CrisisCongress Photo Courtesy of Taylor Davidson on Flickr

As I’ve grown into my activist and humanitarian roles, technology has helped me find a place where I feel like I belong in the response. It’s not my primary profession, per say, in life. But it is a place where I feel like I can make a difference.

How?

Sometimes, from using our voice. Our voice online has the ability to multiply and make a bigger impact. Using your voice on the internet (and this could be Facebook or your own blog) is a way of standing up for what you believe, asking questions, and seeking answers.

That’s what happened to me in January. The earthquake happened and I turned to the Internet to see what the response would be. I had heard of Transparency Camps happening last summer, but only pieces, as I had been in the Philippines on my Kiva Fellowship. I had heard more about CrisisCommons from friends like Alex Rose and Chad Catacchio and with my incessant need for information learned more about the Camps. I started to see them pop up around the country and people were reaching out to me, since I now lived in New Orleans, asking to connect with people who had been instrumental in the response for Hurricane Katrina in 2005 and wondering when there would be a CrisisCamp in New Orleans.

From the bottom of my cause-filled activist heart, you could say this is how I was roped in to creating CrisisCampNOLA.

I was helped by Robert Fogarty, who himself has a nonprofit focused on evacuation techniques called Evacuteer.org and by Barrett Conrad, who leads up a monthly developer event in New Orleans and could tap into those networks to get developers to attend.

So I had Alex and Chad rooting me on, and Robert and Barrett partnering and helping shoulder the load, and the local New Orleans community donating space (LaunchPadNOLA), food (Naked Pizza) and press/promotion (New Orleans Tech) and all of the pieces were coming together. But more than all of that, all CrisisCamps would be remiss not to mention Heather Blanchard.

Heather’s passion for creating CrisisCamp and moving CrisisCommons into a viable entity were never far off from the overall goal of having a successful campaign.

Click here to view the embedded video.

We held CrisisCampNOLA, we invited local Haitians to come and tell their stories and we built a local response and also helped on the national scale. It was, by all means, a success.
Through the type of connections that we make online in this day and age (which makes me feel so old for saying this way but it’s true), Heather and I stayed in touch. In fact, we put together a CrisisCamp dinner during SXSW and we also put together a panel during SXSW about CrisisCamp. We talked many times after about how to move forward and then the Oil Spill happened.

That stupid Oil Spill. God, it makes me so angry and sad and frustrated and wondering what I could do to help. But to “help” I mean, we couldn’t clean the beaches and the catastrophe was so severe.

Again, there was Heather heading up a oil spill reporter app to help people create visuals of where the spill had hit and working with the technical resources at her disposal around the country to make an impact.

This leads me to two weeks ago when CrisisCommons held its first International Crisis Congress. City leads from around the world came together to meet in person (most for the first time) and talk about the future of CrisisCommons. Held in Washington DC on July 16th at the World Bank and travel grants graciously given by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we all gathered for a full day of workshops. The mediator, Allen Gunn, for the day was the best, literally the best, I’ve ever seen. He kept us moving, laughing, engaged and thoughtful. We got up out of our seats and we interacted and asked the hard, tough questions necessary to build and grown CrisisCommons.

Would we be more open? Would we have more rules and legal protection or less? Where are we looking to go in a year or five years from now? We spared nothing to analyze those questions.

In the group, besides City Leads, were professors in emergency preparedness, social innovators, marketers and GIS professionals all bringing their perspectives to the table.

I walked away with a case of the “wow” at the talent that came together for a unified cause. We could have hit a dent in a “virtual conference” but to attend in person we accomplished much more than I ever would have fathomed.

I’d like to extend my sincere thank you and ever-admiration to Heather Blanchard for being the visionary around CrisisCommons. I’m honored to represent New Orleans, and truly moved to be part of the process and be able to flex my own creative muscles into being part of the vision moving forward.

I’m always looking for more passionate and talented people to help grow CrisisCampNOLA and if this is you, please send me an email to sloane@thecausemopolitan.com.

I’d also love to find a way to get training to be able to be a first-responder of some kind for future emergencies around the world. World Vision has people who jump in to assess the needs of an area (like a project manager) and other direct response agencies have people they train in mental health services to go in immediately and help people on the ground. I’m looking to combine my online experiences with real offline field work, so if you know anywhere I should look I’m all ears.

Until then, I’ll continue to search and seek out ways to help with disasters around the world through my contributions with CrisisCommons. I’m so happy to have found a place where I belong and where I can contribute to those in need during crisis.

(Topic for another time…defining crisis!)

Further Reading:

• CrisisCommons Roundtable Series + First International CrisisCongress from CrisisCommons
• How CrisisCommons Is Helping the Tech Community Help Others on Mashable
• UStream from CrisisCongress
• CrisisCongress Flickr Set from Taylor Davidson
• CrisisCommons and Congress on High Earth Orbit

I’m on tour! It’s not quite the Cause It’s My Birthday madness that Doug Campbell and I created last fall, but it’s an exciting opportunity to meet and connect with EXCEPTIONAL techies (along with friends new and old) in five cities this summer. It’s an opportunity to help promote a company and a product we believe in, and help make the launch as viable as possible by sparking conversation and creating content with influencers and those most apt to purchase and develop this product.

The concept went something like this. Erica O’Grady and I wanted to create a unique opportunity for a company to get in front of their target audience, minus the top-shelf sponsorship cost. After all, what does “sponsoring” an event mean? It’s creating a place to get in front of the people that matter to you, right? So if we could do that for you, circulate a room and find the influencers and voices you wanted to reach, evangelize your product, sing your praises and back your endeavors, provide your with leads to follow up with after events that can lead to the same quantifiable ROI, what kind of sponsorship opportunity would that create?

The Party Crashers was born. And for our first project, we are party crashing Mashable’s 5-city SummerMash where awesome-super-amazing-client Microsoft has sponsored us to promote the Windows Phone 7. At each party in Seattle, San Francisco, Washington DC, New York City and Chicago, we’re asking the question (and capturing your answer) to the question:

We’re posting updates on The Party Crashers site, but we’d love you to  Follow Our Adventures on Twitter, Fan Us on Facebook, and please if you’re in Seattle, San Francisco, DC, NYC, of Chicago come to a Mashable Event and say hi (we’d love to get an interview with you)!

You can also leave a comment below with what your dream mobile application would be, we’d love to hear from you!

Does running make you high? What do you think about when you run? Usually, for me, it’s the greatest endorphin and adrenaline high. I get thinking, creative, have big juicy ideas and in general feel any clouds lifting from my shoulders and feel like I’m back in charge. Back in control.

So yesterday when I went running, and found myself conflicted, I had to wonder why. And it was because I was thinking about the oil spill, thinking about what I could do, more ways that I could give back now that Gulf Coast Benefits has wrapped (and we successfully raised just under $50,000 for Gulf Restoration Network).

My friend Jolie worries that people are burning out on the topic, Citizen Effect is creating a platform where we can participate in ways to keep the topic current and on Monday (as I mentioned in my post yesterday) Pepsi’s Refresh Everything projects launches a special Gulf Coast edition giving out $1.3 million in loans.

I ran along the Mississippi (listening to Obama’s Hope speech as a DJ-mashup) and thought to myself, “I love New Orleans and American too much not to keep fighting and pushing forward in the name of humanity, of cause-filled living and of helping people.”

And so I shared those thoughts, raw and unedited, while they were fresh from my mid-day run.

A huge thank you to Jill Foster, Geoff Livingston, Dan Morrison, and May Yu. Through Citizen Effect’s #CitizenGulf campaign, they came to explore the Gulf Coast, meet with nonprofits and find out how they could best help the efforts going on here for recovery and to encourage citizen philanthropy (a favorite topic of mine you all know).

Since I’m smack in the middle of co-producing tomorrow night’s Gulf Benefit Concerts (85 and counting in 11 countries), I couldn’t be with them during the day as they went to St. Bernard Community Center, to visit Catholic Charities and other wonderful groups, but we did get together for dinner last night at Cochon to talk about giving, New Orleans, my experiences here (and frankly travel stories I hadn’t told in awhile including tales from my Burma trip last summer).

To be around such incredible minds, giving souls and dedicated citizen philanthropists was engaging and inspiring. And then it was even better because they were able to help promote tomorrow’s events through the iReport above and also through an exciting blog post tomorrow (publication TBD) and their own social networks.

They kept saying, “Thank you so much for taking time away from the benefit shows to have dinner with us, we know you have so much to do!”

But really, it’s a thank you to them. For coming here and learning. For being open to the experience and being emotionally drained and exhausted, for wanting to keep giving and find more ways for their communities (online and off) to be engaged down here. It was the least I could to do give them my 110% (the very best Sloane I could be) because the emails, the follow up, the Gulf Coast stuff – that was there waiting for me when I got home to my place in the French Quarter last night.

Offline comes before online always. Remember that.

If you like what I’m rapping about in the video above, I hope you’ll attend a benefit concert in YOUR area tomorrow night (or get some friends together for an awareness party if your city doesn’t have an event) AND MAKE A DONATION to support our efforts. After all, 100% of donations are going to Gulf Restoration Network and it all then goes directly to the communities in need. No loopholes. No delay.

Tomorrow isn’t just the day of the benefits, and it’s not the end of this effort by any means. It’s only the beginning.

Yours,
Sloane

Chandeleur Islands Balloon Aerial Imagery from Grassroots Mapping

President Obama made a stop in the Gulf Coast region two weeks ago to survey the damage and while he was here issued a 6-month moratorium on new offshore drilling. Major news organizations have extended their stay on Louisiana’s coast, citing what residents already know, that the environmental and economic impact are far greater than anyone could fathom or dare imagine.

The “Crude Awakening” as it’s been called is causing a lifetime of damage to the Gulf Coast, spurring over 45 rallies nationwide to demand BP step up and take responsibility for its actions and that the government pass stricter regulations on offshore drilling. The spill, which occurred on April 20th, still hasn’t been stopped, and crude oil continues to spill into the Gulf Coast region.

In the mayhem and despair, citizens and activists are in a constant state of emergency and disaster mode. Anne Rolfes, Founding Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, told me, “Our office is bombarded every day by phone calls and people who walk through the door wanting to help in the face of this impossible situation. We are putting them to work to document the problem – gathering data, making the people-to-people connections that will help the real story be told. When the spill stops BP has a public relations machine ready to minimize this and pretend it didn’t happen. We don’t have a machine but we have something better – real people who are passionate and determined.”

The first week of June marks another important date for the Gulf Coast region. It’s the official start of hurricane season. With wetlands and marshes already under attack, meteorologists and hurricane experts warn this year’s hurricane season is more dangerous than ever. Imagine cities not only suffering water damage but covered in oil.

It’s hard not to be despondent, and worse, not know what you can do to help. Listed below are organizations making a difference and bringing together technologies being used to stop the oil spill from spreading and tracking the spill, providing a dataset open to the public.

Consider supporting these organizations and finding a way to get involved.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Grassroots Mapping, a creation of Jeffrey Warren from MIT Media Lab’s Center for Future Civic Media, is producing imagery created by volunteers and owned in the public domain. By using balloons and kites equipped with inexpensive digital cameras, these “community satellites” are able to georeference and create maps with 100x higher resolution than what is available on Google to be used in the environmental battle and litigation proceedings in the coming years. Orientation sessions are being offered in New Orleans or a DIY wiki is available on their website.

What you can do: Grassroots Mapping is currently running a Kickstarter project to raise money for more kites and helium tanks to put in the hands of volunteers in New Orleans. They are looking to raise $5,000 in the next 20 days. A donation of $10 or more gets you a print of any photo in their public domain dataset.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Matter of Trust – When hair can mean more than hair. Salons all over the country, and internationally from countries including the UK, France, Germany, New Zealand, Japan and Brazil, have been taking hair to drop-off points or sending discarded piles of hair to Matter of Trust to make booms by stuffing hair, fur, wastewool and other applicable material into the donated recycled nylons and mesh to absorb oil and stop the spill from spreading.

What you can do: Donations aren’t coming only from “people” salons but from pet groomers, and farmers sheering alpaca and llamas. The most recent call to action? Nylons. You can send nylons new or used (with runs) to their warehouses to help make booms. There are over 2,600 oil spills every year, so this otherwise discarded waste will continue to have a usage for other spills. Sign up here to get involved or make a donation.

Real time reports from Oil Reporter

Oil Reporter – The folks from CrisisCommons and Ushahidi (and scores of volunteers) have created free iPhone and Android applications that enables citizens on the ground to upload photos and videos and notes to report sightings of oil, harmed wildlife and conditions of the wetlands and beaches. Oil Reporter data is open and available to anyone via its open API. A team from San Diego State University’s Visualization Center will be the data repository for Oil Reporter. Oil Reporter will be hosting an Adopt-A-Beach initiative for virtual volunteers to adopt a span of beach along the Gulf Coast.

What you can do: Through the use of high resolution imagery, volunteers will be provided a specific location and training to map data elements of what they see such as perimeters of oil presence and injured wildlife in remote areas where physical assessment access is limited. Details and dates are being announced later this week.

Image courtesy of the Community Center of St. Bernard

Community Center of St. Bernard – St. Bernard Parish was overshadowed by the mass media post-Hurricane Katrina for the Ninth Ward. A working class community, only 2 homes in St. Bernard were not affected during Katrina. Many of these families still haven’t been able to return to their homes, almost five years after Katrina and are still struggling with debt and repaying their SBA loans, yet this community is being hit again by the oil spill. Commercial and recreational fishing bans are currently in effect, and as many of these residents rely on the fish and seafood industries, they are now being forced to sign up for food at the food pantry so that they will be able to feed their families until they can find other work.

What you can do: Donations go towards food, clothing and services for families in need.

More ways to get involved: A recent Gulf Aid concert in New Orleans on May 16th raised over $300,000 for families in need and included performances by Lenny Kravitz, John Legend, Ani Difranco, Allen Toussaint, The Voice of the Wetlands All-Stars and The Preservation Hall Jazz Band with Mos Def. Donations are still being taken through the Gulf Relief Foundation or you can text “GULFAID 10” to 27138 to donate $10 to Gulf Aid.

There are discussions that another series of concerts will be held on July 1st with all proceeds benefiting Gulf Coast families. If you’d like to be involved or create a fundraiser of your own, it’s easier than you think. Identify an organization to direct your donation and contact them. The first point of contact is sometimes all we need to get started.

Don’t know where to start? Leave a comment below and we’ll help you. This is too important for us all not to jump in and find a way to contribute.

**
Editor’s note: This post originally was posted on Pop Tech with the byline: Sloane Berrent currently resides in New Orleans. She co-founded NOLAlicious, a weekly e-newsletter about New Orleans and organized the first CrisisCampNOLA.

Yesterday, before the premier of Treme and the City of New Orleans anxiously anticipating the first episode of HBO’s stellar lineup this season, creator David Simon wrote an op-ed in the Times Picayune talking about inaccuracies and the story lines of Treme. He writes:

That we will be held to certain standards by New Orleanians goes with the territory. Beginning tonight, you are the ultimate arbiters — the only ones we really care about — on the question of whether our storytelling alchemy has managed to make anything precious or worthy from the baser elements of fact.

Your sensibilities matter to us because we have tried to be honest with that extraordinary time — not journalistically true, but thematically so. We have depicted certain things that happened, and others that didn’t happen, and then still others that didn’t happen but truly should have happened.

It’s most fascinating living in a city that seems to be constantly under the national microscope. First a new mayor for the first time in 8 years and then the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and now Treme. Living here is certainly taking its toll on MY descriptions of the city to outsiders and welcoming guests into visit but having to (constantly and consistently) explain myself and why I’m here and why New Orleans matters to me. I thought it fair time, even with just this thin swatch of Treme, to see what others thought and had to say for a change. I’ve gone in search of reviews of Treme and its authenticity and this is what I found:

Gathering to Watch Their City’s Star Turn, NY Times
“People here have spent their lives watching bad film and television about New Orleans,” he said in an interview, referring to Dennis Quaid’s attempt at a Cajun accent in the 1987 movie “The Big Easy.” “For people from New Orleans, it was a tremendous opening show.”

Treme on HBO, LA Times
“…you have not so much a television show as a modern American opera, full of flop sweat, spectacle and something that looks suspiciously like hope.”

Soul of a City, Boston Herald
“This is the kind of TV that viewers ask for but rarely get, driven by characters who are more than the sum of one or two qualities and who harbor depths that are revealed slowly, subtly, and authentically.”

‘Treme’ tunes into post-Katrina New Orleans, San Francisco Chronicle
“This is a love letter with bruises. There’s no Bourbon Street gloss to the story of their lives even as they try to overcome Katrina and help revive a city.”

…and then there is the local reaction:

NOLA.com will be featuring multiple reviews every Monday to get your Monday-morning quarterbacking on.

Treme: The Instant Reviews, OffBeat Magazine pulls some tweets from last night.

I’ll be tuning in with the rest of you to see not only how the storyline unfolds, but how the telling of the collective story of New Orleans is portrayed. By all accounts that is a most delicate and tender balance, the reward of which is up until now, seemingly undefined.

I’m excited to be giving a talk tonight to the local chapter of Operation Hope about networking and basic skills to get the most from your networking. I’ll be posting my slides from the talk later this week, but if you’re in New Orleans and want to come out tonight:

Details: Free seminar: Key to Networking-Make the Most of Your Contacts
Date: Tuesday, 3/30 @ 5:30 pm
Address: 1215 Prytania Street, New Orleans, 70115
RSVP: (504) 309-6153 x4

Follow Operation Hope NOLA on Twitter.

If you want more information about Chairman and Founder, John Hope Bryant (who I met at the World Economic Forum in January) I highly recommend his book, Love Leadership.

Another video with John Hope Bryant (I mean zOMG how amazing is he)!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Can you spot me in this picture?

In honor of the true excitement of the big win, here is little video (part 4 of 4 videos I did on Sunday) right after the big win, on Bourbon Street, in the madness. See the bottom of the post to more videos leading up to and including the mayhem.

(You’ll never see Katie Couric get this excited)

Click here to view the embedded video.

There’s more. Have you heard about all of the 44 craziness from Sunday? Check this out:

• Sunday was Super Bowl 44
• Obama is the 44th president
• There are 44 days from Christmas to the Super Bowl
• The Saints franchise is 44 years old
• Sunday was 4 years and 4 months since Katrina
• Saints won NFC Champ in 4 minutes and 44 seconds in overtime with a 40-yard field goal

Crazy, right?

To start from the beginning and see how we got to video 4, let’s go in order. See the day progress!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Big thanks to the easily-swayed Taylor Davidson for taking the videos and a great partner-in-crime going all through the French Quarter with me on game day and celebrating well into the night. For two newbies, we’re not doing so bad here in New Orleans!

Related Posts:
Getting Back In The Groove
Cause It’s My Birthday New Orleans Slideshow
Where’s Your Companion?

While at the World Economic Forum in Davos, I walked by the Hub, a central meeting place for the Wall St. Journal writers and also where the Hub was interviewing Young Global Leaders, CEOs and social entrepreneurs about Davos and their experiences. They were gracious enough to ask to interview me and readers of The Causemopolitan might remember that I’m only now growing into liking myself on video. I’m being honest! It’s the third medium that I’m adjusting to (after writing and photos). Submitting the MySpace Journal video was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done, it was really putting myself out there and without the help and support of friends here in New Orleans I don’t know that I would have had the courage to do it.

That said, big thank you to Edie Lush and Hub Culture for the interview above and for all you New Orleans readers out there, check out the interview starting around minute 3 where I really get into WHY I love New Orleans and what is of the most value in being here and being part of the community.

From The Hub’s Introduction:

Sloane V. Berrent, Founder of the Causemopolitan, is the winner of a contest through My Space and the Wall Street Journal to be a citizen journalist in Davos. She spent her time in Davos interviewing and blogging to her audience at Causemopolitan. Sloane also talks about her social entrepreneuship web show in New Orleans. Hub Culture journalist interviewed her at the Hub Pavilion in Davos.

For those who might have missed it, here is my MySpace Journal award-winning contest entry video:

Related Posts:
TGIF Video: Challenge. Create. Change.
Make A Donation Page Is Live!
My “Farewell for Now” Party – This Sunday!

Big thank you to the team at What Gives for the interview above from October’s Blog World Expo in Las Vegas where Christopher Smith (@groovemonkey) interviewed me about my cause-filled life, the turning point that got me there, Cause It’s My Birthday and what’s next.

Also, a shout out to What Gives for the post on my upcoming trip to the World Economic Forum in Davos later this week.

Related posts:
Make a donation to support Haiti
Dear Future Me
In Transit in the Philippines