Author Archives: Patrick

Want to Help Humanitarian Operations in Libya using your Laptop? Join UN Volunteers Online Now!

By Patrick | Published: March 10
The UN Online Volunteer Service (OVS) has now teamed up with the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the standbytaskforce.com to support crisis mapping efforts in Libya. This means you can now join the UN as a volunteer to provide direct support to the humanitarian response in Libya. The Libya [...]
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The Volunteers Behind the Libya Crisis Map: A True Story

By Patrick | Published: March 9
My colleague Clay Shirky calls it “Cognitive Surplus” in his recent book. Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams refer to it as “MacroWikinomics” in theirs. What is cognitive surplus? The trillion hours of free time enjoyed by the world’s educated population every year. Don and Tony describe MacroWikinomics as mass distributed collaboration on scales we’ve never [...]
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Changing the World One Map at a Time

By Patrick | Published: March 6
[Cross-posted from Patrick Meier's iRevolution blog] The response to last year’s crises in Haiti, Chile and Pakistan revealed an exciting potential. Volunteers from thousands of miles away could possibly play an important role in humanitarian operations by using social networking platforms and free, open source software to create live crisis maps. Today’s volunteer efforts on the [...]
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