From Flu Wiki 2

Forum: Fluwikian Strategies II

27 July 2006

Bronco Bill – at 15:28

Strategies carried over from here.


lugon – at 08:26

Ok, folks: we are fluwikians. We’re reading, writing, thinking, acting. We’re making up our minds, then changing them. We don’t know and yet we feel compelled to act.

Now, imagine we have 2 months and we want to get the most important and effective stuff done in that time. What do we do?

Let’s climb on a metaphorical balloon and look at things from some distance. From here, what I see is several strategies:

This thread is not meant to decide on any best strategy. What we want is to think of more strategies, and also explore them all, trying to see what’s the value in each strategy, how could we make them work, who can we work with in order to augment the likelyhood of “local” (local to the strategy) success.

Any strategy will make itself concrete with some definite ideas. Ideas hide strategic thinking inside the idea. Let’s make a full “mindmap” in text, here or in the apropriate wikipage.

We all need us.

Dude – at 18:26

We publish a newsletter now for our customer base to keep them informed of what is going on with our company and the service we provide them. It is a personal touch to let them know we are watching out for their interests. It is easy for us to take text, put it in a format and print 8.5 x 11 paper and mail it. I see the wiki newsletter as having a need to raise some money in order for it to get a wide circulation. In my roots I am a person who wants to empower all individuals so I give them the idea and the tools. Do you know those pesky door to door type that help sell you on action for the environment etc. Well, that was my idea given to the head of one of these organizations. Simply put allow someone to make a salary doing what needs to be done in the world. This does not have to be a central thing. I would love to print and hand out to all the business leaders, government officials, hospital personnel etc. a newsletter. You could simply add your local page with whatever articles you can get. You could also add a cover and a back page that has the local paying sponsors of this information for your community and the idea that they support their business for helping out. There is so much good information here. You could do several issues each focused on a major subject. Instead of posts you could start a thread that is a text submission of an article on “subject” In my day it was the Liberation News Service that provided a distribution of articles written by and for the people. So, maybe a wiki news service with articles written by and for the people on a potential pandemic. This is just one idea. It does need an editor who can read and correct the basic facts. Oh, and we paid LNS for the basic service they provided. So we all had a small cash flow for what we did. This is great summer employment. Good money in print advertising sales. Just charge one fourth of what your local paper charges.

lugon – at 19:23

We could have (at least) two kinds of newsletter:

One for people who don’t read fluwikie often. We, regular readers and contributors, would create such a newsletter for them, to keep them updated. It might be something as simple as a paper copy of Heather’s reports, the updated copy of “confirmed human cases” (with some text on “chanes since last issue”) and maybe a summary of the headlines in http://influenzapandemic.blogspot.com Room for advertising would pay for local copies: we could just leave some empty space so that local downloaders would print their “courtesy of Butcher and Co” in that space, and then make photocopies for others.

Another for us, regular readers and contributors, with a short summary of forum threads and maybe wikipages that have changed since last Friday (or whatever). Something like: “WHO new Director General, 20 posts, analysis of the election game and some candidates; Simple masks, 2 posts; etc”. Keeping track of our own activity would be useful to “create community”. I don’t know how difficult that is to do with our current wiki and forum softwares. We can know if we try, and trying doesn’t mean commitment at all - remember this is “the wiki way”!

Of course, newsletters themselves can or should be done cooperatively.

lugon – at 19:26

http://www.fluwikie.com/pmwiki.php?n=Opinion.FluwikieNewsletterTemplate

lugon – at 19:33

Forum.FluwikieNewsletterTemplate is for discussing the above template. Once we have a template, we could try it out once or twice, and learn as we go.

lugon – at 19:41

Over to you, folks! ;)

Ranchgirl – at 23:44

Lugon - How can I post a rough sample template for consideration?

28 July 2006

Dude – at 00:44

Ranchgirl: Is the markup in word, Publisher, or what? I can provide an FTP location that everyone here has the right to use for download. Does that help? Only I can upload to the FTP though because of permissions and not wanting to let anyone have the right to erase everything.

Ranchgirl – at 00:48

I just did a VERY rough mock up of a quick-read one-pager. It’s in WORD (so anyone can use it). When each issue is finished, it can then be converted to a PDF to avoid alterations. How can I send it to you?

Dude – at 00:55

Just email it to dudeatsingtomeohmuse.com I will upload it to the FTP and everyone can download it from there to have a look. Note to add the proper at in my email…what I did stops the bots from getting my address. This is part of our large file communication project headed up by Dem. I provide some behind the scene stuff and the website space, as a gift to the wiki. You should go to TLFCP section of the wiki proper to learn how to download. Hey that should be in every issue too. Grin.

Dude – at 00:58

Hey Ranchgirl, we just had a game of blog tag.

Ranchgirl – at 01:05

the address you gave me isn’t a full email address…as for the instructions…I read them and was still clueless.

lugon – at 06:12

Ranchgirl - yes it’s a full email address - just substitute the “at” after “dude” for the “a with a circle around it”.

Dude - please make sure no private information from Ranchgirl is in the outgoing file. (I know you know, just double-checking.)

lugon – at 06:14

Ok, all, please go to the proper thread which is Forum.FluwikieNewsletterTemplate. Thanks all!

lugon – at 06:15

And of course this thread is open for its own purpose - whatever it was … oh, yeah, strategies to get safe to the other side, as communities …

Ranchgirl – at 23:31

Here’s an idea that I posed to our local temp agency:

Consider this: Some businesses will probably go on hiatus because they offer products and/or services that are not relevant during a pandemic. Some of their employees will still need to work. The employees would be relieved if the employer made arrangements for them to find work in another place until their company got back on its feet.

Other businesses will have products/services that are sorely needed during a pandemic, and they will need to staff up not only to compensate for the 30–40% who don’t/can’t come to work, but to respond to the increased amount of business (i.e. UPS).

Manpower, Kelly Girl, etc. have existing customer bases…some of which fall into the first category and some who fall into the second category. They could offer a service that enables them to barter employees back and forth, AND…here’s the important element…that as one of their NEW services, they could send someone (perhaps a fluwikian) to make a presentation to their office staff on how to best prepare individually and corporately, including hygiene, prepping for a minimum of 3 months, masks, etc. etc. During that presentation, they can query the audience as to which ones feel they might be more inclined to SIP, and which ones need to continue working. (Would need to allow employees to come to the presenter confidentially to “register” in advance).

It’s a win-win-win scenario. Temp agencies are going to be swamped with business…but will have a hard time finding enough people…UNLESS they do some advance scouting like that outlined above.

Any reactions? Open to spin-off ideas and pitfalls.

29 July 2006

lugon – at 04:58

RanchGirl, your idea has gotten me thinking in three directions at once. Phew!


Your idea reminds me of the “let’s recruit survivors” and also the “resources released by a pandemic” (there’s a separate thread for that).

A related idea is that of “waste as a resource”: maybe urban toilet waste can be digested for biogas, or office paper can be recycled, etc. This means businesses could enter a network in which someone’s “waste” becomes someone else’s “food”. Picturing the larger ecosystem, connecting the dots, helps them all.

The more general direction is “what do we do with workers?”. Some fruitful thinking might arise if we look into this direction, so let’s do it. I mean, let’s create an outline with “what do we do with workers”. This might give us some insights worth pursuing.


Your suggestion is a focused and practical one. Could we make it work? Do you have some specific companies we might try, even if only as a thought experiment? How do we go from idea to a small implementation that can be copied by others? I think it could well start with some business that has already shown it has a panflu plan, or maybe not. Or could some fellow fluwikian “think out loud” from the knowledge of some specific business they know deeply? This could be shaped as a template for others to gather ideas from, no?

Maybe it’s just a matter of suggesting Temp agencies to look into that scenario, so that their specific and really helpful expertise would still be operational under much larger workloads.


Note: “be operational under much larger workloads” is a recurrent theme in pandemic preparation. It’s what I’ve seen named, using as single word, as “scale”. Say a database works well for a small number of data items but, does it scale?, i.e., does it work equally well if there’s a very large number of data items?. Same with all our systems, health-care included: do they scale? If not, we have to invent something different. That’s the whole point!

Mari – at 05:24

The temp agencies would need to start thinking about “different” job categories. For example:

  • Delivering goods by bicycle
  • Repairing clothing
  • Teaching people how to treat water so it’s drinkable
  • Teaching people how to make interesting meals out of dry & canned food

People in vulnerable businesses (e.g., schools) could register with a temp agency, get cross-trained into one of these categories, and certified to a level of proficiency.

Ranchgirl – at 07:22

Lugon - I like the idea of recycling resources (perhaps not waste). Go from employees in business to even computers, furniture, telephone systems, etc. If a business decides to close, they would welcome the opportunity to sell their inventory to someone who can put it to use. Perhaps there could be a national website driven by zip code where people could barter their resources.

Mari - I also like the idea of recruiting vulnerable businesses and provide cross-training. The challenge would be to cross-train for a known future job. I keep using UPS as an example. Does a history teacher becomes a route driver? Can that teacher sign up with others for a “UPS Delivery 101″ class prior to the pandemic? I think the jobs you listed above are great for individuals to come up with on their own but doubt these would fall within a temp agency’s scope of comfort. They are far more accustomed to more traditional employment that even adopting the “employee barter system” is going to be a stretch. And…there has to be enough money in it for them to want to tackle such a project.

As for a mini-test, perhaps I can talk our local folks into becoming a test site for a national model. Anyone else out there willing to do the same?

lugon – at 08:20

RanchGirl - please consider using “emergency community currency” (birdshot or timebank or whatever suits you) in the mix. Just as an option.

What would be best is to have “inflatable things”: systems that can be used 1% or not at all in non-pandemic periods, but which would grow to full size or more as soon as the need arises.

Keep us updated on your conversations!

Mari - perhaps we could start an outline of such jobs. People who have read Canada Sue’s chapters in full, or other books, may be able to help in setting up such a list.

This needs a new thread. What would it be called? Pandemic work, pandemic jobs, working in a pandemic? Ok. I’ll copy the pasf few messages over to that place … done. Off we go, over to Forum.WorkingInAPandemic?!

Those wishing to stay in this (productive) thread, please stay focused on strategies! Thanks!

lugon – at 08:24

(links to emergency community currencies: 1? and 2 - main page of the project here)

Ranchgirl – at 08:54

New concept to mull over:

Remember when everyone from Katrina searched desparately for loved ones but had no resource through which to do so? Then EVERYONE seemed to pop open a website where they could search, but since they all came on simultaneously, people had to go to dozens of websites to see if THEIR loved one was on that website.

We are going to have a lot of people moving around all over the country when this thing hits. Many will wait until the last possible moment, and then have a knee-jerk reaction and run to their nearest relative who has food & water. Could there/should there be ONE website where someone can post where they are going to be (together with contact info)…and then someone else can look them up? Kinda like a national white pages…but ONLY for those relocating. They could also post updates as to their well-being periodically.

If you could envision the country from about 3000 feet up…and then imagine people trying to connect in the midst of chaos. Such a one-stop website should be developed and hosted by an official entity, such as CDC, but after seeing the results of Katrina, I wouldn’t count on anyone thinking along these terms this early. Unless….hmmmm…anyone reading this idea is from such an entity….

lugon – at 09:26

Maybe we could reach out to http://www.worldchanging.org

So far we have at least two things we would want to ask them:

As for the second, their best starting link would be this one.

lugon – at 09:28

And no, it was not a central thing - the network created itself out of the blue.

Maybe we shouldn’t be surprised?

Ranchgirl – at 10:55

Lugon - I just emailed worldchanging to see if they were or would consider being the one-stop shop for people finding during a pandemic. Based on their CYA sentence in their contact us page, they remind us that they are a small operation…looks like they may have the technology figured out but not the resources to expand. Can’t imagine the “govt” funding something without controlling it, so it would have to be done through corporate dollars. Perhaps they could set it up as a “pledge system” whereby nobody has to write a check until it’s absolutely needed, but that will enable them to anticipate funding when needed. Do you know anyone over there?

Dude – at 11:15

It is all bandwidth, computer number crunching ability, Hard Drive Space on the web server, and the number of MB you get to transfer each month without an additional charge. It is a simple front end setup with a form and a back end MySQL database. We setup things like this as part of my business. I am working on a side project with one wiki regular to setup a MySQRserver and database right now. Though we don’t want public knowledge/use of what we are up to just yet. I don’t know what site could handle the traffic generated by our nation looking for people on the web. We can hope that cell phones will carry the bulk of this.

Mari – at 11:25

Dude – at 11:15 - Phones are fine if the person is at the number. But what if your loved one is ill? I’d hate to have to call every hospital and funeral home in a state across the country to try to locate my sister.

That said, I think I’d better ask her for the phone numbers of at least 3 of her friends.

Dude – at 11:27

I think that one business plan must be that essential people without family ties should shelter at their place of work. We should develop a kit for those that do. Food, water, waste treatment, communication, entertainment, companions, etc.

lugon – at 12:28

RanchGirl, Worldchanging.org is a blog - they report on what others do. Ok, I think in this case they personally did something. But it was a network thing, with people adding whatever they had (skills, hardware, time) to the mix. That time it was reactive and now it could be proactive and with their experience. Maybe using the links (or asking the editors at WC for help) we could get in touch with those networkers and ask them to bring their expertise here?

Dude, it might help to make it open source so that people from other “our nations” would be able to use it and improve on it.

I think one strategy with phones will be to tell ourselves and all others to “refrain from using the phones too much” (or simply use text and not voice if we can). Otherwise we’ll be blocking the network and it may become unusable for all.

ranchgirl – at 23:33

I volunteer for the Red Cross. They have forms for people coming into shelters, that includes ONE line for ONE person that you can authorize Red Cross to acknowledge your whereabouts. If I list my husband, he is the ONLY one that they will divulge any info to. No other family member qualifies because they aren’t on my card (supposedly). When I asked about adding multiple lines for more family members, I got the sense that that would complicate things to much, especially in a chaotic situation. (Keep in mind that most of the RC volunteers are older, retired people, many of whom don’t use computers, so much is still handled the old fashioned way….on paper.

The website concept above would be massive, especially if it is not limited to the United States (I almost think it has to be limited tho). And I still think it has to be endorsed by a mainstream, well-respected entity. Maybe the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, or perhaps one of the networks, or USA Today - this is a tough one. Keep in mind that I am not focusing right now on the technology part as much as the funding and “authentication” of the website. If it is branded by an entity high enough up, it would deter dozens of other piecemeal websites from doing the same thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying their genuine willingness would not be valid and appreciated, but it would almost hurt the process by diluting/scattering the names to the wind.

This I will continue to have to think about. But not tonight…it’s time for me to get some sleep!!

30 July 2006

lugon – at 08:24

I don’t think the folks mentioned by worldchanging.org used one massive website, but rather a network of not so massive websites. I believe they finally settled for using some kind of protocol for data exchange, so that websites could query each other. If a pandemic is truly like a thousand Katrinas, then it’s quite likely that it would have to be that way: a network, not a site. A network is many sites plus a protocol for working together. All of this can be hammered down in advance. We should somehow talk to them.

Concerns about funding and “authentication” are true. At the same time, I think only a network (pooled resources with a common protocol) would be able to do the massive job. But I don’t know, so that’s why I think we should talk to the experts, and bring our own “experience” to the design table.

The best place to start might be to carefully read this and then maybe contact some folks for their “lessons learned” and for advice … and more than that, ask them for computer and people “muscle”!

The most important links seem to be these:

If someone is willing to initiate contacts, there’s a bunch of insiders starting with Ethan Zuckerman (look at the worldchanging link, the first in this comment). A letter from a fluwikian to, say, five of them, is bound to get us some kind of response. Such a letter would be quite simple:

Hi! At fluwikie.com and fluwikie2.com we’re trying to set up a few things that we think might be useful if the feared pandemic starts soon (whatever “soon” means is anyone’s guess). One such thing would be a way to get information about relatives, in a moment when people may flee cities and phone networks may not work at their best. We’ve only started to think about this, and clearly you, building on the experience from the Tsunami and later Katrina, are the worldwide experts on this matter. You may first want to have some kind of a picture of how we imagine a pandemic would be. A pandemic has been described as an “anti-Katrina”, because epidemics would be simultaneous all over the world, so that there’s nowhere to turn to if you need help. Any piece of advice, however short, would be appreciated. If you don’t mind, I’ll post your reply (minus whatever you don’t want published) openly on the wiki. Thanks!

Well, not so simple. We need to give them a better summary of what we envision: a pandemic and that particular “element of response”. Cut and paste from some of our pages?

Bronco Bill – at 23:11

Bump

02 August 2006

lugon – at 05:36

Two more broad strategies, maybe stated somewhere else: inflatable versus scalable.

What other broad strategies are there? I’m not sure this covers the whole spectrum, but it adds a bit more to it.

Mari – at 08:24

You’re missing “Planned but Not Implemented” (which is what most current strategies are), when you’ve:

Actually, antivirals are a Scalable strategy since they can be used for seasonal flu. There aren’t going to be many Inflatable strategies because nobody wants to spend much money for something that has a low probability of occurring unless they’re required to do so (e.g., fire insurance). Buying drinking water barrels that sit empty until a pandemic is imminent might qualify as an Inflatable strategy.

One of our goals could be to move more of our ideas from Planned but Not Implemented to Scalable. Also, if the idea is already Scalable, we could be trying to increase the current level. For example, my state (New Mexico) should provide $$ incentives for people to add rainwater harvesting and solar to their homes. It makes a lot of sense anyway, and would be of great value during a pandemic.

08 October 2006

Closed - Bronco Bill – at 21:53

Closed to maintain Forum speed.

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