Some great news on the relief work job hunt: I got a phone call from MSF USA the other day to set up an interview. It will be on April 12, here in San Francisco. The nice lady from MSF told me that what made the difference were recommendations I got from ex-MSF volunteers. Thanks Jon and Amy!

Here’s a list of the books I’ve been reading over the last year and a half as I figure out how the relief world works. Emergency Sex and Other Desperate Measures. A sometimes funny, sometimes scathing, sometimes touching story of three aid workers working in the UN system in the 90’s. Will not leave a good taste in your mouth for the UN, or in fact, for some of the characters. But they get points for honesty, I guess. Triage, a well written novella about a terrible story of PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) The Man Who Tried to Save the World: The dangerous life and mysterious disappearence of Fred Cuny. An profile of a legendary aid worker, and of his mysterious death in Chechnya. This book made me strike Chechnya from the places I would accept a job. (Well, the book and the fact I don’t even read Cyrillic, so I’d be useless there.) A Bed for the Night: Humanitarianism in Crisis. A careful look at mistakes made and how to move forward. Pays special attention to the problem of the “humanitarian-military complex”. We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will be Killed With Our Families: Stories from Rwanda. The best book to understand the genocide in Rwanda. Nothing good comes of reading this book, you just feel sad and empty. Perhaps the only good that can come from it is educating people so that it never happens again. But clearly that’s not happening, since it’s happening right now, again, in Sudan. Another Day in Paradise: International Humanitarian Workers Tell Their Stories. Does a really good job of letting aid workers speak in their own words about their motivations. Understanding your own motivation is key to being effective, I’m told. Hint: “I just want to help” isn’t going to get you through the hard days. Engineering in Emergencies : A Practical Guide for Relief Workers. Volumes of information in a form even gung-ho IT guys can use when the real engineers aren’t around. Transitional Settlement: Displaced Populations. The overall philosophy of this book is deeply humane, and reflects a quarter century of aid agencies completely screwing up. In addition to making the case for reform in the understanding of migrating people’s needs, it also has really cool sample layouts for refugee camps and the various other types of camps you may be called on to set up. Condemned to Repeat?: The Paradox of Humanitarian Action. Haven’t started this one yet. The Humanitarian Companion. Nuts and bolts things to know, checklists, etc. I haven’t read too much of it yet, but the chapter on preparing to deploy was really interesting. Cause Celeb. From the author of Bridget Jones’s Diary. Essentially a trashy book for British women to read in the tube on the way to work, except the portrayal of aid worker life and frustrations seems to be very well researched and accurate. The earliest known reference to the MMM theory of aid worker motivations. Hope In Hell: Inside The World Of Doctors Without Borders. The latest book on MSF. Gives a very good overview of the organization, where it came from, and how it thinks. But if you really want to know the dirt, you have to talk to a returned volunteer. And let me tell you, do you hear dirt… :) The Selfish Altruist. A critique of non-self-aware decision-making by aid agencies, from an experienced and passionate aid worker. His point is we have built in biases, and not paying attention to them results in wrong decisions. A good New Yorker article on life in Chad. Books I’ve been meaning to get and study, but haven’t yet: ...

The highly respected journal of international development and humanitarian aid, The Onion, has a fascinating article on relief worker motivations. Wink, wink. Update: MSF’s own website backs up the Onion’s claims. Check out the contents of the life support kit for 8 staff members (KADMKLIF08). Yeah, there on the third page… CONDOM, lubricated + RESERVOIR (quantity 144!). Yeah baby… queue porn music (played on African instruments).

My talk on Monday went just fine. It was fun to see people that I’d met in Hancock County again, and the hard work I’d put in to the supporting documentation paid off. I saw several people reading my report. One interesting thing was that though everyone was dressed in suits to show proper respect for the proceedings, some people were “suits”, and some people were just “in suits”. There were a whole lot of vendors there with their hands out trying to sell something. Everyone could tell within the first few words our of their mouth. What kept it interesting was that both on the panel, and of the invited speakers, there was at least 30%, maybe more, who were just “in suits”. They were people like me who had real-world experience, didn’t care for meetings, or having their time wasted, or getting sales pitches. They were there to make things better, and they didn’t have a lot of patience with people who weren’t there for the same reason. Very inspiring. ...

I’m in Jackson, Mississippi today giving my talk on the work Radio Response did in Hancock County. I’ve been burning the midnight oil the last few days getting the following documents ready: The Little Talk (100 kilobyte PDF file) The Big Report (2.2 megabyte PDF file) If you find a typo, please don’t tell me until next week! I know about the repeated picture, which I’ll fix in the next version. ...

I have been invited to give a 10 minute talk about our team’s work in Hancock County, Mississippi in front of the FCC Independent Panel Reviewing the Impact of Hurricane Katrina on Communications Networks. My talk will be in the afternoon of March 6, in Jackson Mississippi. Feel free to drop by if you are in the neighborhood and give me some moral support!

I finally got my report done on the lessons I learned while working for Radio Response after Hurricane Katrina. Hopefully it will be useful to anyone contemplating starting a group to do work like this.

I got a letter from MSF today informing me that they have reviewed my application and I won’t be getting an interview, and won’t be working for them any time soon. I’m disappointed, but not deterred. This simply means I can’t get off easy and fill in only one application, as I was hoping to do. I now have a huge amount of work in front of me as I research other organizations and chose some to apply to. ...

A development worker in Kabul made an interesting post today. The final paragraph was the most insightful, I thought. And a little bit scary for what it will be like. When I started telling people what my goal is, I was afraid they’d think I lost my mind. Instead, almost without exception I get good feedback about what I’ve set about to do. The other day a woman I really like told me, “We’re all really proud of you.” Which made me feel really good, and made me confident I was on the right track, and I need to keep my eye on the prize and land my first job. ...

I decided to look into Google Video a bit, now that they are selling stuff. First things first, I looked into how the Google Video Player works for free files. (I’m a cheapskate.) It’s Google Engineering at it’s finest; the simplest thing that will work, and no simpler. When you click to see a movie in the Google Video Player, you download a tiny text file (with file extension GVP). That causes the Google Video Player to launch. It reads the file and starts to download the video via HTTP, just like the Flash player is doing in the web browser. The GVP file is just a text file, so you can open it and find the URL. If you fetch the URL yourself with wget (i.e. no cookies, no javascript, etc) you get a big binary stream. The content-type claims that it is “video/x-msvideo”, but it does not play in Windows Media Player. ...