Investing in the value between institutions and informal collectives for humanitarian relief
Channel: Paris Open Source Summit
Date: 23/10/2012

Exchanging business cards before the next disaster: Investing in the value between institutions and informal collectives for humanitarian relief.

Intervention by Heather Blanchard, masters candidate in Global Communications at The American University in Paris

Today we may think that the world is more connected than ever. While there are pathways for many of the 7 billion people in the world to be connected, we are likely connected to those who are like ourselves or have similar interests. During her keynote on the theme of "Humanitarian Free & Open Source Software", Heather Blanchard, a graduate student of global communications at the American University of Paris, will outline the gap between those within institutions such as governments, non-profits and companies and the increasing amount of informal collectives who cluster together in community projects, global movements or just communities of interest. Institutions and informal collectives keep colliding with each other during crisis events rather than creating long-term investment to build sustainable bridges of dialogue and collaboration.  Heather will focus her discussion to illustrate the rise of digital humanitarian informal collectives and how their actions illustrate gaps in service, challenge business models, create new influences in public policy and are beginning to shift the dialogue and collaboration between institutions and informal collectives within international and domestic crisis response systems.