SahanaCamp 1.0

I would like to share a report back from SahanaCamp, which has just completed in Delhi. For the Camp we had a good showing from the Sahana Eden community with Fran, Praneeth, Abhishek, Shikhar and Zubair as well as Hsiaojan Liu, Joyce Chen and Chun-Hung Huang from the Sahana Taiwan team and Nandeep Mali who organised the venue for us at Sarai and joined in with the camp.I have uploaded some photos to: http://picasaweb.google.com/100075072036191778749/SahanaCamp10 We will be sharing slides and other material from the Camp shortly.Fran kicked things off with a session introduction session on the code and framework and then we gave them a practical exercise (of radio management) to work on. The participants were all engaged and there was some great sharing going on between the more experienced Sahanians and the new comers. We wrapped up the first day talking about the concept of “Participatory Programming” and the value of engaging with users and other stakeholders to build sustainable and appropriate solutions, as well as some discussions about user testing and training.For the workshop day we had representatives from IBM and IFRC (International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies). The day began with discussions around Disaster Management, Development and Information Management. We then had some great presentations sharing IBM’s experience deploying Sahana and other systems in response to disasters in India. Lalit Bogra from IFRC shared some of their requirements for volunteer management and Zubair Assad shared some of the work he’d been doing for this in his GSoC project.The highlight of the SahanaCamp was the simulation we ran of the disaster response for the 2008 Bihar Floods. Using example scenarios participants used Sahana to manage organisations, staff, projects, tasks, requests and pledges as well as receiving SMS’s through the system. Participants commented that the activity helped to give them a better understanding of how Sahana Eden could be used in a disaster context. I was personally surprised about how useful this exercise was as a User Testing activity and we have walked away with a long list of improvements to be made. I hope that this is an activity which we can develop further and repeat in order to both familiarize people with the use of Sahana Eden in the domain and improve its usability.The last two days of the camp took the shape of more informal open space. We had the opportunity to log and fix some of the issues coming out of the Simulation and have extensive discussion about ways to improve our usability. Hsiaojan Liu gave us a overview of the work being done with Sahana in Taiwan and facilitated an excellent session to evolve the look and layout of the Sahana Eden homepage. Praneeth brought up the amusing and intersting concept of “Culturally Appropriate Bling” for our design. We also had the chance to spend some quality time with some of the GSoC students helping them with their projects and I managed to convert some people to the wonders of Eclipse. Many exciting opportunities have come out of SahanaCamp. I will be meeting further with both IBM and IFRC to discuss further collaboration with Sahana and we will continue to work with the Sahana Taiwan team to collaborate with their deployment in Taiwan (IBM actually asked me to put together a wish list of things which their developers might be able to work on – suggestions welcome!). I feel that the greatest outcome from SahanaCamp was the relationships which have been built and strengthened over the past days as these are the threads which make up the community.SahanaCamp was certainly a community effort. Through AidIQ Fran, Dominic and I were able to support by bringing Fran along to share his intimate knowledge of the framework as well as by funding many of the meals and other expenses. Thanks to Abhishek and Praneeth for helping with our Taiwanese guests (and finding out about tea in the process!). Finally a special thank you to Shikhar Kohli for his on-the-ground logistical support, without whom SahanaCamp would not have been possible. We all hope that this SahanaCamp will be the first of many. We’ve all learnt a lot from the experience and I’m sure that the next time we hold such an event it can be even better. I’ve already discussed the idea of holding a virtual event and I’m also interested in the possibility of holding a SahanaCamp in South East Asia – Bangkok, Vietnam, Jakarta, etc. I also hope that next time we will be able to hold the event in a residential venue, so we can work, code, talk, eat and play together 24/7. However, this will require more funding, so such an event will need more time to organize. It would be great to hear from anyone who would be interested in being involved. I’m sure that you can expect numerous ideas coming from SahanaCamp to start appearing on the mailing list (I think that they already have!) and some new faces in the community. I’m looking forward to bringing some of the ideas and energy from SahanaCamp into our virtual spaces!