Agenda & Notes February 2, 2010

Lessons Learned, Overview from Last Weekend's Camps

New York City / Brooklyn - contacts: Anna Curran annapembertoncurran@gmail.com @AnnaCurran, Ohad Folman @freelancersu @ohadfolman, @Kenold.
Toronto, Canada - January 30, 9am - 5pm - follow at @CrisisCampTO Register for the event - contact: @heatherleson, Heather Leson heatherleson (at) gmail.com
Chicago - Saturday 2010-01-30 Illinois Technology Association - Register @ Eventbrite - contact: crisiscampchi AT gmail.com Facebook @CrisisChicagoCHI, Deborah Shaddon dshaddon at) comcast.net
London - Saturday 30th Jan 2010 at the London Knowledge Lab. Details and Registration here. Join our Google Group here - contacts: @leashless@OBazaS, Alan McNeil Jackson alan (at) aptivate.org and Barry obazas (at) googlemail.com
User Experience Crisis Camp Support in Silicon Valley, January 30, 2010, hosted @ Hacker Dojo. Register
DC - Saturday 30th Jan 2010 at NPR. | Contacts @NoelDickover, heatherleeblanchard (at) gmail.com
Montreal - Lorraine Craig crisiscampmontreal (at) gmail.com
Calgary - Just starting this week. Looking for new projects to work on. Any ideas... | Contact: Darlene Parker: crisiscampcalgary at gmail dot com

Projects

Communication

Social network for CrisisCommons (Open source version - Elgg or Crabgrass, or Jive or Ning?)

Major Lessons Learned

Project Managers
- Project Managers should not be writing code, they should be coordinating. This is critical especially if multiple cities are (wanting to be) involved.
- There should be a one page description for the role, responsibilities, and expectations for project managers that is given to them when they sign up for it. Project Manager job description
- Project Managers need to be available during the week to discuss their project with City Coordinators
Cross-City Communications
- Central Dispatch: Each city needs a central dispatch person who is familiar with the projects being worked, AND who is on the IRC channel. All the cities should have a central dispatch person who can reach out to the others via IRC, and get in contact with who they need. This will in part mitigate the project managers not always being available to communicate.
Some of the project descriptions aren't clear, and appear to overlap with other projects. We need to clarify these, and perhaps have statements in each showing how they differ (or are similar) with like projects.
"Onboarding" process was smoothed by having "Social media coordinators" available to help people navigate and understand the wiki, IRC and the google groups