Guest blog post by Sean Bonner, Co-founder & Director of Safecast, and Associate Professor at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan ( adapted from original safecast map launch announcement )

Guest blog post by Pablo Ruiz-Muzquiz, FrenaLaCurva Maps Technical Coordinator on how they're using Ushahidi to help spanish speakers connect to critical resources during Covid 19 lockdowns

In response to the growing need for platforms like ours to surface additional information and support coordination efforts, we want to do our part in making Ushahidi accessible to those who need it.

As a result, for the next 90 days, starting March 18th 2020, we will be waiving full fees for the Ushahidi basic plan, allowing all users to access the full feature set of the platform

Ushahidi is currently building a new public technology product called Dispatcher, which helps communities build resilience through peer-to-peer engagement and machine learning. Dispatcher builds upon our deep experience in crisis response, and is the next chapter of Ushahidi’s mission to understand and improve how communities come together and help each other, both in times of crisis as well as during everyday life.

In order to best design a product that is responsive and thoughtful to the needs of our user base, we will be hosting a community research study at iHub in Nairobi on 1 March 2019, from 08.30am until 18.00pm. We are opening this event up to the public for participation, and would like to invite anyone who is interested to sign up for a 20-minute time slot to chat with us and answer a few questions about your community involvement.

We sent out the Ushahidi Open Source Survey 2018, to get a better understanding of who our open source user and contributors are, their experience using and contributing to our tools, and what we can do to improve your experience.

We sent out our survey on 4th October 2018, with an initial deadline for feedback of 19th October 2018. In a bid to garner more feedback, we extended the period to November 9th 2018. However, even with the extension, the feedback turn out was still lower than expected. Nonetheless, those who participated in the survey shared some useful insights that will feed into our open source strategy moving forward.