Forget the government — regular folks create major Gustav resources

I’m really impressed by the Web sites that have sprung up to spread information about Hurricane Gustav. No government required — regular folks created full-featured sites for people to share information, photos, videos, and whatever as Gustav approached and struck.

Just like Wikipedia, the Hurricane Gustav Wiki allows anyone to add and edit content, creating a one-stop for information. Information like….

…traffic maps, aid agencies and donations, federal and local government resources, FEMA registration, postal services, insurance information, national and local phone numbers, animal rescue resources, health and safety information, shelter lists, ham radio resources…

You get the idea. All of this is created and maintained by average Janes and Joes. And that, my friends, is the power of social media. A government-created site would have info, sure, but you can guarantee it wouldn’t be nearly as comprehensive (ham radio info?), and wouldn’t include on-the-ground updates, e,g., “The 14th street shelter is full — don’t bother going there.”

Meanwhile, the Gustav Information Center, also set up by regular folks, is more of a social network in that users can post blog entries, photos, video, and so on. It even has an interactive map showing evac routes and shelters. If you want the latest news on what’s really going on, that’s the place to be. (It’s not just user-created stuff. It’s also pulling in mainstream news feeds related to the storm.)

Even if you aren’t affected by Gustav, it’s worth taking a step back and marveling at this stuff. The Gustav Wiki was built using the same software that powers Wikipedia. From experience I can say that it probably took about two hours to set up, if that. The Gustav Info Center was created on Ning, a site that lets anyone set up a social network in a matter of minutes.

In other words, all this incredible, high-end functionality took the creators no time at all to have up and running. And now they’re the defacto home pages for the storm.

(The Center for Social Media has a short post about both these sites, too.)

• • •

Looking at all this got me into researching social-network software in case anything interesting ever happens. :) I could use Ning, but I like the idea of self-hosted stuff. I first looked at content-management systems (Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla), then social network packages (Elgg) and finally realized that what I wanted was groupware. And the big name in that category is TikiWiki.

So I’m creating a test platform to see how long it would take me to create “Whatever Information Center.” It doesn’t have to be a disaster, of course; it could be “Richmond Election Day Information Center” or “Summer Kids’ Activities” or whatever. I’m tossing around ideas in my head (not a long distance to toss) about what such a site would need and what it wouldn’t.

Who knows — maybe next time I’ll be the one running a site like this.z