I have been aware of the existence of Crisis Camps and BarCamps for a while without really knowing what they were, through seeing frequent references to them on a couple of work colleagues’ twitterfeeds.  The other day I got round to asking one of those colleagues about the Crisis Camps and it is a real eye-opener.It turns out they have been working on open source mapping software, helping to make sure it covers all of Haiti so the relief operations there can use it, amongst other things.   It is admirable that people who spend all week working with computers or in meetings and presentations then spend their weekends coding, meeting and presenting,  One of my colleagues has been having meetings with the UN about how they can best help.

It all seems like a bit of a busman’s holiday but they do appear to enjoy it and from what I can see there are some very positive results.  All of the attention goes to people who fly out with supplies and get their hands dirty at disaster sites, but there is an increasing number of people making a valuable contribution at home in the evenings and at weekends.

The whole setup is very egalitarian and open source, with every bit of activity being blogged, tweeted, webcammed or put on a wiki and it looks like anybody can start their own event and plug into the CrisisCommons network.  My colleagues have been going to the London crisis camps, but anyone further afield can just start their own if one doesn’t exist.

For well-meaning techie types with time on their hands it might be a more productive use of spare time than writing snarky political blogs.