Digital Humanitarians - Talk from Patrick Meier on Friday 22 May 2015

We are pleased to invite you to a talk on ‘Digital Humanitarians’ by Patrick Meier. Patrick is an internationally recognized thought-leader on humanitarian technology and innovation and he will be speaking about the use of Big Data and social media during humanitarian crises.

See abstract for full details.

Date: Friday 22 May
Venue: ICOSS Conference Room, University of Sheffield
Time: 14:00-16:30 (talk: 14:00-15:30 with coffee and tea served afterwards)
Registration: This talk is open to all, but registration is required as places are limited to 55. Please add your name to this form to register.

This talk is hosted by the Visual Social Media Lab, the Digital Society Network and the Sheffield Institute for International Development.

We look forward to seeing you next Friday! If you have any questions, please contact Farida Vis: f.vis@sheffield.ac.uk

Digital Humanitarians - The information overflow that occurs in the wake of a disaster can paralyze humanitarian response efforts. Computers, mobile phones, social media, mainstream news, earth-based sensors, humanitarian drones, and orbiting satellites generate vast volumes of data during major disasters. Making sense of this flash flood of information, or "Big Data" is proving a perplexing challenge for traditional humanitarian organizations. Aid groups are more adept at dealing with information scarcity than overflow. To address this problem many organizations are turning to Digital Humanitarians: tech-savvy volunteers who craft and leverage ingenious crowdsourcing solutions with trail-blazing insights from artificial intelligence. This talk charts the rise of Digital Humanitarians and describes how their humanity coupled with innovative solutions to Big Data is changing humanitarian response forever.

Bio: Patrick Meier is an internationally recognized thought-leader on humanitarian technology and innovation. His new book "Digital Humanitarians" has already been endorsed by Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Oxford, UN, World Bank and the Red Cross. Patrick directs QCRI's Social Innovation Program where he develops "Next Generation Humanitarian Technologies" in partnership with international humanitarian organizations. He has a PhD from The Fletcher School, Pre-Doc from Stanford and an MA from Columbia. His work has appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, BBC, Forbes, Times, Wired and Mashable. Patrick's influential blog iRevolutions has received over 1.5 million hits. He tweets at @patrickmeier.