Alan Gutierrez

I’m working in New Orleans on the recovery of lovely, yet troubled neighborhood called Hollygrove. One of the projects that I’ve been working on is creating an interactive map of the neighborhood, simply by uploading geocoded photographs to nifty applications like Picassa and Flickr, that can create a map of the neighborhood.

Which is why I’d so dearly appreciate the donation of Josh Hallett’s Helio Ocean toward this effort.

Hollygrove is not the most digital place in the world. In fact, a lot of people have not come back. Those who have come back are still in their FEMA trailers. What surprises me though, is how often people who never had a use for computers or the Internet before, go out of there way to get online. The problem is always that there is never enough information specific to this lesser known neighborhood.

I ride my bike through the neighborhood everyday. I would love to be able to take pictures and put them online. It’s my understanding that the Helio could put those photographs straight online and directly into maps at Picassa or Flickr. This would make it much easier to create the reports we need to track the redevelopment. I’d love to find that the ability to create a quick geocoded photo record is the sort of think that other neighborhoods could imitate. I want to do something to get them thinking about clever uses of social media. City hacks.

Working with a fancy device like the Helio Ocean would make it easier to implement, but it might also capture the imagination of the people I meet each day. We’re implementing a block captain program, where one family on the a block will great people as they return, and keep track of the houses that are still empty. After I pilot, I could imagine a program to put a Helio Ocean in the hands of the block captains.

Helio Oceans with Picassa or Flickr, and people watching from afar will be able to track the recovery of their neighborhood, with new photographs springing up every day like a garden in bloom.

I have a full-time professional services contract with the New Orleans Housing Resource Center. I work for Paul Baricos, and with Meghan Finn on Hollygrove related recovery issues. They are assembling a block captains program, a newsletter for Hollygrove, as well helping to organize discussions on land use and development.

I continue to work on all aspects of Think New Orleans. There is no “but”. There is only “and”. I’m working on Think New Orleans, and the Road Home Unconference, and I have an office at the Trinity Christian Community Center, and I am affiliated with a neighborhood.

I’m in the middle of a lot of projects. The one that has most of my attention is the Road Home Unconference. I’m going to lend whatever support I can to Maitri Venkat-Ramani in her work on Rising Tide 2.

For Hollygrove, however, I’m focused on finding ways to get digital media into a neighborhood that has very few computers. The route we’re perusing is an older digital format that has become quite common in most American households. It’s called compact disc. We’re going to produce PodCasts for the block captains, but rather than distribute iPods, we’re going to burn CDs.

I’m going to interview an engineer with the Sewage and Water Board. Hollygrove is 9 feet below sea level. Water drains out of Broadmoor and Carrollton and into Hollygrove, where it is pumped into the Metaire 17th Canal and flows to Lake Ponchartrain through Jefferson Parish. It floods. It has flooded 11 times since the big one. (I’m going to post this and post corrections later.)

Last weekend Christopher Johnston and I went photowalking through Hollygrove. We chose a block and took a photograph of every house on that block. It’s on me to create a map that has all these photographs, so people can see the state of the neighborhood.

Expect to learn more about Hollygrove, as I learn more about Hollygrove.