I just landed in Amman, Jordan, for the three day “Mobile Data Collection in the Middle East Workshop.” I’m joining a group of about 50 developers, analysts, designers, and representatives from NGOs and foundations that Katrin Verclas from MobileActive and Panthea Lee from UNICEF Innovation have brought together to discuss and brainstorm on solutions for large-scale data gathering. Here is the breakdown of what will be happening at the workshop:

Day 1: Overview of projects and technologies for data collection in difficult environments.

Day 2: Review specific requirements that organizations and attendees have for their projects and work.

Day 3: Develop specific action plans and next steps for the various projects present.

Tomorrow morning I will be presenting on some of our latest work with SlingShot SMS and Managing News. While I think it will be valuable to focus on these technologies since so much has happened since the Managing News launch a couple months ago, I will also talk about how we used Managing News and MapBox in our recent work tracking fraud in the Afghanistan elections as well as about some of the participatory GIS projects I worked on in Kenya and Uganda last month.

The participant list for the workshop is stellar and the format looks great. I’m really excited to catch up with folks from Ushahidi, InStedd, NiJel, and the Open Mobile Consortium, meet new folks, and a have a great week of meetings with some of the best minds in this field.