Self-Organizing Man

From Alan, via Hugh at gapingvoid.

Hugh,

I need your help. There is a problem with New Orleans. Reporting has been given over to the media, and they are talking about the looting, the shooting, the crime. It’s a great big show. It’s anarchy, it’s chaos. No information to be had.

But, in reality. There is A LOT of information to be had. It’s simply not presented in a way that is at all useful to the citizens of New Orleans. (emphasis mine).

There are land lines working, SMS messages are working on cell phones, people are running all sorts of information through the http://nola.com/forums/ .

That’s the problem. It scrolls off the screen and gets lost.

I gathered some of that information into a Wiki page. It was information about about Xavier University. A faculty member posted a list of trapped students. I formatted it and put it on a Wiki page.

Then people started to send me updates in e-mail. Someone thanked me for the page. So, I made point of gathering and formatting all the Xavier messages I could find onto the page.

The Xavier Wiki page became an unofficial web page, and kept it up until I couldn’t stay awake an longer, and sadly, went to sleep.

When I awoke, I found that the Xavier families, has simply kept the Wiki page going without me. I cleaned up the their markup, buth the information is there.

Now, I’m finding the page gets updated, nice and neat.

http://thinknola.com/wiki/index.php?title=Xavier

Wiki works.

Okay, cute. But this helped. Maybe only a tad, but tad more than nothing.

I wish I could create a page for every university, school, hospital, nursing home, apartment, etc. Gather photos off of Getty and AP and organize them by neighborhood. I wish I could key in more names from the myriad message boards into a real survivor directory like:

http://www.familymessages.org/index.php

The people in crisis don’t have time to fiddle with a new technology. But, we could help, by gathering and organizing this information for them. The journalists won’t do it. Someone has to.

Please, help me figure out how to get more people involved organizing all the loose information. There is a problem that we can help to solve from our keyboards. There really is.

Get a conversation going. It’s not about the software. It’s about getting the data organized. Giving people places to rally.

Alan

Make your way over to Alan’s wiki and lend a hand.  It is really easy, actually.  And frankly, will probably make us all feel better to at least being doing something of value to the survivors.

Jen at Transcending Gender provides information where you can donate to help orphaned and abandoned animals.  As a devoted cat lover, I feel my eyes well with tears everytime I see Mr. Jack, aka Jack E Poo.  Hearing stories about humans leaving their animals behind just wreck me.

Give as much as you can.  Even if it is only five cents.  The Red Cross needs your help, too.  Click on the button on the right to donate.  And for those naysayers, I don’t make any money at all, ever, of your click.

Sue over at Authentic Eccentric offers up more great links for donations, including groups that want to attend to the needs of the thousands of refugees pouring into Texas and a link to assisting LGBT survivors of Katrina.

Yours truly called my local chapter of the American Red Cross to volunteer for two week hardship stint in the Gulf Coast area.  I don’t know when I will be going just that I am going.