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.