi available.
Afterwards: Coffee and chatting can continue at Hilton on the Park, a short walk from the library.

Register at Eventbrite:  https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/crowdsourcing-information-for-humanitarian-disaster-responses-tickets-13275384031

What is it all about?
During disasters this century, people share photos and experiences on social media, sometimes before emergency services are involved. The GeoTag-X pilot project is a collaborative open-source experiment to integrate information from social media into official humanitarian disaster response efforts.

The project is led by the United Nations Institute for Training and Research’s Operational Satellite Applications Programme (UNITAR/UNOSAT). It is part of Citizen Cyberlab, a broader European collaboration for citizen science projects – which also happens to involve some Australians.

We’re looking for volunteers to help test our beta version and share your experience. For this workshop you will need to bring your own laptop with which to experiment. We will be using GitHub to share bugs and feedback, so preferably you will have a GitHub username already, or you can learn to use GitHub Issues during the workshop.

What will we cover?
This workshop will share an overview of why this project is possible, from the perspective of humanitarian organisations like the United Nations as well as from an open-source technology perspective. Then we will have half an hour in which participants can explore the technology on their laptops, then we will have a half-hour discussion sharing feedback about the project. We will wrap up by discussing how people can get more involved if they’re interested.

Who will be teaching it?
Cobi Smith is presenting this workshop on behalf of the Australian Science Communicators. She is a human rights advocate, open activist, sometimes comedian and former ABC journalist. Her PhD research at the Australian National University’s Centre for the Public Awareness of Science is about participatory governance of science and technology. Cobi keeps taking leave from her PhD to work on cool projects like GeoTag-X.

This entry was posted in Branch Notices, Vic by George Aranda. Bookmark the permalink.

About George Aranda

Dr George Aranda is a former psychology researcher who has moved from the world of neuroscience to pursue a career in science education research and science communication. Now researching and teaching at Deakin University, he has broad interests in writing, social networking modes of communication, podcasting, science communication videos and understanding how scientists and their work are perceived in the world.

Leave a Reply