I have been working with the team here at Microsoft to help mobilise technical assistance and community/victim support in the event of disasters. With the floods going in here in the UK we are mobilising our resources right now. Please come down tomorrow Sunday 16 February and lend your assistance.
Shortlink to this page is :http://aka.ms/ukfloods
Invite and further details below:
Calling all developers! We have been hit by the worst flooding and weather the UK has seen in our lifetimes. Getting the right information to people about the problems affecting particular areas, and the right places to turn to help (or for information on how THEY can help volunteer) is crucial. The government has near real-time data on flooding levels and alerts, mapped out across the entire country, which they want to put to the best possible use.
Today we hosted a meeting at Number 10 and brought together leading technology companies, the Environment Agency, the Government Digital Service, the Open Data Institute and the Cabinet Office who are working to open up this data to the public, allowing developers to build innovative applications that can help those affected by the flooding.
This Sunday at 10am, we are inviting the community to join developers from Microsoft , GDS, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Conversocial, Datasift, Mother, Taskhub, Do It and many more for a hackathon, hosted by Tech City UK at Google Campus, where the Open Data Institute will share the flood level data with developers and be on hand to help throughout the day. The Cabinet Office will be choosing the most useful applications demoed on the day to be promoted to flood victims across the country.
Sign ups for the hackathon are through Eventbrite – http://floodhack.eventbrite.co.uk and more information can be found here and on the Tech City UK website.
#floodhack
Also in case you interested ive been using our social listening tool to keep track on the Floods:
Mark Margolis's Blog 