Hurricane salvation volunteers web 2.0

The Katrina hurricane three years ago had an informal army of web volunteers trying to coordinate rescue work, people finding and housing. This actual Gustavian period is showing many virtual footprints. There are bloggers and tweeters commeting on prominent problems regarding the eventual effects on the President campaign and how the Republican Convent has conventiently cut down on their more festive activities (such as the Good President G.W.Bush not showing up), and there are the volunteer calls for action. Andy Carvin, NY has started a Ning group, there is a coordination wiki http://www.gustavwiki.com - and there is an updated entry in the English language wikipedia en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Gustav

Following the fast forward edits of this page might be one interesting study for those who wish to get some idea on the folksonomy efforts to share detailed information, in a decent manner.

Being in another part of the world all I can do is to observe; well actually I might jump in eventually giving a hand, from transcription of chatlogs in the IRC channel, to collection of donations for rescue work. This would be perfectly doable, because The world is Flat *), grace to the web, and our more and more complex interconnectedness. However, it seem that thre are already many hands in action, and some confusion about multiple purposes and channels (for example on Twitter, and competing with other SMS services).

*) The World is Flat is the title of a most popular and highly relevant book, by Thomas Friedman. I'll get back to this, eventually (my current motto).