By Molly Bull, Senior Communications Manager, Microsoft Disaster Response

The Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing is a gathering of women technologists, and first took place in 1994 with 500 attendees. Today – 20 years later – it celebrates a record 8,000 women and men in attendance.

Produced by the Anita Borg Institute and in partnership with the Association for Computing Machinery, the conference hosted its first male keynote speaker today, Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft, who was interviewed on stage by Maria Klawe, president of Harvey Mudd College.

Microsoft was also part of the Grace Hopper Open Source Day “Code-a-thon for Humanity” just yesterday where women technologists came together to put their skills to work for good.

The Microsoft Disaster Response program was one of seven humanitarian focused organizations sponsoring projects. Those who volunteered for Microsoft chose from three projects to work on throughout the day, all of which focused on how technology can support disaster preparedness and response.

Grace Hopper Open Source Day volunteers.

Here’s a glimpse into the three projects:

Crisis Check-in: During a large-scale natural disaster, people resources are often requested for deployment from outside of the impacted area. These can include: search & rescue teams, logistics experts, medical personnel and many other specialized individuals and groups. This can be difficult to track due to challenges in travel logistics and the sheer number of people from different areas that are called in to assist. To help response coordinators track these resources, an open source project was started as part of Humanitarian Toolbox to develop an application that allows people to check-in when they arrive in the impacted region.

Code-a-thon Results: Volunteers implemented bug fixes to improve functionality and user experience.

Humanitarian coders working on the Crisis Check-in app.

International Women’s Hackathon Jump Start: The increased scale and frequency of natural disasters has increased the number and variety of government, humanitarian, military and private sector organizations and individuals who mobilize to lend their assistance. While these resources are valuable, it also increases the complexity and importance of coordination and information sharing. DirectRelief has posed a challenge to develop a game that leverages historical event data & live multiplayer capabilities to train responders on their role in increasing collaboration, coordination and information-sharing across the response community. This challenge is a jumpstart on one of the projects that will be part of the International Women’s Hackathon which kicks off on October 11^th and continues through December 15^th.

Code-a-thon Results: Volunteers evaluated data, created concept designs and got started on architecture planning which will be shared with participants attending the International Women’s Hackathon this Saturday.

Rapid Technology Assessment Application: Natural disasters often disrupt or destroy technology infrastructure required for communications, which is critical to all facets of humanitarian response. To help responders understand where technology restoration or new deployment resources are most needed, communications technology experts from a variety of industries developed a series of digital forms to enable rapid technology assessments shareable across the response community.

Code-a-thon Results: Volunteers took learning from Typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan and developed design documentation and initial architecture that will be leveraged in future hackathons for Humanitarian Toolbox.

We recognize and thank all who participated in Grace Hopper Open Source Day. It was an honor to work with the many women who volunteered their time and contributed to open source projects that will have real-world impact. The innovation and passion in the room was inspiring and we look forward to seeing these projects continue to evolve to deployable solutions for humanitarian responders.

If you are attending the Grace Hopper Conference stop by the interactive Microsoft booth #515 and remember to sign up for the International Women’s Hackathon.

@msftresponse
www.microsoft.com/disasterresponse

By Molly Bull, Senior Communications Manager, Microsoft Disaster Response

September brought an abundance of online publications and posts, community events, and other activities focused on how you can prepare for a natural disaster.

Our own Harmony Mabrey just returned from running Cannon Beach’s Race the Wave 5k, capping off a great National Preparedness Month. The first-time event, which drew approximately 100 runners, took place at the Oregon Coast on September 28 to raise awareness of the danger posed by the Cascadia subduction zone (also known as the Cascadia fault) which runs from Vancouver Island to California. Fault activity can cause earthquakes significant enough to trigger a tsunami, so for those who live along the coastline, familiarity with evacuation routes and having a family preparedness plan in place is critical.

Tsunami evacuation route, Cannon Beach, OR. Tyler Whitaker and Harmony Mabrey of Microsoft ready for the run.

“The community is really engaged and they have come up with some innovative ways to prepare. Building awareness of evacuation routes through this run is just one example,” says Harmony Mabrey, Senior Operations Manager, Microsoft Disaster Response. “One of the neat things you realize is that you can use running and fitness tracking apps and other technologies that you use in your everyday life to practice evacuation routes for any type of hazard in your community. It’s a great way to develop muscle memory in case you ever need to remember what to do in a real emergency situation.”

Click the 7 second time lapse video above to see the tsunami evacuation route run by race participants.

The event was organized by local community members, the City of Cannon Beach, the Oregon Office of Emergency Management, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) Region X.

“It's inspiring to see local, state, and federal entities all coming together to collaborate and plan this activity,” says Mabrey. “These types of initiatives show the power of whole community participation in building preparedness and resiliency.”

Throughout the month of September, FEMA’s Ready.gov web site offered helpful preparedness information and through Twitter (@Readygov) focused on various themes each week including guidance for family and pet emergency plans, tips for teachers and students, place of employment prep, and even included Q&A and an emergency kit scavenger hunt. In addition to these great resources, we would like to take a look back over the last several weeks to revisit some of the dialogue from the #NatlPrep hashtag and call out some of our favorite tweets (in no particular order).

When you are planning remember, many of the technology tools you are familiar with and use every day can play an important role during an emergency to provide you with vital information and services. The key to taking advantage of them is to plan ahead so they are available and operational when you need them.

If you haven’t gotten started on your preparations yet, it is never too late – or too early – to begin planning. We hope that some of the information we’ve shared throughout National Preparedness Month has been useful. We have certainly learned a lot from the many people and organizations who have contributed and participated throughout the month.

@msftresponse

Grace Hopper: Open Source Day

Month in Review: National Preparedness Month