[Cross-posted from OpenCrisis.org]
This weekend is going to be a busy one for in-person crisismapping events: Digital Humanitarian Training is launching its first meetup in New York, and the Digital Humanitarian Network is running its first in-person meeting in Boston USA (they’re both on our shiny new crisismapping calendar).
As someone who dedicated years to helping crisiscamps around the world and the CrisismappersNYC meetup (spawned from the CrisisCampNY meetups), this makes me both nostalgic and hopeful at the same time.
I’m nostalgic because even the most collaborative groups like CrisisCamp London & Crisismappers NYC are difficult to keep going from a distance (e.g. if you find yourself working 3500 miles from London or even 50 from NYC). Though distance may be short on the map, no amount of tech can fit the enormous gap of quality in meeting-people time. Keeping people engaged in training on crisis mapping, connecting them to other mappers in different cities and handling logistics is a lot for any one person to shoulder. Indeed, the planning, staffing & training work required at an event speak nothing of the ground work involved in identifying venues or maintaining networks and individual connections.
And I’m hopeful to see the next generation of crisismapper meetup organisers come through. They’ll learn, like we did, about the things that do and don’t work, and hopefully will find some of the things we left behind for them, like the Crisiscamp-in-a-box packs describing everything from what stationery is good to have (post-it notes are always useful) to how to organise training (backstory: Crisiscamp London had a real cardboard box that they stored all their stuff in between meetings). But hopefully, unlike many of us old ‘uns, they won’t burn out trying to train and map and organise meets all at the same time.
I wish you both luck, Andy and Willow – and if you ever want to drink a pint and talk about all the things that did and didn’t work in the past, I’ll see you sometime in New York!
Sara.