new york – Rebekah Heacock Jones

Ugandan GLBT activist in NY next week

Frank Mugisha, head of Ugandan GLBT activist group Sexual Minorities Uganda, is speaking in New York City March 22.

Frank Mugisha, head of Ugandan GLBT activist group Sexual Minorities Uganda, is speaking in New York City March 22 (details here).

Mugisha will be joined by the Rev. Kapya Kaoma, an Episcopalian Priest from Zambia and author of Globalizing the Culture Wars, a report on how Christian evangelicals in the US have influenced attitudes toward sexual minorities in Africa.

For more information on what Ugandan sexual minorities face, check out my posts on the issue or the blog GayUganda.

For more about Rev. Kaoma, read this review of Globalizing the Culture Wars by Ethan Zuckerman.

From Budapest to Haiti to NY to Chile

After the Global Voices Summit in 2008, I came home and raved to friends and coworkers about Ushahidi, and they looked at me and said, “Usha-what?” Now people are coming up to me in the hallways and asking me if I’ve heard of this new Chile crisis mapping project that’s happening at SIPA.

Eight days ago I found out that I would be attending the 2010 Global Voices Citizen Media Summit in Santiago, Chile. I’m thrilled to have the opportunity to meet up with the larger GV community again, and I’ve been browsing through old blog posts from the 2008 summit in Budapest.

I helped put out the liveblog for that summit, including the coverage of a session called When the World Listens, about the power of citizen media. Juliana Rotich, Program Director for Ushahidi, spoke during the session about the organization’s role in documenting the post-election violence in Kenya in late 2007 and early 2008.

At the time, the founders of Ushahidi were deciding what to do now that the Kenyan crisis had ebbed. Juliana said the next step would be to create a downloadable tool that could be used by anyone in the world.

Flash forward to this Saturday, when I worked with the rest of The Morningside Post team to host a conference on Policy Making in the Digital Age at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA). Patrick Meier, SIPA alum and Director of Crisis Mapping and Strategic Partnerships at Ushahidi, came and spoke about “Usha-Haiti,” the instance of Ushahidi developed to respond to the massive earthquake in Haiti in January.

As Patrick writes on the Ushahidi blog, at 7:00am — just a few hours before he spoke at SIPA — he heard that an earthquake of even higher magnitude had just hit Chile. Before leaving for New York, Patrick had already launched the Ushahidi team into action, cloning the earthquake-specific Haiti site and beginning to customize it for Chile.

While speaking at SIPA, Patrick described the Ushahidi Situation Room at Tufts, where student volunteers have been working around the clock to map reports from Haiti. By the time Patrick left Columbia’s campus on Saturday afternoon, a group of students who had attended the conference had already created a Facebook group and begun organizing potential volunteers through a Google group.

Yesterday, Patrick announced that SIPA would be taking the lead Ushahidi – Chile. New York now has its very own Ushahidi Situation Room, and I’m headed to campus in a few hours for a training so I can help out.

I’m trying to figure out how to describe this circle of events. “It’s a small world” doesn’t seem to apply, since it is, in fact, a very big world — from Budapest to Port-au-Prince to New York to Santiago covers a lot of area, and I haven’t even mentioned how some of the students heading the SIPA Sit Room are also putting together an instance of Ushahidi for Iraq.

I’m amazed at how much has happened in this field in two years. After the Global Voices Summit in 2008, I came home and raved to friends and coworkers about Ushahidi, and they looked at me and said, “Usha-what?” Now people are coming up to me in the hallways and asking me if I’ve heard of this new Chile crisis mapping project that’s happening at SIPA.

My heart goes out to those who have lost loved ones in both Haiti and Chile, and I hope that what the SIPA Sit Room does over the coming days and weeks can help.

New York is dangerous.

Coyotes on the Columbia campus. Seriously.

Just arrived in the inbox (emphasis mine):

To: SIPA Student Groups

While on patrol this morning Post 15 PSO Patterson noticed three animals in front of Lewisohn Hall. Sgt. Galan responded and spotted one animal and identified it as a coyote. Sgt. Gillis contacted 911 and NYPD responded. NYPD spotted one of the animals and confirmed it was a coyote. The one coyote that was seen by NYPD and Sgt. Galan went behind the CEPSR build and it is believed exited the campus. An additional sighting by facilities was called in to base at approximately 1000 hours this morning. The undersigned responded and was unable to confirm the sighting. Patrol units were advised if they see any possible coyotes while on patrol to notify the base and maintain a visual but not to approach the animal.

For Your Information,
Sgt. Oakley

I would like to take this moment to point out that, while being raised in Kansas, I never once spotted a coyote.

Policy Making in the Digital Age: February 2010 Conference at Columbia

My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake. It’s also why I am so excited about Policy Making in the Digital Age, a conference that The Morningside Post is sponsoring at Columbia in February.

My biggest frustration with grad school so far has been how difficult it is to bring what’s happening in the real world of ICT and development — mobile phones for health, Ushahidi, debates over what online privacy means for activists — into the classroom. With the exception of a few phenomenal professors, much of the SIPA academic world seems disconnected from the entire field. In my opinion, this is a sad mistake.

It’s also why I am so excited about Policy Making in the Digital Age, a conference that The Morningside Post is sponsoring at Columbia in February.

Policy Making in the Digital Age will bring together faculty and students at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs with the wider Columbia and New York City communities to explore trends and future implications in ICT and development, privacy issues, open governance, and humanitarian affairs.

We’re building a fantastic line-up of experts to discuss everything from how new media can help in crisis to the intersection of technology, business and culture in different countries. Know someone you think we should invite? Let us know at editor [at] themorningsidepost.com. Want to come? Mark your calendar for February 27, 2010, and check the conference site in late January for more details.

traitor.

I’ve been using Blogger for six years. It’s seen me through angsty college musings, a public to-do list, the beginnings of a cooking blog, an ill-fated attempt at blogging in Russian, and an even iller-fated attempt at Rebekah auf Deutsch. Oh, and this here web log.

When I started blogging, WordPress.com didn’t exist, and everyone I knew who wasn’t using Xanga (cringe) or LiveJournal (ditto) was on Blogger. But as I’ve continued, more and more of my friends have defected, falling head over heels for WP’s plugins and beautiful themes and shiny dashboards and seamless post tagging (Blogger was sadly late to the post categorization party) and integrated commenting (remember the days of Haloscan?).

To which my response has always been: bah humbug.

You see, I’m a bit of a Scrooge: I like Blogger. Specifically, I like the control it gives me over my template and the fact that I have this control absolutely free of charge.

But in the meantime I’ve grown up and moved to the Big City and somehow become editor and technical director of one of the best graduate school blogs on international affairs in the country. And we use WordPress.

And I like it.

A lot.

Which is why I’m spending November 13 and 14 at WordCamp NYC, surrounded by WordPress lovers and their shiny, shiny dashboards.

If things go well (for the shiny dashboard people), I may even swaddle my precious Jackfruity baby in WordPress clothes.

Care to join me?