Saving the World One App at a Time
summary
Humanitarian Toolbox builds open source disaster apps and shows concrete results: crisis check-in is in virtual field trials coordinating hundreds of volunteers for site assessments, and Already manages smoke-detector campaigns with Twilio notifications that raise install success from ~20–30% to ~80%. Code sits on GitHub, runs on ASP.NET Core, uses Microsoft Philanthropies cloud, and has ~115 contributors and ~2,700 commits. Projects are volunteer-built, sponsor-guided, partly operating as “disaster response as a service” and still need further field validation.
AI-written summary · about
chapters (37)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:44Error Messages
- 1:33Software is eating the world
- 2:02Travel the world
- 2:28Katrina
- 3:00Animal Rescue
- 4:11Sustainable Software
- 5:54Open Source
- 6:45Autonomy
- 6:57Mastery
- 7:32Purpose
- 8:24Cloud
- 8:35Everyone has a computer
- 9:17Save lives
- 10:22Outcomes not outputs
- 12:30Vertically integrated
- 12:49Organizational challenge
- 13:13Crisis Checkin
- 13:33Virtual Field Trial
- 16:38Project Already
- 23:32Styling Challenges
- 24:02Running in the Cloud
- 25:02Flood Prevention
- 25:32Other Projects
- 26:02Disasters
- 26:32Work Item 4
- 27:02Community
- 27:32Project
- 28:02Longterm contributors
- 29:02Trust
- 29:32Charity
- 30:02Contributors
- 30:32Steve
- 31:02John Ski
- 31:32The Community
- 32:02Outcomes Not Output
- 32:32Outro
related talks
10mThe Role of Open Source in Mitigating Natural Disasters
17mFrom Swipes to Solutions: Exploring the Impact of MapSwipe on Humanitarian Response
58mDo What You Can with What You Have
12mThe O'Reilly Radar
32mThe World Needs Open-source Now More Than Ever
21mExploring OSPOs and Open Methods in Humanitarian Response
14mRescuing Kerala with Python
30mOpen source for good: COVID-19 Responses
