A Webinar on Hurricane Katrina: Innovative Information and Communications Responses

(This item was originally posted to
<http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog/
_archives/2005/9/28/1266385.html>.)

On Tuesday afternoon, I participated in a webinar on innovative ICT
responses to Hurricane Katrina that was jointly hosted by the
Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, HumaniNet, Aspiration, and
the Innovation Funders Network.

I felt proud to hear about the geek emergency response to the recent
tragedy. Representatives from a range of organizations - such as Cisco
Systems, Technology For All, and the Center for Neighborhood
Technology - briefed us on their efforts. Some information about the
Katrina PeopleFinder Project was also ably presented by Zack Rosen (of
CivicSpace Labs) and Steve Wright (of SalesForce.com Foundation).

I do my share of griping about the limits of the webinar format, but I
can't deny that there's great potential benefit in conducting this
sort of briefing and coordination in real time.

N-TEN will probably make transcripts and other materials available to
anyone who is interested, but there's an even better (though more
labor-intensive) opportunity coming up for those who want to
participate in this conversation. On 17 October 2005, there will be
an international conference in Washington, D.C. on the topic of
"Answering the call: Katrina, the Tsunami, Darfur, Afghanistan -
lessons learned from the Global ICT responses." N-TEN and HumaniNet
will once again be playing host.

Deborah Elizabeth Finn
Boston, Massachusetts, USA
http://blog.deborah.elizabeth.finn.com/blog
http://public.xdi.org/=deborah.elizabeth.finn