Haiti: communications in disaster areas.

Below is the video of I talk I gave recently at the Dublin Ignite event. If anyone is wondering why I speak so fast then look up the concept of Ignite events.

Team Rubicon: reflecting the motivation of so many others.

Time Rubicon is one of the great volunteer organisations that grew out of the 2010 Haiti earthquake and that have developed into organisations providing expert care & assistance. They are a clear example of how a grassroots approach can work better than the large lumbering NGO’s. In the following video they talk about their work [...]

“Checkins with a purpose”; using location based services in disaster response..

One of the factors that led to my involvement in the disaster response and rebuilding after the Haitian earthquake last year started many years before after the tsunami that hit the Indian Ocean in late 2004. At the time I was following the disaster recovery efforts closely and one of the things I noticed was [...]

Continental Airlines is an utter and complete failure.

It is a blessing that in general one only comes across a company that is a complete and utter failure in customer relations on a few rare occasions during one’s lifetime. Now seems to one of those moments for me. let me explain; last year I flew with Continental Airlines from Shannon (Ireland) to Fort [...]

Another disaster in the making

For some time now I have been saying that the current situation in Haiti could lead to a disaster of a a similar or even larger scale than the January 2010 earthquake. More than 6 months after the quake and with billions of dollars pledged in aid there are still over 1 million people living [...]

Failure is not an option….

I recently blogged about the criticism I was coming under from a small group of people related to my work with Haiti Connect a charity which I founded that is providing aid and assisting in the rebuilding efforts in Haiti. Initially the criticism focussed on whether or not our aid was needed and if Haiti [...]

Go West young man…

One of the “activities” that is taking up lots of my time for the last few months is fundraising for “Haiti Connect“. I try to create a buzz around the charities work in order to increase public awareness in the hope that this will lead to donations. I also “knock on doors” in a manner [...]

Paid advertising on Twitter (for charity).

After more than three years of using Twitter I am nearing my 50,000th tweet. This should be an opportunity to do something special and I have been working my grey matter for some time to come up with an idea. Now it would be an ideal moment to let someone else provide the content for [...]

Relief through digital media…

Shortly after the earthquake in Haiti I decided that it was my time to do something and try to help out in a way that went beyond the usual “effort” of donating some cash to a charity. Having a background in wireless (wifi) networking has had me thinking about the applications for wifi networks in [...]

Ask Willie….

Irish Minister of Defence Willie O’Dea, who has featured on my blog before, has recently been asked why the Irish army did not provide assistance during the floods in Ireland & if they would assist with releief efforts in Haiti. Both times he answered that they would have to be asked first. So I did [...]