Are you preparing for a summer internship (or new job!) in an exotic locale like Caracas, Cape Town, or Cleveland, and wondering if any other SIPA students or alumni will be around? Are you looking for connections in a certain field and want to see which of your classmates is making those connections right now? Are you a program administrator who wants to see where all of his/her students are headed this summer? Well with the help of Crowdmap, you can find out!
We have created a map to see where SIPA students and alumni will be during the months of May, June, July, and August. But in order to be useful, this map, like all crowd-sourcing efforts, requires your help! So check out the map at https://sipasummer2012.crowdmap.com/, and upload information on where you will be and what you will be doing this summer. Simply click on “Submit a Report” and follow these guidelines:
1) Report Title: This serves as a brief “title” to your summer plans, and should include the type of work and the location.
2) Description: Use this section to elaborate about your internship/job/travel. You can include as many details as you like, but it would be useful if you included: What you will be doing; Who you will be working with; Where you will be; When you will be there… etc.
3) Date & Time: If you like, you can change the date to your internship/work start date
4) Categories: Select as many categories as apply, but particularly focus on your Degree and Work (and sector and concentration when applicable). This allows users to search by different categories to see where all the ISP’ers are hanging out and who is humanitarian’izing.
5) Class: Whether you have it or not, select your graduation year (including 2014 for the n00bs and “other” for alumni)
6) Employer/Partner Organization: self-explanatory… I hope?
7) Name/Contact Info: Include any details you want to be publicly accessible (I think including your UNI (w/o “at columbia”) here might be useful and relatively safe from spam)
8) Optional Information: This information is for our use, to “verify” you are a SIPA friend (consisting of a semi-exhaustive SIPA database search and/or googling). This information will not be made public.
9) The Map! You can either drag and zoom the arrow on the map, or type in a location to zoom directly there. You can continue to adjust your location until you are content.
10) Refine Location Name: Give a specific name to where you will be
11) News Source Link: Use this to link to your organization’s website, your blog, or other useful information you want to share
12) External Video Link: Keep it (relatively) relevant
13) Upload photos: include a photo of yourself if you like, or of your work location
14) Submit! This will send your entry off to the NMTF team for verification. Check back soon to see your post… posted. (Allow 1-2 days)
You may notice that some of these features would be more useful in, say, a crisis mapping situation. Well, you would be correct! This is an example of the Crowdmap platform and how information can be both gathered and disseminated using online mapping tools. For more on Crisis Mapping, check out our earlier post here or come to a New Media Task Force training session next semester!