Twinkles: Looking forward to a bright future

New York City is beautiful in September. A slight crisp to the air and for thousands a new beginning, because after all it’s back to school time. Just like a new school year, you look back with a sense of all of your accomplishments and are excited to see what’s in store for the new school year. That’s how Noel, Andrew and I felt on Wednesday.

We were excited to present exciting accomplishments of the CrisisCamp movement to the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.  We talked about the very  first CrisisCamp, the extraordinary growth of the community during the Haiti earthquake response and on going efforts like last week’s 20 hour marathon effort to help respond to the Pakistan Floods. We advocated for the continued exploration of the significant value of volunteer technology communities and how a commons approach could help bridge understanding, capacity and capability between these communities and crisis response organizations.

We were really happy with our presentation, but more importantly with the dialogue with the Sloan Program Directors and Dr. Paul Joskow, President of the Sloan Foundation. We had a good feeling when we left. We had learned a lot. We felt that everyone in the room was just as excited as we were about the possibilities for the future. It reminded me of the day before we hosted our first CrisisCamp. We didn’t quite know what would happen, but we knew it was a good thing.

Less than two hours later Sloan Program Director Paula Olsiewski sent us an email sharing Sloan Foundation’s appreciation for the presentation and extended an invitation CrisisCommons to submit a 2-year Trustee proposal this fall. We received the news like any earnest startup, we were huddled together around the corner having a beverage and hoping for a call with good news. As soon as we saw the email we all cheered in unison! Literally we jumped out of our seats. High fives all around!

Quickly Noel began to tweet the great news out to everyone, Chiara our fantastic research associate was saying in Italian, “bravo!” We could hear the virtual applause and excitement from everyone online.  As our fearless, coolest facilitator of the First International CrisisCongress, Allen Gunner of Aspiration Tech would say, show your support with your hands by using a “twinkles” gesture. There were virtual twinkles lighting up the sky that night from all the well wishes. To say the least, we are thrilled and humbled to be able to represent all of our wishes and dreams on Wednesday. It was a great day for everyone.

Tonight we hosted a conference call to share all the experience with everyone and to answer questions and begin talking about our next steps. As we mentioned, Wednesday’s great news is the first step. We still need to write a proposal and submit it to the Sloan Foundation by December for their Trustee’s Meeting. This is where the Sloan Foundation makes the final decision to support the proposal. There is much more work still to be done, but as you can imagine, we all are elated that this, indeed, is a giant step forward. Like the presentation this week, the process will be open. You can view the notes from our presentation to the Sloan Foundation here and the PPT presentation. Here are notes from our conference call (9/9/10).

There are so many people to thank at this moment. First and foremost, we thank the believers. We thank everyone who came out, who stepped up to lead, who spent their weekend, their vacations and truly believed an idea can indeed change the world. CrisisCommons is about you. Its about the idea that people can come together to do great things. We are humbled that you came out. We are grateful for your leadership. We are delighted you stayed on board for the ride. You know, its only been 15 months since the very first CrisisCamp. Lives have been changed by your spirit and willingness to lead and contribute to the community. We thank all of you. The best is yet to come!

Andrew, Noel and I are committed to sharing what we are doing, thinking and helping shepherd everyone through this process. But again, there is still work to be done. Our first priority is to complete the current set of Sloan deliverables by October 15th, host the Global CrisisCamp Day on September 25th and support the effort to build “CrisisCamp in a Box” so we can share our knowledge and tools with others who want to join in the CrisisCamp movement and create a local CrisisCamp in their hometown.

We look forward to working constructively with everyone. We know that there will be great times ahead and but we do know there will be challenges. Just like any community, we are connected to each other because of what brings us together, but we know there might be bumps in the road or even situations where agreement may not be reached. We commit to sharing as much as we can throughout the coming weeks on this blog.

As everyone knows, Andrew, Noel and I have always had an open door policy. Our email addresses are pretty easy  if you need to get in touch. Our  first names at crisiscommons.org.

Here’s to the successes of the last 15 months and to a bright future ahead!

Cheers to everyone and twinkles times a thousand,

Heather B.

Photo Credits: Maggy Hohoruw