Saturday, April 2, 2011

Volunteer Technology Communities; new use for ICA?

https://www.gfdrr.org/gfdrr/volunteer-technology-communities-open-development

"During 2010, a new form of volunteer emerged from the background: the humanitarian technologist. These experts—who are most often technical professionals with deep expertise in geographic information systems, database management, social media, and/or online campaigns—applied their skills to some of the hardest elements of the disaster risk management process."

Volunteers with skills useful to a problem work together in an essentially nonhierarchical format to accomplish goals that were previously difficult to do.  These actions help the traditional structured organizations do their jobs better.  Now for the new challenge: "It is here—in the politics and tempo of this new volunteer capability—that the bottom-up, grassroots structures need protocols to work with the top-down systems within large organizations."  How do you get the nonorganized to work well with the organized?  I don't think that should be much of a problem so long as the Volunteer Technology Communities just accept a task and accomplish it, without the organized group interfering with how that is done.  The organized group (say, the Red Cross), may fear the chaos of the nonorganized, but that should not be a concern at all.  The results, if satisfactory, should be all that matters.  Don't fear chaos.

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