WHAT APPROACHES WILL HELP US ADAPT TO A CHANGING

WORLD AND PREPARE FOR THE UNEXPECTED?

Banda Aceh, Indonesia, 2004

IN OUR OPINION, COLLABORATION MAKES ALL THE DIFFERENCE

• Diverse groups self-organize seamlessly into a coherent whole.

• The flow of information is:

– free, reliable, secure,

– up, down, sideways,

– timely, accurate, complete, relevant, and credible.

• The response is agile, coordinated, efficient, and effective.

WHAT IT SHOULD LOOK LIKE

A FEW REASONS WHY IT SELDOM DOES…

Harsh field conditions

Slow, unreliable networks

Hot, tired, overloaded responders

Low signal-to-noise ratio

Data trapped in silos

Disincentives for cooperation

Lack of good tools for

emergent collective action

Ignoring the local community

7

InSTEDD

Improve event detection and humanitarian response

Socio-technical organization and mission

Collaboration technologies

Worldwide, with field laboratory in Phnom Penh

Free & open source

CONSTRAINED ENVIRONMENTS CREATE A PRESSURE COOKER FOR INNOVATION

GRAMEEN SOLUTIONSGRAMEEN SHAKTIGRAMEEN KAYLANGRAMEEN PHONE

Free Open source Standards

The InSTEDD Technology Platform

Mesh4X: Share Data Across All Boundaries– MESH4X lets you integrate applications, devices, and information seamlessly

into a shared, synchronized, distributed data mesh

GeoChat: Take Decisive Action in Response– GEOCHAT lets you engage and coordinate with everyone who needs to be

involved, linking headquarters, field, and the local community

Evolve: Synthesize Data into Actionable Information– EVOLVE lets you and your team monitor and collaborate around diverse data

streams to detect, analyze, triage and track critical events as they unfold

INFORMATION FLOW

Nokia Phone with Khmer script support, and an unlikely fortune cookie note

InSTEDD GEOCHATSMS, Twitter, email, … LocationOpen and Closed GroupsExplicit or Automatic LocationSMS-Only interactionAPI Semi-structured information, extensible pipeline

INTEROPERABILITY

Laptops from all over the world come together to integrate medical records systems, HISA South Africa 2008

A synchronization framework for seamless information sharingMesh4x

• Fuse data from diverse applications, sources, and devices

• Synchronize data automatically between databases, files, websites, desktop software, PDAs, maps, and the Cloud

• HTTP, files & SMS• RESTFull N-way data sync• Open standards: FeedSync, RSS/ATOM,

XForms, RDF• Multiple channels: http, files, SMS• Available in both .NET and Java

Come and play - Mesh4x.org

•MySQL•Hibernate•MSAccess•MSExcel•AmazonS3•JavaROSA•EpiInfo•KML (G Earth)

SHARING DATA IS DISRUPTIVE

Les Lenert from CDC briefs about technologies they consider disruptive. Mesh4x changes the game of data ownership and storage lock-in

FROM DATA TO COLLECTIVE ACTION

InSTEDD Evolve 1.0Collaborative decision support around streams of information

Features:• Create collaborative workspaces

• Subscribe to data

• Sift through the data for emerging events

• Annotate items with tags, comments, ratings, links, locations, files, alerts, and other social metadata

• Autonomous agents perform data extensions, feature extraction, classification, tagging, geo-coding

• Human teams act with augmentation of machine learning

ARCHITECTUREDECENTRALIZED

OCCASIONALLY CONNECTED

INTREROPERABILITY

SECURITY

TOP-DOWN AND BOTTOM-UPDECOUPLED

USER-EMPOWERINGDIVERSITY

CONTEXT AWAREDYNAMIC

…CONSTANT EXPLORATION!DATA AS A BUILDING BLOCK

PATTERNS - SOLUTION TO A PROBLEM IN A CONTEXT

PATTERN LANGUAGES FOR ISSUES THAT MATTER IN THE MAJORITY OF THE WORLD?

HUMAN INTERACTION DESIGN

Balsamiq Mockups

InSTEDD Innovation Lab

Socio-technical labNeutral space for gov, org, edu & com In-situ interaction designDissolving silos of data & trustLocal Sustainable Innovation

Thank You!Eric Rasmussen rasmussen@instedd.org @rasmussene

Buddhist monks bless the InSTEDD Innovation Lab and our generator, 2009. As far as illusions go, electricity is a darn useful one

Eduardo Jezierski edjez@instedd.org @edjez