Breakout: Collaboration Environments for Emergency Response and Solution

Facilitator: Steven Rosenberg

Scribe: Jitendra Kavathekar

Rapporteur: Estelle Dodson

Description

This session will focus on two important issues:

1. How can new collaboration technologies & approaches improve preparation and response to disasters? 
2. How will various collaboration technologies and approaches help improve coordination between members of the DMI family to collaboratively produce and share results?
   

There are many new collaboration technologies and communications channels available. These include such things as mobile (smart) phones, messaging (email, SMS, twitter), social networking (Facebook, LinkedIn, Gist), information sharing (websites, wikis, maps), GIS and mashups, mobile machine translation, crowd sourcing and even multiplayer games (MMOG). How will these affect collaboration environments for emergency response and solution development?

What additional collaboration tools would be useful? What are the advantages and disadvantages to Google Earth and World Wind and similar applications? What is the role of Hyperwalls and similar technology?

What collaboration problem would you would like to solve? What collaboration tools would help with your collaboration problem? What features of your collaboration problem are not supported (or supported poorly) by existing collaboration tools?

How will various collaboration technologies and approaches help improve coordination between members of the DMI family to collaboratively produce and share results? Could we use traditional version management tools such as subversion, communication via email, IM, wiki, website, open source approaches, reuse libraries, etc.? Should we try more innovative but risky approaches and "eat our own dogfood" using new collaboration technologies that we create? What are best choices to use with our diverse group that would enable the most effective work?

• http://www.cmu.edu/silicon-valley/dmi/workshop/overseer_luqman_griss_2009.pdf
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_globe
• http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2010/classes-haiti-0305.html
• http://eweek.stanford.edu/2010/0226c.html