Humaninet.org

Executive Director's Report
November 15, 2007

Exercise Khichadi was successful beyond all expectations of the ADRA and Caritas planners. The relationships, friendships, and learnings will serve all of the participants powerfully in future emergency responses.

Among the dominant lessons that emerged from this intense week-long field exercise were:

Field communications are vital and must be practiced at the team level.
Professional relief teams can work together as unified teams, and the teamwork can begin very quickly.
The time for using GPS, GIS, and coordinated information management is now.
Simulations are not simply helpful, they are essential to team effectiveness.

I'll have more to say about this on the Team Blog, but for now I encourage you to check out the other reports on like Exercise Khichadi:

Our Flickr photo page
Our Team Blog, with comments by planners and participants
Goals and objectives of Exercise Khichadi
The Exercise Khichadi GIS page

Tech Day, which preceded the exercise, was also very well attended, with NGO team members mingling and sharing ideas with leaders of Nepalese tech initiatives, technology experts, government and UN officials, and students. The energy from this single day could have lit up a hundred villages, and the Ecosystems pedal power exhibit a hundred more.

I want to express sincere thanks to our partners at ADRA and Caritas for their magnificent support of Tech Day, and to our sponsors for making Tech Day possible: Inmarsat, Vizada, ESRI, and IDV Solutions.

The conclusions from Exercise JavaLava in October 2006, listed below and in my 2006 article, Observations from a week under a volcano, still hold up. The leadership and planning team was unanimous in recommending the continuation of the simulation series, with the next exercise planned tentatively for Thailand in March or April.

Finally, I want to thank the leadership team (whom you can meet on the exercise page) for their patient and cheerful cooperation – they are a world class group of dedicated professionals – and especially Robert Patton of ADRA Asia. Robert, all of us are fortunate to know you as a leader, expert, and friend.

Our thanks and best wishes to all who planned, hosted, participated in, and sponsored this landmark event,

Gregg Swanson
Founder and Executive Director

Twelve Reasons for Conducting Simulations

1.	Preparedness - only by practice and training can teams and individuals gain and practice the skills needed in a very demanding environment.
2.	Does your plan work? Only by testing your plan will you know.
3.	Identify gaps, weaknesses, and needs - you won't find them out without a field exercise or an actual response, and it is easier to determine and record these findings in a field exercise.
4.	Teambuilding - there is no better way.
5.	Motivation - just ask the ADRA Asia team members. As one told me: "If there is a disaster, that is where we want to be – that is our job."
6.	Evaluate your personnel - managers need to know who is good at this, and who is a top performer.
7.	Try out new processes and procedures - an exercise is a great laboratory for testing new concepts.
8.	Try out new enabling capabilities, including ICT equipment. Providers of services and equipment are often delighted to loan their newest products for field testing by "real relief workers."
9.	Acquaint your senior management (and other internal management) with your plan, your capabilities, your people. They may not know how challenging it is.
10.	Show external organizations, including government and U.N. agencies, what you can do.
11.	Show your donors what you can do. They want to know, and they will probably be impressed. Invite key donors as observers.
12.	Publicity of your simulation is healthy and should be welcomed by all employees, volunteers, donors, and other supporters. The press and the public are very interested – and this is not only at home. The press and public in countries like Indonesia are very aware of the dangers of natural disasters, and they have a stake in relief capabilities.

Our mission – ICT assistance. HumaniNet is a nonprofit ICT information service for humanitarian and mission field teams. With its partners, HumaniNet investigates and tests available, affordable solutions that provide a critical lifeline for teams in remote areas. These solutions provide reliable field communications, enable the coordination of planning and operations, and facilitate the sharing of useful information.

HumaniNet is unique in identifying current, practical ICT opportunities and developments which all humanitarian and mission teams can quickly translate into greater operational effectiveness and cost savings. HumaniNet encourages NGO field users to provide feedback on “what works and what does not.” This facilitates the sharing of “lessons learned” and other valuable information with NGO managers and field teams.