A Moment of Discovery and Awe

Angie and I are in Abu Dhabi for the Eye on Earth Summit. It has been a great conference so far, with a lot of discussion about greater access to environmental and social data for the conservation of the planet.

What just happened a few moments ago left me and Angie speechless. We were at the technology showcase area speaking with different people who had questions about Ushahidi, its tools and uses around the world. Three gentlemen walked up, introduced themselves and we started talking about crowd sourcing. I was about to ask where they came from; and reading from the business cards they shared, they were from Afghanistan.

As we talked a little more, they asked one question. Is there anyone using the platform in Afghanistan? We quickly started searching for this on our community website that lists Crowdmap deployments around the world, and recommended that he download the Ushahidi app on his mobile phone. This is because when he gets back to Afghanistan, he could fire up the app and get listings of deployments in his proximity. The deployment that came up in our search of the community site was this...