How useful are Twitter, Facebook and other social media channels for disaster response organizations? I’m looking at the question from three different angles.
We need email stamps! (Really expensive ones)
On October - 14 - 2010
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This is a rant. If you are not interested in reading rants, mosey along … I love the fact that email is almost instant and free, but I’m wondering whether – at least within big companies – we shouldn’t introduce email stamps. I’m serious. Recently it seems like that for every email I’m sending I’m getting four or five emails back. I’m being buried under an absolute relentless onslaught of emails. And I’m not the only one. I have spoken[...]
“So … how is Haiti these days?”
On August - 29 - 2010
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“So … how is Haiti these days?” – this is probably the question I have been asked most since I’ve come back. The problem is: the question is misleading because it assumes that it’s possible to make significant changes in a couple of months.
What’s this World Humanitarian Day?
On August - 19 - 2010
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Last year, when I heard about World Humanitarian Day for the first time, my first impulse was that this sounded pretty self-righteous. I mean, where is the World Firemen Day or the World Truckdriver Day? Two professions that are very dangerous and that probably contribute more to people’s lives than most professional aid workers do. Since then I have changed my minds slightly. For one thing, there is never anything objectionable about remembering colleagues who have died. But more importantly[...]
You might have been on mission for too long, if …
On August - 6 - 2010
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Knowing when to leave can be a difficult thing. Here are a few signs that might indicate it’s time for you to pack your bags and run for the nearest airport.
Haiti – six months after the earthquake
On July - 11 - 2010
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One of the biggest mistakes that international organizations make is not taking enough time to explain to journalists why thing are complicated and take a long time. But taking that time and investing into communications pays off.
The rubble-problem (with video)
On June - 24 - 2010
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One of the biggest obstacles to building transitional shelters in Haiti is the amount of debris that is lying everywhere. Do me favour and look down your street. Now imagine that up to 60 per cent of all the houses just collapsed (the percentage of destroyed houses depends a lot on which part of town you are in in Port-au-Prince). Can you imagine how much rubble this would be? From a shelter perspective the problem is that before you build[...]
Port-au-Prince from above – the camps in June
On June - 23 - 2010
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Thoughts about tents and tarps and a collection of photos from an aerial assessment of the major IDP camps in Port-au-Prince in June 2010.
