 We're at the last talk this evening in this tent already and the next one up is Tim Mai. She's from Random Hex of Kindness. She's a global operations coordinator and she's a community builder and she's gonna talk about just that, building community. Have a big round of applause. And a huge thank you for turning up at this late hour. I know it's right in the middle of the night and a dry topic as it is. I am Chin Mai. I'm a technologist and I work in the area of humanitarian hacking. I work with the organization called Random Hex of Kindness. It's in global organization which has communities around the world building humanitarian and civic tech through hackathons. I'm here today because of something that I've been experiencing in the recent past that is the lack of a community to support civic issues and a lack of a community to support humanitarian issues. There is a rising trend of issues around the world and but we don't have a community which continuously supports building technology for such situations and that's where I felt the need of coming to this camp and talking to all of you about the need and how you can do it in your own communities without the need of a central or global organization to do it. That's what I'm gonna be talking but I would also like to hear if you have different expectations of the talk then I can similarly talk according to that. I can give you two minutes if you want to have a different question that answered through the talk. Could you come to the microphone and tell me? No? Okay. Super. Yeah so I was talking about the growing need of humanitarian or civic hackers. Let me talk about a few instances. We've been all talking about digital access, equal digital access for everyone and one of the issues that countries face is internet shutdowns. This is a map of internet shutdowns that's happened in India and this is in the first half of 2017. So we've faced around 79 total internet shutdowns. What I mean by internet shutdowns is that a country or a region decides to cut internet for a specific period of time. In this case, in case of Kashmir recently they experienced like a two-month internet shutdown. So you are unable to get online, you are unable to do anything because of this. So let's, cases like this and then there is also humanitarian crisis. This has increased over in the recent past. There have been more humanitarian crisis than there have been in a decade. So there have been earthquakes, there have been climatic changes which have resulted in issues like, you know, cyclones and there have been floods, droughts around the world and we have also, sorry, coming back to, also issues wherein we have corporate entities taking over natural resources. So we have different crises around the world and there is a huge need of humanitarian hackers and I want to talk about these three stories and how humanitarian hackers have helped. In the internet shutdowns in Kashmir, what happened is a group local to Kashmir actually went ahead and shared the knowledge of how to use VPNs in Kashmir and that helped people circumvent the internet shutdown and the blockage in itself. So that's one example of how humanitarian hackers have helped. In the Nepal earthquake, this is a group called Kathmandu Living Labs. One of the issues of Nepal was there were no clear maps for the first responders to go and rescue or go and even provide any kind of aid. So a local group in Kathmandu came together and built open street maps with the knowledge of local entities and with the knowledge of their countries survey of Nepal and this actually helped the first responders have access to areas they did not even have access to. So this is how a local group could help and in case of Standing Rock, in fact Standing Rock, one of the issues of Standing Rock was that there was no medium of communication between the child that was protesting and the rest of the world. So my parent organization that's Geeks without bonds actually could help with the help of technologists at the Standing Rock tribe in itself to bring internet by using a local telecom operator and some technology that was built during previous humanitarian hackathons. So these are three examples talking about three different crises and how humanitarian hackers themselves could bring about a change. That's one of the reasons why I am here to talk about bringing this community alive, bringing this community to your towns, your cities, your countries. There are several ways that we can do this. One of the things that humanitarian technologies or civic technologies need is continuous understanding and interaction with the local communities. That means we need a group that can exist for years. We need a group that can understand these issues over a period of time and can support the technologies that are built over a period of time. So we need sustainable communities. We cannot have communities which are just coming in to build one solution or communities which can do one hackathon. That is not a good solution. The second thing that can be done is that supporting the existing networks in themselves. There are various humanitarian networks. So these are some of the humanitarian networks that exist that are persisted over the years. Space Apps is one of the communities run by NASA which looks at NASA data and builds technology for civic action. Digital humanitarian network is again an informal group of humanitarians which over time look at humanitarian technologies and critique and support and connect different technology builders to have these technologies ready in times of crisis. In fact during the Haiti earthquake the humanitarian network was one of the reasons why they were able to communicate the realities on the ground through the Twitter updates and everything. Similarly there's of course the humanitarian open street map. This is also not something that just comes alive in terms of crisis. It's always active and it needs maps which are not readily available and through humanitarian open street maps you could also build projects, humanitarian projects which could support local communities. So there are existing networks like this and random hacks of kindness of course the network that I belong to also has been existing for six years now and we have 30 sites around the world which continuously look at civic tech and humanitarian tech. These organizations also have a repository in terms of the technology that they're built. In fact these space apps and randomize of kindness have been active for more than five or six years so they have open source solutions that you can use for humanitarian crisis and in fact they have been used in Haiti, they have been used in Australia during bushfires, they've been used in different so MSF recently took one of random hacks of kindness hacks and they implemented vaccination routines through the hacks that were built during these events. So there have been multiple hacks or multiple technologies that have been built and there have been multiple methodologies set up by organizations like this which could be used in your local communities and it's highly encouraged that not just building something that's in local community and that is sustainable but also having the support of organizations like this. So what happens is you have in repository of knowledge existing and also you have a global community to talk to and you also have mentors who have experience of working in the field while working with organizations like this. The third thing that to increase the number of hackers or to increase the number of people interested in civic tech or humanitarian tech is to look at different demographics. One of the things that we found hugely successful was working with kids and adolescents. So we worked with communities around the world where kids looked at their own spaces, looked at what they had as issues in their own spaces and went back and built simpler technologies to amplify those issues. What this helped was to get the communities they live in to come back and say that we want to be more involved in solving these civic issues. We also experienced that when we work with diverse group of people be it women or be it marginalized communities we saw that the methodologies they used were very specific to their communities and that helped in refining something that would work instead of building something that's very generic that's built by someone who is in probably Europe and US and you expect that to work in a country like India or Africa. So that was something that we saw come out well when we worked with local communities and when we worked with diverse communities and also we understood that the problems could be when they're hyperlocal even if it is the problems in Scandinavian countries or if it is European countries they're not worked upon and overlooked when there are no local communities and when they don't look at local issues. So it's highly important that we work with diverse group of people and you try different methodologies. In this case we just decided that we would not do something like a hackathon but instead we decided to just go mapping with a paper map and that's where the kids are holding. So when you try these different approaches the involvement of local communities increases. This is one of the ways that we found it to be engaging for local communities. I've been talking about local communities I've been talking about what are the things or networks that are available but how can you personally help with these local community building or how do you contribute and in what capacities can these be done. So there are different things that you could do. One is most of these communities or groups don't start because there is no one to take ownership of. I also spoke about sustainable communities. So one of the reasons why people don't take ownership of such communities is because there is a need for sustainable ownership and that is very tiring. You burn out at the end of a few months. So there is a need for a lot more people to volunteer to be these communities and also to build the next leaders. So that's how you can sustain any kind of community. The second thing is not just hold these communities or build these communities or bring people, build people together. Sometimes just holding one event and taking ownership of one event it could not be an hackathon. It could be different formats. So to bring humanity and hackers you don't have to necessarily format it in a way that you have and technology built by the end of that event. It could just be that you provide a platform for people to come and talk. So providing simple things where people can come and discuss politics or discuss technology in an intersection of politics can also be a very good way of involving the community. It takes time, yes, for them to go ahead and be a hacker but it still helps in a way that there is a sense of understanding of what they're building. There is a sense of understanding of what they're implementing and that is very important. It also involves people who are not probably technologically capable and that is important for the reason that technologists sometimes can be very blind and sometimes can build things that are not usable. Then you have people who are not technologists. You have different viewpoints and that helps you identify flaws and helps you identify usability issues easily. So that's one of the reasons why you have to hold not just community which is technologically aware or technologically capable but also something that can lead to discussions. The third thing is you probably don't have the bandwidth to lead a community or you hold a discussion but you can definitely write a document on the safe practices of using some social media platform or how to even set up a secure internet network or something like that. So it could be different skills or it could be about using a platform to build a website in a few steps. So these are things, these are skills that as technologists we could share and sometimes it's also skills like how do you approach a particular governmental organization just to get your project passed or even what are the formats to share your technology with the government or a civic body. So there's varied skills that each one of us can share with the community and even that is a good way to contribute. The other ways to come contribute is also about connecting different networks. A local organization could have technologists but could lack non-profit connects. It could have someone who does not understand technology but does not understand UI and UX. Maybe you could connect someone who understands usability. So that's also another way to connect these different communities or enable those different communities. Then most of these civic and technology, humanitarian technology communities don't have sustainable funding. What I mean by that is that they're funded once in a while because they was a mandate to do a hackathon or something like that from a company but there is nothing that they're not a lot of funds to build upon the knowledge. There is not a lot of funds to maintain the technologies once they're built. So there is a need for funding these communities. Sometimes these discussions are political and there are no funds to support some political discussions especially let's talk about like net neutrality or if somebody talks about let's talk about unique identity systems for your citizens. So there are things that are highly political in nature and in that case these communities don't get funded. So this is one of the way to support them. The third thing could be also to build materials. Earlier I told you told about sharing skill sets. Building materials could be an extension of that. It could be something that you don't personally feed the communities but you can write manuals that can be shared with these communities. It could be about ethics, it could be about design, it could be about anything. But this helps these communities learn something that's missing in a city or a town but could easily be found somewhere else. I needed the sun pixelated. Is it possible? No? Okay, sorry. While I've been talking about how to do it a lot of these efforts for the past have been well intentioned but at the end of it there have been a lot of issues as well and one of the reasons why these communities have failed is because we have not addressed these issues and overlooked them and gone ahead and done the same processes over and over again. This is actually a picture which was talking about and toilet which was built in one of the tribal communities and the picture showed how the toilet that was built was used as a grain storage unit. So it spoke about usability fail. Of course the building of a toilet is well intentioned. It is something that is solving a problem but it is not being used by the community the way it should be used. This has been happening a lot with civic tech and humanitarian technologies and the reason being that these technologies have always been built in separation to the communities. They've not been with the communities. They've not been built after understanding the needs of the communities. There's always been an alienation with what the needs are and who builds it. Though we would like to do local communities there are times that privilege plays because technology is obviously something that's known by someone who's privileged and there is always a disconnect with people who use it. So that leads to massive failure in terms of how these technologies are never used on ground and never supported. So also with respect to like ethicality there is a sense of appropriation that even though you understand the issue you do not fully see it from the perspective of someone experiencing it and that also leads to failures of the usage of technology or building of technology. The third one is of course like I said there is a need for these communities to be persistent consistent and that is a hard thing to do. It's hard to maintain these technologies because the developers who built it cannot stay beyond a certain period of time because this is used by someone who is possibly not someone near them. So they would have moved to different projects or they would not have funds to work more on the projects or even the fact that the way it is used by the communities is possibly harder and the feedback is not provided to the developers so it goes to waste. So it's very important that when we build these local communities that we always have an understanding that we include different groups and we always have an understanding that of our own privileges and our own sense of you know sorry our own I'm not I'm unable to get a right word for this. Okay you could call it privilege but to be aware of our own privileges so that's something to think of and something to reflect upon and to work on. Well yeah so I would okay I do want to end the talk here because I am unable to currently put together what I had in mind but I would like to throw the floor open for questions and I would like to answer based on that. Okay that's very round of applause come on so questions. You mentioned that in the event of an internet shutdown hackers can come in come into play and try to solve that problem for for the people but do you have any other example of a situation in which hackers can actually improve the living conditions of people? I think I talked about three examples one was the internet shutdown the other thing was when I talked to you about what I keep forgetting the name of the camp, Standing Rock Camp. So even in this there was an issue the issue was that they were protest but they were disconnected from the rest of the world and what happened at the Standing Rock protest was not being relayed to the rest of the world and this is where again the hackers could get involved in building technologies that could help share what is happening or relay these messages this is one. The second thing of course the other example that I was talking to you about was the earthquake where there were no maps in themselves so the maps were built. The other example that I can also give you is about building emergency systems where bushfires in Australia were relayed in real time and this is also something that was possible due to technology and due to the fact that you could automate this message sending yes so there are various places where technology can be useful and it has made a difference yeah cool okay any other questions in your presentation you mentioned several humanitarian organizations or at least well helping it I was wondering if these organizations often work together I mean yeah they do work together but they do have a specific focus that they there is not one organization but there are several I was wondering about the difference between them in focus so they do work on different things so the space apps challenge mainly works with data and they work with the NASA data and the governmental data. Digital humanitarian network actually works with practices and connecting networks so it is not building technology in itself but connecting technologies or technology communities with humanitarian organizations and also building processes for usage of these technologies yeah open street maps again is a completely different organization so they only work with maps yes of course yeah and random acts of kindness we started out building technology for humanitarian crisis in fact our primary focus was humanitarian crisis and that's how some of our technology got used in Haiti and then they also got used in the hurricanes and hurricane hurricane disasters in US certain and certain places yes then we moved to civic tech because of the issues that the local communities faced and themselves and the geeks without borders yeah so geeks without bounds sorry it's another organization it's not completely a humanitarian organization it used to be a humanitarian accelerator sorry humanitarian technology accelerator but what they essentially do is work with communities for technology implementation so in fact Standing Rock is one of the one of their projects where they got internet to the camp the other example that of their projects is actually looking at water networks or water pipe networks in Tanzania and improving the water supply processes by looking at you know what are the different points of failure and working with the local agencies to ensure that's possible so essentially they work with technology and communities yeah thanks okay any other questions yeah we have one more question thank you for your presentation I had a question about gender a lot of my experience a lot of open source communities are have a majority of male hackers and developers would you share some insights about men and women working together in a positive way and for instance humanitarian community okay so we've had a certain amount of success with having an equal participation of men and women in fact one of the hackathons that we did it's more a program it's more an accelerator program with a hackathon which with with around gender-based violence in India we had 50-50 participation of men and men work coming together and working on issues so we've had even in different communities we've had women leading the communities we've had a lot of women hackers coming to the communities one of the things that we found useful was the friendly space policies and also the fact that we choose issues that they aligned with or they identify with and that's how we were we were a we are able to bring those communities to the hackathons yeah thank you thank you any other questions okay okay thank you chairman thank you very much have a lot of thoughts