Boulder Creek Field Trip

Let me begin by saying that I thoroughly enjoyed this field trip for many reasons.  Particularly, it was an educational way for the class to have fun and get some fresh air and exercise.  I am an avid outdoor enthusiast so I have been to the creek, in the creek, and tubed the creek.  I also run, bike, and longboard the path at least once a week.  The funny part about this is that I was totally oblivious to all of the flood warnings.  As I said in one of my earlier blogs, I am moving directly into the flood plane next year.  It amazes me how the city of Boulder takes zero precautions when it comes to warning renters and homeowners of the potential danger.  There are a few instances from the trip that I would like to bring up to further analyze.  For starters, the glass obelisk that marks the point of 100 year, 500 year, and the Big Thompson flood level.  This flood marker is located just east of broadway; I pass by here almost everyday unaware of this flood warning because if at a glance it just looks like art.  Another instance of an unclear warning sign was the red rock with the pictures scribed next to the descriptions.  Most of the pictures and descriptions were about how Boulder Creek should be environmentally preserved and usable for everyone; only at the bottom did it mention floods.  In contrast, there were also signs that were very clear of the flood danger such as flooding is IMMINENT.  To me the most obvious signs of the flood were areas where the water was so high it was noticeable on the path.  Ben's picture of the water level reaching the bench and my picture of the water level above the sidewalk were the two signs that convinced me of the apparent danger.  Aside from showing us the high water levels, I found looking at the intersection at 28th and the floatable flood door.  The wall that was built to protect the mall is so subtle that millions of people probably drive by it and never take a second look.  The floatable door idea intrigues me; I had never seen anything like this.  I was wondering if there were any more of these located on the flood plane.  Another idea like the floatable door was the breakaway bridge.  I understand the premise that in case of a flood the bridge remains intact so dangerous debris is not swept into the water.  The only unreasonable part of this idea is that the breakaway bridge is a low-traffic bridge that is downstream of much larger bridges that would break and send extremely dangerous debris downstream. As a side note I thought it was helpful at the end of the field trip to reflect on class and see if we needed to do any catching up. Also I talked to my dad tonight and found out that he was living in Boulder going to CU when Big Thompson happened.  He told me how it wiped out full roads and how cars were swept away.  I looked at some of the pictures of the flood on Google and I found some of entire hillsides swept away.  In conclusion, it was a good field trip.

Crisis Informatics

Crisis Informatics to me = Getting the best information to the most people as quickly as possible.
I am writing this blog not only after the reading, but also with two more weeks of class time.  This means that my definition has more features that we learned during in-class discussion  than the reading alone provided.  Informatics is the study of information.  The reason that this topic relates so close to class is that social media is a platform for sending messages. In other words, studying social media is like study the delivery of informatics.  In a crisis, information is imperative at the before, during, and after stages.  The before stage deals with precautionary information.  For example, informatics of before a crisis deals with warning people who live on a coast line that they are predisposed to disastrous storms.  Something we analyzed in class was how people are alerted prior to crises.  This is where public information officers come in.  It is there job to study crisis informatics so they will know the fastest way to get the best information to the most people. In Amanda's class discussion I was in the group that focused on Hurricane Katrina.  In this group exercise we acted as if we were PIOs responding to the oncoming hurricane and it was our job to deliver that message to New Orleans.  The reason I point out this exercise is that this was the first time I really understood the magnitude of a PIOs job.  While talking about Katrina we discussed how word of mouth is a useful method of spreading information because the culture of New Orleans is tight-knit and neighborly.  The point is, all the previous examples were verbal informatics, but word of mouth is a non-text way to verbally communicate messages.
All of the previous informatics have been about spreading information verbally, whether orally or through text.  The current trend of displaying information is going visual.  There are many benefits to visual data rather than verbal data.  Visual data such as graphs, charts, and maps are easier for the common person to consume.  I mean this in a few ways.  Not only is it faster for somebody to view something than read something, but the use of visual data breaks all language barriers that could arise with verbal information.  A good example of this that we have been discussing all semester is mash-up mapping.  By annotating maps common people can fathom a larger amount of data much more quickly than if they were to try and write the information.  The key to informatics is balance.  In some cases verbal data is better, in some cases visual data is better.  Sometimes you need a map and sometimes you need a press release.  This is why it is important to broadly study all aspects of informatics and attempt to utilize all forms of delivering messages

Amanda's Study Lab

To begin I apologize for being 5 minutes late to the study lab.  After doing the previous night's readings and then walking into the class discussion type setting, I at first assumed we were simply going to have a peer to peer conversation about the material.  Then once I sat down and was handed a fake smart phone and saw the deck of cards I assumed we were going to play a game.  The best description of this study lab was somewhere in between these two assumptions.  I liked how we were doing a mock study on a future Boulder fire as that is a personal subject to nearly everybody in the class.  At first I was really interested in trying to answer the questions on the card as if I was a PIO.  I felt that the first hour of conversation went great, we discussed two promising ideas based on twitter and mash-up mapping.  I also enjoyed hearing the story about the phony tweeter who made false claims that people were trapped in the fire.  Although the conversation broke into a tangent then, I liked learning about the future and how social media plans to overcome challenges such as misleading tweeters.  Eventually, the questions on the card became redundant on methods of using social media.  It was smart of Amanda to have us stop drawing cards, and instead just open the discussion up to a broader sense of how we would do things if we were the PIO.  I am not sure if Amanda got what she wanted from us, but I was able to take a few things away from the study.  In particular I learned from one of the questions dealing with press releases.  The original release in an emergency is typed out in detail and is much longer than Twitter's allowed 140 characters.  This dilemma made me think about how people got their news and in which format.  This got me thinking about how press releases will be more instantaneous and brief in the future. For example, in the future data will be represented visually in an easy to digest format that is so quick to comprehend that the typed press release will be a thing of the past.  If I had any advice for Amanda I would say the cell phones are unnecessary, I understand the tangibility of having the internet in your hands, but I think with today's technology we assume to always have access to the mobile web.  In closing I enjoyed the study and hope that Amanda gained some useful information from our class.   

Tuesday Hurricane Katrina

Amanda presented our class with scenarios that public information officers (PIOs) could possibly face.  My team's scenario was answering questions about being a PIO in response to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.  Many of the questions involved how saftey messages concerning all stages of the flood were communicated with local people.  As a team we decided to only focus on the before stage of the storm for two reasons.  We felt that the before stage had plenty to discuss, and also the fact that the Hurricane gave plenty of warning raised many questions on how people received news of the oncoming storm.  A few aspects of the before stage occurred before the actual forming of the Hurricane in the gulf.  New Orleans was a city built below sea-level, The city's protecting wetlands were destroyed, and the levees were not meant to hold back large storms.  The question here is if the people of New Orleans were truly informed of all these warnings?  Many local citizens knew of a storm coming, but to what extent did they fully understand the repercussions of evacuating, relocating, and other life-changing events.  Our team took on the mentality of PIOs and thought of how to reach the people of New Orleans about precautionary hurricane warnings.  One example we came up with dealt with the city's culture.  New Orleans is a tight-knit community where the people are mostly friends of each other.  Word of mouth is a useful approach to spreading important information because even those without means of accessing media you can still get the message.  This is important because both the elderly community and poorer neighborhoods can still receive information on the hurricane and be just as equally prepared as their counter-parts.  I believe this example was relevant to the study because many of the questions we faced were dealing with an underlying theme of; through what methods (means of accessing media) can you reach everybody. Our group assumed that majority of New Orleans is well connected to news outlets through radio, television, and the internet.  However, we thought word of mouth was helpful for a situation such as a hurricane were you are at risk for simply living in the state, so once you move in your neighbor might as well tell you what to do in case of an emergency.

Show and Tell Technology

The language translating application 'Jiggibo' is amazing simply for the fact that technology has finally broken the language barrier.  The original application was written for the iphone 3G and only converted spoken language.  One user would speak into the phone, then choose the language they want it converted to.  Today the app allows Droid and iPhone users to convert both spoken and printed text.  This is huge because any language barrier can easily be broken by both parties.  In other words international communication is now possible without the use of a translator.  (This is of course bad news for those employed as translators).  The possibilities of Jiggibo are endless, stop and think of how many ways this app could prove beneficial.  For example, if you are in a foreign country and come across a road sign simply take a picture of the sign with your mobile phone, convert it through Jiggibo, and the message is communicated
.  Example

Thursdays' Guest Lecturers

Dr. Sue Salinger and Jason Zietz both provided the class with interesting information regarding the means of how people receive messages during a crisis.  Although both speakers were informative, each had a unique presentation style

Dr. Salinger barely used power point slides to convey her presentations theme of 'the media as the message.'  I was able to easily relate to this topic as we had to read this article in the TAM intro class.  What 'the medium is the message' means is that a person's perspective on how an image is consciously received is based on the medium.  The reason for this is that each medium incorporates a certain level of a social agenda.  For example, television users receive commercial advertisements in between programs; this is because the social agenda of advertising is to sell.  Salinger tied this into social media for social good by describing how people receive and interpret messages in the time of crisis.  During a disaster the most important content is news.  Due to technology the trends in how we receive news has changed from printed paper, to broadcast radio, to broadcast television, to the internet.  As technology progresses so does our ability to filter out any social agendas from mediums.  Consider the difference in bias between receiving news from a non-political website and receiving news from FOX news television.  Since FOX news must hire expensive anchors and run expensive networks then behind the scenes there must be somebody with an agenda paying bills.  It is for this same reason that internet sources prove to be the most unbiased.  It is free for individuals to construct a webpage, since there is no parent company overseeing the operations of the website there is less social agenda.  The medium being the message ties into social media for social good because it is important to study which platform proves to be the most effective for providing useful information to the greatest number of people for the lowest cost.  

Jason Zeitz used more of a visual/ hands-on approach to lecturing.  He presented most of his information through drawing on the board.  This was necessary because his presentation was about visually displaying data during a crisis.  He explained how different charts and tables can be used for different situations.  I had never seen a tree-graph until Thursday; I plan to use these in the future for visually displaying trends with multiple factors.  I also learned that Zeitz is not a fan of pie charts because they are hard to precisely estimate the proportions.  This came as a shock to me as a fourth-year business student I have probably made of one hundred pie charts.  In a nutshell Jason Zeitz lecture ties into Dr. Salinger's lecture.  In visually displaying messages the medium is once again the message.  In other words, the chart or table you decide to use can have a vast impact on how the receiver interprets the message.  For example, if I am trying to display the infant mortality rate by country as a percentage of Africa as a whole, then according to Zeitz I would use a tree graph as opposed to a pie chart.  This is because the pie chart may skew the message because the receiver has trouble interpreting it.  These small differences may seem trivial on the surface but consider the impact of a medium's message on a global scale.  For a closing example consider the presidential election that takes place every four years.  If the majority of undecided voters choose to watch FOX news instead of visiting an unbiased website, then those voters have subconsciously been swayed to vote republican.

*As a side note I learned in TAM intro about 3rd person viewing.  3rd person viewing is a mentality that proactive people use when interacting with any medium.  It means that before a receiver interprets a message they take a step back and consider the medium.  Ask yourself, is the medium trying to push something upon me?  An example of 3rd person viewing would be, before you turn on the television say to yourself, 'these commercials are trying to sell to me.' If you are able to take yourself out of the picture and realize that mediums carry a social agenda then you can make yourself unswayable to bias.

Maisha Marefu Project

"If you could save a child's life for free, wouldn't you?"

My project focuses on the infant mortality rate in Africa.  This issue does not hold any particular interest with me, the reason I am focusing on it is because I truly believe social media can help resolve the problem.  Despite popular belief, the root of this problem is not lack of doctors.  Instead, the problem is lack of communication between tribes and doctors.  This is due to many factors that are all contributors to the underlying theme of poverty.  This is where I believe my project is unique to other social good projects.  I am not proposing that we provide African tribes with any tangible items such as food, technology, or money.  This is because I believe throwing money at an issue is simply, 'providing them with fish, as opposed to teaching them how to fish.'  My plan is to use teach African mothers how to become self-sufficient by using the resources majority of African tribes already have (radio).  The project in a nutshell is as follows: An expecting mother will radio her delivery date into a central hub, this hub will be based somewhere in Africa, from there computer programmers allow amateur computer users (such as you and me) to act as middle-man of communication between the tribes and doctors.  Doctors will receive information on the location of expecting mothers in two ways.  The first way is that the central computer hub will be responsible for sending an SMS text of the date and location of the mother. The second way the doctor receives information is visually, and that is where I come in.

Much like Ushahidi employed mash-up mapping to visually display the violence in Kenya, Maisha Marefu is going to have a website that allows users to make annotations based on the timing and location of the crisis.  Providing people with a visual aspect is beneficial for two reasons.  The first is that maps are free of a language barrier, this means that Africans as well as any other culture can read the same map.  This plays into the second benefit of visual mapping out crises which is consistency.  News reports on crises can be skewed, but there is no possible way to be biased with google maps.  At this point this may sound extremely beneficial to Africa, but where is the motivation for others to join the cause. This is where I want to start a campaign (facebook group, blog, etc.) that states, "If you could save a child's life for free, wouldn't you?"  The way this works is that the traveling doctors will also use social media to document the happenings within each tribe.  By opening accounts in Twitter and Flickr, doctors can tweet information and post pictures of the projects progress.  This inadvertently allows users to visually track how their personal contribution has helped the overall infant mortality rate.  Since I am the creator of this project I have an additional duty.  Since infant mortality rate is not a sudden crisis, or disaster, it is commonly overshadowed by events like hurricanes or violence.  This is why it is my responsibility to spread the Maisha Marefu project by word of mouth.  By joining/liking facebook pages, posting blogs, and pictures on Flickr, I hope to develop a following of people of social media users.  The cool part about this following is that if they are technically savvy enough to follow me, then they are technically savvy enough to participate in making mash-up maps.  In summary, this is a self-sustaining project.  In relation to cognitive surplus, there are already enough internet users to donate a small amount of time to help with infant mortality rate.  Most importantly, if successful this project will improve a crisis situation without asking for any money.