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About 10 days ago the category five super storm Haiyan,
or alternately named Yolanda, reached the Philippines and left destruction in its path.
You have probably seen some imagery and felt as powerless as we have upon seeing it.
I am here to explain to you that you and I can make a difference in such dire situations!
Not only indirectly by donating some money but actually help more directly, even from your own home.
How? Through crowdsourcing.
Crowdsourcing is not a new concept. Crowdsourcing can be summarized as an organization
from NGOs to commercial companies or individuals
using a larger group on unspecified individuals from professionals to volunteers
for consultancy innovativepolicy-making or research purposes.
Companies have used this strategy to update their products for quite some time.
Navigation systems where the users can update the quality of the road they drove on are an example.
What the situation in the Philippines shows is that crowdsourcing
is also a super effective tool to deploy in a disaster situation.
All that is needed is volunteers, a fraction of their time and an organisation to streamline their efforts.
So how did it start in regard to the Philippines.
Just with some entrepreneurial individuals, a few people with ideas and the will to help.
Some of them get connected and form a group using social media
Using social media they create a project page which can be found by others.
More people find the project page and sign up.
Some of the people are dedicated to connect people to projects where their skills are beneficial and project groups are formed.
You might wonder how these project groups help.
We are living in a world that is as interconnected as you can imagine.
We can watch live imagery from the other side of the world and share it with others using social media.
Now imagine these messages as data.
Someone in the Philippines tweets that the people in this village are stranded
as the river has flooded and the bridge has collapsed. We know what is going on,
we know when it was posted and we can track where the tweet was placed accurately
If data in the past were static numbers, it is now dynamic,
not in a fixed format and most all: it is there in vast, vast amounts.
Organizations simply do not have the manpower to deal with this amount of information.
No organization would have. Software developers can make a difference here,
develop software to filter the data automatically, to map to data and to make it manageable.
This is a core of our actions and with it, we focus on providing concrete solutions that can help people,
from NGOs to citizens in the Philippines.
Our initiative is only taking shape in the last week free on a people join since then.
We started with just some ideas, with some people who took the initiative.
Yet in it just a few days time, it is amazing to see what has been achieved.
Different projects are live and we are working alongside with organizations such as the
United Nations, the Philippine government as well as all the crowd sourcing group.
A few days ago, we had never spoken to each other before, nor had any organization behind us.
Now we are working in one of the most efficient organization that many of us have ever experienced.
Who am I? I am just one of many.
In fact, I am not even a programmer. I am just an industrial engineer who happens to knows way around graphic software.
Within our group there are people with a range of expertises, from project managers to communication officers.
Remember the definition of crowdsourcing at the start of this video?
It explained that it is a group of unspecified individuals:
While the core might be software developers, multi-disciplinary teams are essential in such situations.
There is a role for everyone, you can make a difference!
Imagine if our group organisation has an infrastructure to start up from,
if NGOs and governments have scripts ready to deploy and take full benefit of our workforce.
and if everyone in the world is aware of the potential and knows where to find us, or other initiatives.
Our results are staggering, but this is just a start, imagine the next time we can contribute,
nay, when we are called upon.
The power of crowdsourcing, the power of people, it can make a real difference.