On Tuesday afternoon, I participated in a webinar on innovative ICT responses to Hurricane Katrina that was jointly hosted by the Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network, HumaniNet, Aspiration, and the Innovation Funders Network.

I felt proud to hear about the geek emergency response to the recent tragedy. Representatives from a range of organizations - such as Cisco Systems, Technology For All, and the Center for Neighborhood Technology - briefed us on their efforts. Some information about the Katrina PeopleFinder Project was also ably presented by Zack Rosen (of CivicSpace Labs) and Steve Wright (of SalesForce.com Foundation).

I do my share of griping about the limits of the webinar format, but I can't deny that there's great potential benefit in conducting this sort of briefing and coordination in real time.

N-TEN will probably make transcripts and other materials available to anyone who is interested, but there's an even better (though more labor-intensive) opportunity coming up for those who want to participate in this conversation.  On 17 October 2005, there will be an international conference in Washington, D.C. on the topic of "Answering the call: Katrina, the Tsunami, Darfur, Afghanistan -  lessons learned from the Global ICT responses."  N-TEN and HumaniNet will once again be playing host.