Brain dump by Ajay Kumar on June 23rd 2009
Sourceforge has announced the finalists for the SourceForge 2009 Community Choice Awards and Sahana has been selected as a finalist in the “Best Project for Government” category.
Two things:
1. Please go and Vote now for Sahana. Vote here!
2. Help spread the word out & get others to vote for Sahana! 
Brain dump by Mark Prutsalis on June 15th 2009
I had the opportunity to present Sahana to the CrisisCamp Ignite session on June 12, 2009. The presentation, with narration, can be found on my slideshare site. Download the entire powerpoint show rather than viewing it through slideshare to hear the voiceover.
About Crisis Camp: “CrisisCamp DC started with one idea: How can technology help people around the world during times and places of crisis? CrisisCamp DC is part of a global movement who is bringing together volunteers, academia, non-profits, companies and government officials to share best practices and lessons learned to advocate for further use of technology and telecommunications to assist citizens and communities during crisis.”
Sahana definitely has a large role to play in follow-up from Crisis Camp.
There are major opportunities and major object lessons for Sahana that came out of the weekend. The first is that there was a consensus that “Good tools do not require training; If you to train people on it, it’s not good enough.” Those interested in improving the user experience and front-end of Sahana take note; this should be a priority for post 1.0 development.
A second relates to the abundance of excellent new tools available - especially in GIS - and Sahana should not be competing with these systems, but integrating with them. Packaging Sahana with Open Street Map can provide a total downloadable open-source solution, but we should not abandon potential commercial partnerships – such as with ESRI, which offers a free viewer and sells a single server license for an affordable price for most organizations and jurisdictions. Also take a look at Ushahidi and FrontlineSMS.
A number of potential opportunities were discussed to exercise, test, simulate disasters to road test tools, and especially interoperability, including a “hack-i-stan” exercise for such a purpose to discover requirements and task developers to come up with solutions. Sahana should also be an active participant in such an endeavor.
You can follow Crisis Camp activities in a number of ways. Twitter: @crisiscamp or search hashtag #crisiscamp; a ning site and a wiki have already been set up for follow-up activities. Sign up and get involved.