Maurreen Skowran wrote: > Hi. > A Sept. 9 article (http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/front/3347494) > that I just came across today said that the new Red Cross Web database for > Katrina survivors would not be searchable by the Web crawler at Yahoo > (http://news.yahoo.com/katrinahelp). Does anyone know any more about this? > > I've been biting back on this one, actually. They probably built whatever they built for security (perhaps influenced by the Department of Homeland Security),. That's OK. It has to be OK. It is what it is, and hopefully this makes it's way into the way things are done by organizations - whether they have corporate emblems, Red Crosses and Crescents, or flags.
I'll not ding Microsoft here. What I will say is that when you hire someone to install windows (no pun intended), you don't hire someone with black paint (or let some corporation volunteer it). So this was a mistake in judgement on the part of the Red Cross as far as I'm concerned. But because the focus was probably on security, they hired an organization noted for it's black paint. When there's so much technology coming from passionate and spirited people that cannot communicate and share with the de facto center of the expectations of the world when it comes to disasters... who do we blame? The internet and computers seem to have changed everything but the Red Cross... but the Red Cross, as an institution, deals with other entities which require levels of bureaucracy that lend themselves to searching only a limited scope of answers. It's not the fault of the Red Cross, either. They have to make changes, and I think that they know that. How they do that, and how long it takes, well... New Orleans wasn't built in a day. It certainly won't be rebuilt in one either. So everything is under a lot of strain, and because of that there's got to be a little restraint in hammering on this one; there's plenty of nails to go around in the wake of Katrina... we can use them to nail a few bodies up, or we can build something better. This is a learning experience for the Red Cross if they are paying attention, and it may be one for Microsoft if they are paying attention as well. Personally, I hope some blinders come off. The folks in the DigitalDivide community alone have put forward some great ideas and suggestions, and implemented some of them. Honestly, I'd like to hear these voices not only have a say but an effect on the way things are done in the future. It seems to me that if EDC got some funding for something like this, we wouldn't be losing valuable people like Cedar Pruitt. But funding doesn't come unless one signs up for the same bureaucracy and control which allows the existing systems to be the way that they are at present. To paraphrase Uncle Albert, we can't solve our problems at the same level of thinking that created them. And as someone else said, if you find yourself in a hole the first thing you should do is stop digging. > Also, a Wikipedia article has started on Katrina and technology, at > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina_and_technology. > > That's pretty cool. :-) -- Taran Rampersad Presently in: Georgetown, Guyana [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.knowprose.com http://www.easylum.net http://www.digitaldivide.net/profile/Taran "Criticize by creating." — Michelangelo _______________________________________________ DIGITALDIVIDE mailing list DIGITALDIVIDE@mailman.edc.org http://mailman.edc.org/mailman/listinfo/digitaldivide To unsubscribe, send a message to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the body of the message.
