We journeyed to the World Bank headquarters in Washington DC to design and drive the agenda for the 2010 Crisis Congress. Aspiration’s travel and participation supported by the generosity of Mozilla as a part of their Drumbeat initiative.

The first-ever face-to-face meeting of all the city leads in the Crisis Commons community was a high-energy opportunity for an international network of crisis response practitioners to convene in person for the first time. Topics ranged from assessing the responses to the earthquakes in Haiti and Chile, to discussing collaborative technology development, open standards, volunteer engagement and project sustainability. Participant travel to The Congress was supported by the generosity of the The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Aspiration also designed and facilitated three focus groups on the day before the Congress at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, engaging peer NGOs, representatives from the private sector, and academia to discuss both how better to employ these stakeholders in crisis response, as well as how Crisis Commons could better support the efforts of those networks.

Event proceedings were streamed live, and notes were captured on the Crisis Commons wiki. Thanks to Mozilla and Crisis Commons for a great time in DC!