Edward Vielmetti is inviting you to A2B3 lunch on Thursday at Eastern Accents in Ann Arbor, Michigan 48104

crisis informatics, or the study of community emergency response

The "crisis informatics" (Google search) term is new to me, but the research I've been able to find under that term is familiar.  Faced with an unexpected crisis situation that is bigger than what the mainstream media and existing government organizations can easily manage the news flow from, how do communities response in emergency situations with social media and with ad hoc emergency response systems?

Without going into lots of detail I do want to share one recent paper that caught my eye, via Leysia Palen: Backchannels on the Front Lines: Emergent Uses of Social Media in the 2007 Southern California Wildfires.

Opportunities for participation by members of the public are expanding the information arena of disaster.  Social media supports “backchannel” communications, allowing for wide-scale interaction that can be collectively resourceful, self-policing, and generative of information that is otherwise hard to obtain. Results from our study of information practices by members of the public during the October 2007 Southern California Wildfires suggest that community information resources and other backchannel communications activity enabled by social media are gaining prominence in the disaster arena, despite concern by officials about the legitimacy of information shared through such means. We argue that these emergent uses of social media are pre-cursors of broader future changes to the institutional and organizational arrangements of disaster response.

The term "crisis informatics" is credits to Christine Hagar (2006).  If you do a proper retrospective look at the phenomenon without that term, you unearth previous discussion of the use of the net for responses in the Kobe and Northridge earthquakes, hurricanes Katrina and Rita, and various power outages and ice storms.  A proper retrospective bibliography awaits someone else's project.

Wiki analytics: using the new Google Analytics tools to measure and improve a civic wiki

This is part of the Wiki Wednesday and coincidentally also part of the Web Analytics Wednesday series.

UPDATE: changed throughout, some spots still not filled in, I am promising some graphs; want to work in the RichmondWiki blog notes as well.

UPDATE2: analytics for wiki edit failure

Google Analytics has a bunch of new features.  Mediawiki, the code that runs Arborwiki, has Google Analytics installed and is tracking user behavior to help improve the quality and relevance of the content that's there.  Here's some applications of the new features.

1.  Segmentation by geography.

Arborwiki covers information about Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and the surrounding Washtenaw County area.  One reasonable segmentation of the readership and contributor base is to see how people from inside the area behave compared to people from outside the area.

...

(graph)

We'll break down usage for specific pages and see how they differ.  First, look at traffic coming from Wikipedia - how does it compare to everything else?

(graph)

Next, look at the most popular page, the "birthday deals" page, who is seeing that?

(graph)

A further refinement will look at how much birthday deal traffic is coming from surrounding suburbs, e.g. Oakland County. 

2.   Conversion tracking: who edits a page.

We have set up the idea that a page edit is a success criterion and a conversion goal.  More page edits, the better.  Please contribute.

There are at least two end states: a page is edited that didn't exist before, or a person edits a page (because they linked to something that wasn't there) and it was abandoned.  That's a failure condition and a sign that the wiki is incomplete in that specific area.  So we set up reports to look for pages where people are editing the page but it shows up as the exit page, which implies that someone left the page in mid-edit

The method:

• segment by page includes "action=edit"
• top content report (or perhaps
• show "exit rate"
• the higher the exit rate for edits, the more people bailed out; look to improve anything that's red?

(graph)

(report)

3.  ...

...

(quote from Avinash)
(quote from ...)

...

You can overthink a civic wiki; until there's a critical mass of content, report generation is not that much good.  So don't stare at your metrics until you have some idea that there's enough there to work from - a map of the holiday light shows (Richmond Wiki), the great places to go for a birthday dinner (Arborwiki), [your favorite civic wiki's favorite page].

----

More on this topic:

Web Analytics Wednesday meets worldwide: ...
Wiki Wednesday meets worldwide ...
Other civic wikis: RichmondWiki

Great Wall of Panera: what do corporate cafe wifi networks block?

Quite a few cafe networks have filters set up to block various kinds of use.  My usual failure modes with these are that they mark perfectly reasonable internet services as inappropriate.

Here's a litany of Panera complaints, to give you a feel for it.

Tinotopia was blocked for a while, which got the author riled up enough to document some of the failures.  No entries since April 2005:

In this case, Tino of all people is the loser: for he has once again been suckered into coming into Panera only to find that the network is kaput. The network here is now well and truly down more than it’s up, at least when I’m here. It’s even more kaput than usual today, too.

TinyURL.com is blocked by Panera Bread, notes Technology Evangelist :

I can understand Panera choosing to block porn sites, since it could be disturbing for customers to glance over to see a neighboring table watching porn while they're trying to enjoy some bread bowl chowder.

But why is TinyURL.com banned? Why not just block inappropriate sites that people may be trying to access after being redirected from TinyURL.com?

BookOfJoe documents the Panera Blocked Site Hack:

I remarked Saturday on the fact that I couldn't access bookofjoe on my local Panera's WiFi because it was blocked.

Reader Benjamin Tung of the great state of Michigan confirmed shortly thereafter that the Italian–American corporate version of the Chinese firewall is up and functioning in a similar fashion at his local branch of the sandwich/bakery chain.

Benjamin wrote, "Don't make me choose between the cinnamon raisin bread and reading your blog."

The solution is as simple as it is perfect, and should work nearly anywhere.

http://www.google.com/translate?langpair=en|en&u=http://www.bookofjoe.com/

translates bookofjoe.com from english to english via $GOOG.  hey presto.  Replace the URL as needed, and bonus points for the next step of turning this into Greasemonkey or your favorite bookmark tool.

Interview with Dave Sommerness, GovDelivery COO

The City of Ann Arbor has started an email-based delivery service for changes and updates to the city's web site run by GovDelivery.  I contacted Dave Sommerness, a University of Michigan graduate and their COO, to find out more.

How did your organization get started, and who was your first customer?

GovDelivery, Inc. was started in 1999 by our two co-founders, CEO Scott Burns and EVP of Sales Zach Stabenow.  We developed the GovDelivery Digital Subscription Management system in 2000 in collaboration with the City of St. Paul, who had a need for reliable communication with its residents.  We found this need to be pervasive across public sector organizations, and it's taken off quite well from there.

Government web sites are built with all kinds of technologies.  How do you manage the process so that it all looks the same to the user?

We integrate with client sites by simple links on their web pages.  The effect is seamless because we customize our web and email templates to match the look-and-feel of each client.  Behind the scenes GovDelivery is deployed as a multi-tenant, SaaS system, so Ann Arbor is using the same basic application as our other clients.

The service I signed up for was an email based one.  What are your plans for looking at web 2.0 technologies for notification, e.g. using something like Twitter to do messaging?

We're always looking forward to new technologies and applications to our system/market.  A couple years ago we added RSS capability, so our clients can publish their messages as RSS feeds in addition to sending them out through email.  We've seen a lot of excitement in our market over Web 2.0 technologies, so we're developing functionality to take advantage of that and promote more options for communication and collaboration between government and citizens.  A few examples of Web
2.0 notification that we already support include automatically posting messages to blogs, updating a Facebook page, and using public RSS feeds to publish bulletins to widgets.

Do you work with libraries as part of your business, and if so, can you share some good stories from those implementations?

The majority of our experience has been with government bodies - from small cities and counties up to the largest federal departments - and transit authorities, though we have some experience with education,
non-profits, and other organizations.  We work with a number of libraries, mainly through city accounts, but the most notable stand-alone library account is the Library of Congress.

What makes St. Paul a good place to run this business from, and not Silicon Valley or Washington, DC?

Good business is about good people, and there's a great pool of talent in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area. We're one of the fastest growing software companies in the area, which attracts talented people and helps us to retain and keep them challenged.  We don't have the issues that Silicon Valley has where folks are more apt to jump to the next flavor of the day.  Because of the density of clients in D.C., we do maintain a sales office and staff there, which we plan to grow as the business does.

Who do you root for when Michigan plays Minnesota?

I grew up a Bulldog hockey fan in Duluth - the Gophers were big rivals, so it's been tough for me to become a fan of any of their teams.  The real dilemma for me would be if Michigan ever played UMD in hockey.

--

Thanks Dave!

November 8, 2008: Podcamp Michigan

Now you know just about as much as I know.

Web site: Podcamp Michigan
Twitter feed: Podcamp Michigan

140 characters or less: Saturday, Nov 8, Free Unconference for bloggers, podcasters, and all fans of new media.

Venue: November 8th , 2008, 9-4 at Embassy Suites Hotel, 28100 Franklin Road, Southfield, MI
Hotel phone: (248) 350-7007

Michigan Football Parking 2008 map

These are projected, estimated, possible, or likely prices for Michigan football parking for 2008.  It's based on the dataset I collected from the 2007 football season, which as you might recall had an unfortunate start (which definitely impacted prices).

View Larger Map

It needs better icons so you don't have to decode the color chart.  Typically prices can vary $5 from week to week depending on the game, and if all goes well it will rain on a Thursday so that the golf course is closed and thus neighborhood parking is at a premium.

beer, barbeque, urban alienation and intranets

some interesting research from Marcus Foth in Australia about community networking; any paper that cites " Intranets and Local Community: 'Yes, an intranet is all very well, but do we still get free beer and a barbeque?' " is OK by me.

Participation, Animation, Design: The PAD Approach to Urban Community Networking

Foth, Marcus (2007) Participation, Animation, Design: The PAD Approach to Urban Community Networking. AI & Society.

This is the latest version of this eprint.

Full text available as:
PDF (author-version) - Requires Adobe Acrobat Reader or other PDF viewer.

Abstract

Theories of networked individualism and forms of urban alienation challenge the continued purpose and relevance of conventional community tools in urban neighbourhood. However, the majority of urban residents surveyed in this research still believe that there are people living in their immediate neighbourhood who may share their interests or who are at least personally compatible, but they do not know them. Web-based community networking systems have the potential to facilitate intra-neighbourhood interaction and support community building efforts. Community networking studies have shown that technical connectivity alone does not ensure community, and that new and weak communities do not benefit from community networking systems as much as existing and strong communities do. This paper builds on these findings to present a methodology combining principles of Participation, Animation and Design (PAD). It is currently being employed and tested in a master-planned inner-city residential development. PAD builds on intrinsic motivation in residents to find out about and meet one another in a private and inobtrusive way. It encourages residents to take social ownership of the community building process and the community network. PAD recognises the network qualities in the communicative ecology of urban residents and supplements collective approaches towards community building with personalised networking strategies.

DTE power outage mobile phone reporting interface

DTE Energy, the power provider for SE Michigan, now has a mobile web based trouble reporting interface:

Now you can report power outages on line using a mobile device.

Just go to mobile.dteenergy.com with your web-based cell phone or PDA. In moments you can report an outage or get a repair estimate on a previously reported outage.

This is reporting only, not mapping, and the mobile interface has the most pessimistic assumptions about mobile phone capacity. If you have a cell phone capable of displaying a PDF file, you can get the DTE power outage map directly. Oddly, the mobile phone interface does not include a regular phone number (1-800-477-4747) on it if you happen to have a problem with the web site.

There were quite a few problems with incoming phone calls to that phone number in the past few days; they were attributed to problems they were working on with the help of Verizon.

Mike Wendland from the Free Press has been without power for a week, and relates this trouble report:

In my area of Oakland Township, said James, there were still six downed wires that needed to be fixed, a blown transformer, problems with an underground connection and still unknown issues at a nearby substation. He said crews were working 24 hours a day but there was still much to be done.

There are plenty of comments on his post regarding the untrustworthiness of DTE estimated time to repair numbers that are being given out, and unwillingness to believe the counts of houses without power:

We've been in a hotel for 3 nights, but...late yesterday, I got my hopes up. Our status was 'power restored'!!! My husband went to the house today at noon, and no...no power, and it hadn't been on in the neighborhood at all. I have to believe they're just closing some work tickets to make things look better, then reopening them when the get the 2nd, or 3rd or 4th call. This has happened to several people I work with as well. One got through to a warm body at DTE and they said "You don't have power? We show you do!!!" That whole neighborhood was and is "down".

More bad weather expected Friday, of course it's too soon to know if this will trigger more outages.

Marquette Mining Journal removes reader comments from newspaper web site

The Marquette Mining Journal recently ran this editorial regarding taking interactive comments off of the internet version of their newspaper, reading in part:

The comments were posted, without prior screening, in order to make it as easy as possible for Journal readers to submit their input directly. Unfortunately, a handful of participants abused the system. While most comments were astute and relevant, some relentless individuals decided to turn the comments section into a chat room that ventured, frankly, into the realm of inappropriate, sophomoric idiocy.

The roots of The Mining Journal’s editorial ethical standards go back some 163 years. In order for a letter to the editor to be considered for publication in our print edition, a name and other verifiable information must be included. Not so, however, with the Internet comments. Subsequently, on our Web site a small but persistent group of people threatened to tarnish The Mining Journal’s reputation for responsible journalism. A few Web comment submissions even consisted of cowardly anonymous personal attacks on local citizens. That could not be allowed to continue.

The New Orleans online newspaper, nola.com, also has unmoderated comments. Alan Gutierrez notes what this does to the discussion, quoting Mayor Ray Nagin:

Your news cast and the local newspapers are feeding these awful, ugly talk shows, that are feeding these blogs. You go look at these some of these blogs out there and some of the stories that come from the paper and you read the comments, it’s the most vile angry people that I’ve ever seen in this community.

Alan notes:

This is a common misconception in New Orleans, that the bloggers are the rabble. The city newspaper’s website, NOLA.com, is entirely unmoderated. NOLA.com calls these free-for-alls blogs.

Newspapers always run letters to the editor after verifying the identity of the writer. Should online newspapers be any different?

Snow Day - Billy Collins

As always, we will be tuning in to see if the Ann Arbor schools are closed tomorrow; it's bitterly cold, there are wind chill warnings, and a few area schools have already cancelled. AAPS snow day phone 734-994-8684 - WWJ SE Michigan snow day page - WZZM Grand Rapids MI school closings - WSYM Lansing MI school closings - WLUC Marquette MI / Upper Peninsula school closings

SNOW DAY by Billy Collins

Originally from The Atlantic, February 2000

Hear Billy Collins read this poem (in RealAudio).

Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows

the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.

In a while I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch,
sending a cold shower down on us both.

But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news

that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed,
the All Aboard Children's School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with -- some will be delighted to hear --

the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School,
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and -- clap your hands -- the Peanuts Play School.

So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.

And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.

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