Relief comes in code form for victims of Haiti earthquake

While International Red Cross and other organizations have begun to offer help to victims of the earthquake in Haiti, a group of more than 130 programmers in Washington D.C. have started working on their own form of relief - and it comes in code form.

Huddled in the offices of the Sunlight Foundation on Saturday, they programmed applications, blogged, designed maps, and gathered around whiteboards to brainstorm.

Called CrisisCamp Haiti, the gathering was organized just a few days ago and before too long more than 100 volunteer technologists signed up to help out.

Josh Folk of Online Video Service was one of the volunteers who was busy keeping up a wiki page and documenting the lessons learned for future reference.

"I heard about [the CrisiCamp Haiti] on the Sunlight Foundation's blog and I signed up for it because I thought it was something cool I could help out with," Folk said.

The first "Crisis Camp" happened last June, when technology companies such as Google and Microsoft teamed up with international organizations to help bridge the divide between first response organizations and the information technology community.

But after the earthquake in Haiti, which killed tens of thousands of people and has left many of the Port-au-Prince's residents without food and water, CrisisCamp instead became a new form of assistance - engineers and coders creating applications and software for use by organizations in the field.

"We are not mixing concrete, we are not delivering water, but three and four and five weeks later there is still going to be a massive crisis. There we can start offering coded maps to stick their data online," said Noel Dickover, an organizer for CrisisCamp Haiti and a computer consultant.

"Here is the places where water delivery is taking place, here is where roads are up, here are where funerary services are located," Dickover said, giving an example.

"If you look around they are not talking, there is work happening, and the goal is to see how we can save lives," Dickover said.

The projects range from mapping software that allows relief agencies to share information and find important areas to a program to help people locate family members displaced by the earthquake.

Some of the volunteers were developing an application for translating English to Creole, said Heather Blanchard, the co-organizer of the event, who was constantly busy answering questions and helping the volunteers who were broken up in 10 groups.

Other CrisisCamps were formed around the nation in California, New York and Colorado. Blanchard was waiting for the California group to take over the projects around 5 p.m. on Saturday.

While taking a break on a couch and checking her messages on her laptop, she said that one of the most significant aspects of the CrisisCamp was the volunteers.

"Our goal is to build a community of tech volunteers," she said. "It's important to understand the people piece of this."

Dickover said that as more organizations move in, they will be able to take advantage of the combined resources and information the programmers helped create.

"It's citizen engagement, it's a change. Before, all you could really do was send money to the Red Cross. What we're saying is, from your living room, you can actually help people and prevent them from dying," Dickover added.

"There is a different way of helping in a crisis than there ever was," Dickover said.

Dave Mroz (sitting) and Michael Mendelson work on an English/Creole translation program: By Andy Medici

Jaakko Helleranta works on the front page of the applications. By Andy Medici
 

Scott Stead works on the crisis wiki. By Andy Medici