User Profile for Mr Robert Kirkpatrick (Robert_Kirkpatrick)

Bio: Robert Kirkpatrick is Chief Technology Officer at InSTEDD (www.instedd.org), a 501(c)3 non-profit organization based in Palo Alto, CA developing an innovative, free and open source software platform for emergent communication, resilient information flow, and collaborative decision support. InSTEDD is dedicated to harnessing the power of collaboration technology to bring together information, tools, and human networks for early detection of, and more effective response to, humanitarian emergencies, major disease outbreaks, and natural disasters.

Robert is an expert in the design and use of technology to facilitate cross-organizational collaboration in austere field environments, developing nations, and sudden-onset emergencies. He has spent more than 10 years in collaboration technology, supporting the use of ICT for health data collection, disaster relief, NGO field security, telemedicine, conflict mediation, and civil-military cooperation. Robert’s work with technology industry partners, government agencies, and international humanitarian organizations has explored ways that system design may impact trust- building and information sharing behavior across cultural, organizational, and linguistic boundaries.

Robert co-founded and led solutions development for two pioneering humanitarian technology teams, first at Groove Networks, and later at Microsoft where he served as Lead Architect for Microsoft Humanitarian Systems (MHS), a deep-field solution prototyping team created by Chief Software Architect Ray Ozzie. Robert has worked in Iraq under the Coalition Provisional Authority, in Afghanistan on two missions related to information flow for telemedicine and program coordination, in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir following the 2005 earthquake, and in New Orleans, LA and Waveland, MS after Hurricane Katrina. While at Microsoft, he and the MHS team designed a set of tools for mesh-based collaboration and low-bandwidth data transport among humanitarian workers in Afghanistan. Following the Pakistan earthquake in 2006, Robert worked on humanitarian relief solutions for earthquake victims in Kashmir, and he later prototyped a telemedicine application in Afghanistan. Robert is a member of the Highlands Forum, and a member of the Executive Committee for the Strong Angel series of integrated disaster-response demonstrations. In 2006, he directed application integration for Strong Angel III (www.strongangel3.net) in San Diego, CA, and in 2004 for Strong Angel II in Kona, Hawai’i.

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