grassroot geekery in the UK.

GeekUp Liverpool

When

19:00 Tuesday May 26 2015

Where

DoES Liverpool, Gostins Building, Hanover Street, Liverpool L1 4LN

Description

GeekUp Liverpool takes place on the last Tuesday of every month. It's a grass-roots knowledge sharing and networking social for folks involved or interested in all forms of technology and creative media.

Sharing humanitarian data at the United Nations - Francis Irving

OCHA (the UN’s Humanitarian Affairs body) allocates international funding when there is an emergency or natural disaster. This can include anything from the Syrian refugee crisis and the Haiti earthquake to the Ebola virus. This work is fundamentally about data—using information about refugee movements, the weather, and NGO capabilities to decide who can best use money to save the most lives. OCHA has hundreds of country offices, and also works with many partners, such as the Red Cross. All these gather lots of data during a crisis. They tend to store it in spreadsheets on their own systems, or share it with the world in PDF reports. In the necessary rush of emergency work, it’s hard to find more time to put into data sharing.

The Humanitarian Data Exchange is a new project with a goal of increasing the reuse of data in the Humanitarian world. UN OCHA is building a data hub. It’s based on the Open Knowledge Foundation’s CKAN product. ScraperWiki is supporting the data collection process and providing technical project management. The presentation will answer these questions:

• What motivates people to share data?
• What barriers must be overcome in data sharing during a crisis?
• What features in a data hub do on-ground workers need?
• How can a non-profit make best use of crowd sourcing from its volunteers?
• What metrics best measure how useful a data hub is?

Lessons from the front line of humanitarian aid are invaluable in industry too. Every business is saying today: “It needs to be easier for our staff to share data with each other."

DoES Liverpool provides tea & coffee, feel free to bring your own beer or if you forget someone else will share with you.

Directions, Gostins Building is at the opposite end of Hanover Street from Liverpool Central Station, near to John Lewis and the corner with Duke Street. Go up in the lifts to the fourth floor and follow the signs to DoES Liverpool.

Contact

If you have any questions about GeekUp Liverpool get in touch with John McKerrell

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