A system for automatically keeping track of who is responding to a particular emergency and automatically creating a "contact list"/"phone book" of those that are there. See presentation by Andrej Verity - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypA9Iza5OFg

Focus on simplicity and ease of use.

Contact information is name, email and phone number

Availability is Start Date to End Date (one stretch, no times, no complexity)

No worries on security for now (access given when link is received)

User ties themselves to one cluster (a cluster is an area of focus for humanitarian response)

One problem with volunteers for crisis events is keeping unqualified and unneeded people out of the way of the most qualified and necessary workers to get into the zones. Volunteers often can become a huge burden who actually interfere and draw away support and logistics that is needed for the local victims and necessary first-response personnel. Some thought is needed to classify and prioritize volunteers to allow NGOs to filter out the key personnel from the rest that will be unmanageable with thousands of names. Too many unqualified volunteers can be as bad or worse than too few qualified ones. NGOs may need to define the traits of volunteers that they consider important or not for various purposes.

The point is that we will need to start building more of a profile for volunteers and their skills.