BuzzMachine

Tom Evslin blogs from an Aspen Institute meeting about media, disasters, and better planning. I was supposed to be there but got swamped and besides, my real contribution was getting Tom, Jon Donley of Nola.com, and Brian Oberkirch there. Important work.

Tom Evslin and Jeff Pulver, two gods of the VOIP industry, has filed a formal petition with the FCC — needing your comments and support — asking that “all phone companies who are currently required to provide E911 service also be required to make voicemail and call-forwarding available to ALL their customers any time those customers phones are inoperable or unusable (as in an evacuation) for more than twelve hours.” The problem post-Katrina was that people couldn’t use their phones or phone numbers, thus people couldn’t get in touch with them. Go here for instructions on how to comment.

The Times asks whether corporations are ready for a pandemic. I’ve been asking myself the same question about schools, local government, telecommunications, technologists, local retail, and the rest of life.

The internet provides entirely new means of keeping life going even if we have to quarantine ourselves like Charlton Heston in Soylent Green. A few possibilities and questions:

* Schools should be ready to teach students remotely. I have no idea whether my district has a plan; I doubt it does. The last thing we want is children put at risk and putting communities at risk with their tendancy to spread germs. The next-to-last thing we want is for their education to stop. So they should be able to receive schooling thanks to technology. At best, this is via computers and the internet (insert “digital divide” PC screed here). At a minimum, this is via phones and conference calls.

* Cable companies, telephone companies, and power companies should make passing every home with bandwidth a priority, a matter of national security. They should be doing that for business anyway. If they don’t, then why not nationalize them before they implode on their own? And where do we stand with technology to enable large-scale wireless networks?

This, by the way, is FON’s opportunity to take off and do good. (And, no, I’m not on their advisory board.)

* These same telecommunications ventures need to provide easy and cheap or free means of running conference calls for schools and businesses.

This is Skype’s opportunity to rescue the economies of stricken regions. If I were Skype, I’d announce today that the company will provide free, large-scale conference calls for all schools.

* PBS, NPR, and commercial broadcasters should be prepared to air classroom instruction and educators should be prepared to give it.

* Every office needs a plan for running the business across distributed, distance networks. And if, God forbid, they have to do this, I’ll predict that this will become the new way to do business overnight. It will save rent.

* Every local retailer, especially supermarkets, should have plans for online and phone ordering and for delivery to homes, without face-to-face contact.

* Similarly, if I had a restaurant and a prayer of survival, I’d pull a deliver-and-run strategy out my hat.

* I’d sell Starbucks stock. Which makes me wonder whether some stock analysts have bird-flu pandemic strategies already mapped out. The sad thing is, they’re probably the best prepared.

What else should we be doing to use the internet to prepare for a pandemic (or another natural disaster or another terrorist attack)?

Tom Evslin writes to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin to ask the FCC to urge him to make this happen in the event of a disaster:

Stuart Henshall at Skype Journal had a brilliant idea for making these people reachable: have their drowned numbers terminate in voice mail. Those looking for family members generally know their phone numbers. Numbers are much more precise than names in the chaos of a disaster. There is no longer any technical reason why a NUMBER has to stay associated with a physical LINE when the line is inoperable.

KRON TV writes up Recovery 2.0.

About 45 good people came to our Recovery 2.0 meeting in San Francisco, called there by nothing more than a few blog posts and a desire to find ways to improve the internet’s response to the next disaster. I didn’t know what, if anything, we could accomplish in an hour and a half. At best, I hoped for a simple list of simple starting points and that’s what we got:

* We need a place online to gather and share information, needs, and solutions. That could be the Recovery2.0rg wiki — and the recovery2 tag.

* We need to work on standards and APIs for the tools and data bases people create to help in disasters. The peoplefinder standard is already underway and some of the folks from Yahoo at the meeting — who had experience on the ground in Houston and also at the Red Cross network operations center — are working on improvements. At a minimum, we need to do a better job harnessing the internet to help people find each other.

* We need to meet face-to-face with government, NGOs, and business to offer help and coordinate. There is a meeting in Washington on Oct. 17 about just that. Folks from this meeting will be there. Details on the wiki.

The meeting began with introductions, during which I stood there in awe of the internet and its ability to bring together such a group. Brian Oberkirch, who’d just started a weblog business, fled his home in Slidell and, sitting in Dallas, was desperate for news so he started his blog to bring the news to him and his community. He wanted us to make sure we don’t think this disaster is over as we try to prepare for the next one. One man started one of the first missing boards and when he was overloaded and Yahoo contacted him to serve it. The Yahoo people were there and so were people from Google. One man works in the Bay Area — which he called God’s theme park for natural disasters — to prepare for rescuing special-needs people in a disaster. Others came from charities that help in disasters. I finally got to meet Evelyn Rodriguez, the marketing blogger who happened to survive the tsunami and shared her experience so compellingly on her blog. I was glad that former FCC Chairman Michael Powell came (and, no, I didn’t make Howard Stern jokes, to answer the question some of you already asked) and talked about lessons learned reestablishing communications after 9/11. Scott Anderson, a Tribune Company online exec and blogger, said he wants to make sure that media companies are prepared as well (and learn from the amazing experiences of Nola.com, WWL, and WDSU in New Orleans); he plans to get this added to the Online News Association’s agenda and I’ll join in there. And on and on.

Then we spent some time listing key needs and characteristics of recovery 2.0: how we need to be even more concerned about preparedness than recovery; how systems need to be open; how we need to find ways to connect to the unconnected (e.g., the Skype virtual phone room idea); how it needs to connect with authorities; other characteristics: searchable, fluid, matchable, swarmable, transparent, trustworthy, discoverable, accountable, tested… and more. We ended up with many words describing what it needs to be.

But, of course, there is no “it.” There is no one system or authority or organization. This is the distributed internet, where people’s best efforts will pop up everywhere. The real goal is, as I described here, to get us to communicate and swarm better around needs, around the best replies, and around making the best better.

Thanks again to John Battelle and company for providing the space at Web 2.0. And thanks to Greg Burton for creating and managing the wiki and to Ross Mayfield for contributing it. And thanks to everyone who came — passing up the siren calls of Web 2.0 cocktail parties — and who blogged about it.

I took part in a wonderful meeting last night on Recovery 2.0. I’ll write about it later. Ed Batista is writing about it now.

: Craig Newmark also blogged it. So is Marnie Webb.

Josh Hallett predicts version inflation for the internet:

Web 2.0 is a popular topic, but how soon before somebody starts to talk about Web 2.1 or even Web 3.0? Who will be the first to say, ‘Our product draws on the social networking capabilities of Web 3.0′ We always talk about ‘internet time’ being so fast, yet it’s taken us 10 years to get to Web 2.0. A quick Google search shows:

Web 2.0 - 9,230,000 results
Web 2.1 - 19,700
Web 3.0 - 38,300
Web 4.0 - 16,100

I’m practicing version deflation. On the first night of Web 2.0, I’m going to Web 1.0, where we’re all supposed to wear new-media-blue shirts and Gap khakis and argue over how to say gif. “Whenever you say “monetize,” “font face,” or any of a variety of secret 1998 words, everyone drinks.”

: LATER: And there really is a web 2.1 and I’ve registered.

[via Winer]

: And since we’re having fun with numbers, I hope many come to Recovery 2.0 (see our fancy new wiki for details); no need to sign up for or pay for anything…..

: LATER: Rick Segal says enough with this 2.0 thing!

I have no idea what we should accomplish at the Recovery 2.0 meeting in San Francisco (which is on for 6p in the Olympic Room of the Argent Hotel, 50 3rd St. in San Francisco).

The starting point is simple: I thought it would be a good idea to use this opportunity to get into a room some of the people who want to find ways that the internet can be better at responding to needs in the next disaster, and in the recovery from recent disasters. What comes out of this, if anything, is up to everyone in the room. I’ll suggest a starting point and will, as Craig says, get out of the way. I will be the least qualified person in the room to lead anything; I’ll be eager too follow. We’ll get this on the wiki and I urge you to correct, add, delete.

The cause: What made me write my first Recovery 2.0 post was seeing a confusing though good-intentioned array of more than 50 boards and means to find the missing. We need to do better.

Two goals: We need to be better at swarming. That is, when we see a need, perhaps the best thing to do is to see whether someone is trying to meet that need and whether they’re doing it well. If so, perhaps the best thing to do is point people to that effort with the power of our links. If not, the choices are to offer to help or to do better. The distributed nature of the internet is its greatest strength but so is our ability to swarm and pool our efforts.

Thus we also need to be better at communicating. We need a means or a place to better share needs, solutions, resources, and calls and offers of help.

A review: Tom Evslin suggested that we should do some self-criticism of the internet’s response to recent disasters: What should and can we do better?

Needs: We need a place to communicate. Is a Recovery2.org wiki enough? Do we need a blog and a forum?

David Weinberger suggests that we need tags or a microformat so the things people do in our distributed places can be discovered.

What else?

Field day: Jeff Pulver is suggesting that the web, like ham radio operators, hold a field day to test what it can do.

Meeting: Yes? No?

Names: Who’s doing what?

We’ll be together just an hour or two. Nothing will be accomplished. Much should be started.

PLUS:
I would love to have a volunteer at the meeting act as wikimaster to record ideas and issues. Thanks to Ross Mayfield at Socialtext and the great work of Greg Burton, we’ll soon have a new wiki at Recovery2.org.

I was just told that Web 2.0 is switching the Recovery 2.0 meeting to 8p on Thursday, Oct. 6 so as not to conflict with an AT&T party (yes, one wonders what they have to party about). The problem with this is that I already had been warned that many or most participants in Recovery 2.0 had dinners planned that night. So 8p won’t work. Thus I need your help: Can anyone volunteer space near the meeting hotel (a large office… the Apple store… a church….) for an hour or two? Email or comment if you can help. Thanks much.

UPDATE: The good folks at Web 2.0 moved a mountain and we’re back on at 6p in the Olympic Room of the conference hotel.

I am amazed, though that only five minutes after posting this, I had four offers for space for the meeting near the hotel in San Francisco. This web this never ceases to amaze. Thank you all very much for you help.

We need to put our country’s best brains and experience to the question of what to do with New Orleans.

We should see a cooperative effort — or perhaps a competition — among the country’s best urban studies programs, architecture schools, economics departments, MBA programs, engineering and environmental programs and their counterparts in industry, with a few (the few) competent politicians thrown in (read: Rudy).

This is not as simple as pumping out, digging up, and moving back in, of course. There are complex engineering and enviromental issues: Can this city be made safe from the water and the pollutants that took it over and at what cost? There are blunt economic questions that must be asked: How many people can this place support when it had no industry aside from tourism before the storm and when residents will stay away in droves after the storm? There are social issues we’ve not begun to grapple with: How can we improve the prospects of minorities trapped in the poverty, crime, and injustice that took over this city? What is appropriate public spending and what is merely the product of cynical political ass-covering? How do we make sure that money reaches its goals? What is the appropriate and fair public policy for this and future disasters? What is a new vision for the city?

This could start at a grandiose level: a foundation brings together the best and brightest.

Or this could start at our level: someone starts a weblog or a wiki with an idea and a challenge to share better ideas. Big thinking can come from small starts, from anyone anywhere.

And we need big thinking that is unafraid to ask the hard questions and come up with imaginative answers. Perhaps New Orleans should be a new planned community. Or it should be all but abandoned and its residents helped with relocation elsewhere. Or it should finally go all the way and become the Vegas of the South with entertainment, food, gambling, and conventions at its core. Or turned into an economic development zone that creates opportunities where so few existed. Or what?

Recovering from Katrina needs more than water bottles and helicopters and buses. It needs strategy, imagination, the intelligent use of capital, real and political. We can’t leave this to the governments that made such a mess of the city — at every level, yes, every level. We need to need to help our fellow citizens in New Orleans find a better future. For tomorrow, it could be our town.

: This is about the positive: building the appropriate future. But it also about preventing the negative: corruption, patronage, pork. Glenn Reynolds spotted this scathing criticism of Louisiana’s pols in today’s Post:

The state’s representatives have come up with a request for $250 billion in federal reconstruction funds for Louisiana alone — more than $50,000 per person in the state. This money would come on top of payouts from businesses, national charities and insurers. And it would come on top of the $62.3 billion that Congress has already appropriated for emergency relief.

Like looters who seize six televisions when their homes have room for only two, the Louisiana legislators are out to grab more federal cash than they could possibly spend usefully. For example, their bill demands $7 billion for rebuilding evacuation and energy supply routes, but it also demands a separate $5 billion for road building and makes no mention of the $3.1 billion already awarded to the state in the recent transportation legislation. …

The Louisiana delegation has apparently devoted little thought to the root causes of the Hurricane Katrina disaster. New Orleans was flooded not because the Army Corps of Engineers had insufficient money to build flood protections, but because its money was allocated by a system of political patronage. The smart response would be to insist that, in the future, no Corps money be wasted on unworthy projects, but the Louisiana bill instead creates a mechanism by which cost-benefit analysis can be avoided….

…Congress should ignore the Louisiana bill and force itself to think seriously about the sort of reconstruction that makes sense. Katrina has exposed mistakes of policy: water-infrastructure programs that made flooding more likely, and levees and insurance schemes that encouraged human settlement in dangerous places. Now that Congress is getting ready to spend tens of billions on reconstruction, it must seize the opportunity to correct those past errors.

Do we trust Congress more than the legislators of Louisiana? Barely, perhaps. Mark Tapscott urged that the entire process of reconstruction be thick with FOIAs. He’s right. We have to watch these people.

: Note that I’m not saying I have any experience to contribute to reimagining New Orleans or accounting for the money; I’m just a gadfly journalist. But I know there are brilliant people in this country who can set the agenda that government does not have. I’m eager to see them help.

: Note also that I’ll be posting what I hope is a simple agenda for next month’s Recovery 2.0 meeting. I hadn’t intended to raise anything so grandiose as this but who knows what people will want to bring in.

Out of all the good efforts to use the internet to help Katrina’s victims, I’ve been thinking about the ethic of the swarm.

One thing the internet does well is bring people together around shared interests, needs, functions, and lines of communication. We swarm around standards and make them standard. We swarm around tags on Flickr or Del.icio.us so we can find each other’s stuff. We swarm around applications — BitTorrent, IMs of various flavors, and so on — so we can all use them together. We swarm around news and decide what matters.

And when people don’t respect the swarm, others will bring them in line: If you go into a support forum and ask a question that’s in the FAQ, you’ll quickly be directed there because other people had the same question and we all shasre the answer.

The swarm is useful. It’s efficient. It’s good citizenship.

So I wonder whether we should discuss the swarm ethic in relation to recovery 2.0 efforts. Try this:

If you see a need, first look to see whether someone else is already trying to meet that need and doing it well. Then you have a three choices:
1. You can decide that incumbent efforts are lacking in some way that you can fix and you do so.
2. Or you can decide to throw your support — your work, your promotion, your links — behind that effort.
3. Or you can decide to work separately but around shared standards to allow you to work together.
And in any case, it would be a courtesy to communicate with the incumbent.

In the case of the missing boards after Katrina, it was quickly obvious that people could miss connections because there were so many separate repositories of names. One option is to swarm around just one, but I’m not saying that’s what should happen; that’s the 1.0 way to work, it’s antithetical to the distributed nature of the internet and to people’s inclination to gather around their own communities (some people will look for each other around their churches, for example).

That’s why we have efforts to compile the names in one place (the Katrina peoplefinder project), to search the names across where they are (see Yahoo’s search), and to create standards for tagging the names (the people finder interchange format).

These are efforts to help us swarm. Swarming is the way we capture not just the wisdom but also the work of the crowd.

This is one of the things I hope we discuss at the Recovery 2.0 meeting in San Francisco. I think all we really want to accomplish is to provide ways — wikis, email, blogs, you tell me — for people to more readily communicate their needs and solutions. We need help swarming.