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Hi, my name is Heather Blanchard, and I'm a volunteer,
but I might not be your average volunteer.
I'm what you would call a digital humanitarian.
Each and everyday, there are disasters all across the world.
It could be a tornado, a flood or a fire.
But when these events happen, people want to help.
They no longer want just to give and donate,
they want to donate themselves.
We're part of a new share society
where people -- it's not just about sharing something on Facebook --
they want to share their skills, their resources,
their connectivity to their social structures.
Today this is evident by volunteers wanting to participate.
Take Jack for example,
he just says, "I just can't sit there and watch CNN,
I can't look at the internet, I must do something,
I really want to do something."
And Josh, who's a computer programmer,
and he's like, "Isn't this a nice thing to be able to share my skill,
to help people that may be in need."
The thing about Josh and Jack,
is they may never know what it's like to be a first responder.
They may never be on a plane to be deployed to the field.
But does that make their contribution any less?
Can they be part of a greater global response?
My argument is yes, they can.
Part of the challenge today, is that digital humanitarians
are not necessarily as connected to the official response systems,
and my wish is for that to change,
because often digital humanitarians when they offering themselves
and when they want to help, use their skills,
they're met with this.
So I'm here today, to talk, to tell you a story
about a digital humanitarian community, called Crisis Commons.
And I want to share with you first,
that there're so many great digital humanitarian communities out there,
that are doing great things, everyday all around the world.
But I want to tell you one story
about the community that I volunteer for.
And our community really started with an idea:
how can we bring together first responders
like your local fire department,
and police departments, and public health
with the technology community,
with international humanitarian relief communities;
at the local level, how can we just you know start that engagement,
and that was really where Crisis Camp was born.
It was really all about creating the relationships before the disaster,
being able to make those connections.
During the Haiti earthquake,
people began to create crisis camps,
all over the world.
It was truly amazing, crisis camp transformed
from not just a place for dialogue and information exchange,
but it transformed itself into a place of action.
And there were 65 crisis camps in 10 different countries
with about 25,000 people participating.
It was truly amazing.
This community today still contributes.
Let me show you a few examples.
During the New Zealand earthquake,
crisis camp communities rallied support
and they wanted to support the local technology community in Christchurch,
and they helped them with their recovery Map.
Also during the blizzards that happened in North America this year,
the local crisis camp community in Chicago,
worked with and partnered with Humanity Road,
the Chicago CERT and the Chicago Tribune
for their map.
During the Japan earthquake,
crisis camp volunteers worked in a virtual sense,
people were dialing in through Skype
all over the world.
And part of what we did is we partnered with the GISCorps
to look at different ways to use data sets.
And I'm happy to say,
for the very first time, crisis camp during the Japan earthquake
partnered with the United Nations.
And the United Nations ask us,
to ask the volunteers to go out and search for open data sets
that might be helpful for their operations.
But I would have to say that all these great things
that digital humanitarian communities can do
including Crisis Commons during the disaster,
there are so many more.
But part of the challenges,
is that we need to be working before the crisis,
we truly need to have those relationships made before the event.
And I'm going to tell you a story about missing persons information
and a volunteer named Tim Schwartz.
During the Haiti earthquake, Tim Schwartz found himself
in the middle of coordinating missing persons information.
And during that process
he said, you know
can we really do this better?
are there other people that are doing this?
how can we connect this?
Because during a disaster events,
missing persons databases just pop up everyplace.
And what ended up happening he started a few conference calls.
Might you Tim Schwartz is an artist in his day job,
that what he does during the day.
He started a few conferences calls
and then those conference calls turn into a written framework,
and now today, all of these organizations
are working in an informal way through a community of interest
to start looking at different ways for missing persons information
to be interoperable, wheeze to innovate.
Today I just want to leave with the idea
that there are digital humanitarians all around the world.
They're people like you and me
they're people that may not ever be a first responder,
but they have skills, and they have all kinds of ideas
and they can work not only during the response,
to support first responders,
to support international humanitarian relief organizations.
But what they can also do, is they can work before the crisis,
when I would say it really matters,
when you build those relationships especially at the local level.
So my wish here,
is that we connect the digital humanitarian communities
with official response systems.
And so if we do that,
we're really able to have a true global united response.
Thank you very much. (Applause)