StormCrowd is an innovative mobile reporting process developed through a collaboration of Ga***rd College and OU IT Development Office. StormCrowd is a web-based mobile tool that helps journalists report video stories from breaking news events as close to real time as possible. In 2012, Professors Julie Jones and John Schmeltzer led a team of 17 journalism and meteorology students outfitted with i
Pod Touches, shotgun microphones and mobile hot-spot devices to report on the Oklahoma severe weather season. Through an AEJMC/Knight Bridge grant and with assistance from Weather Decision Technologies, the first version of OU StormCrowd was built upon the open-source software Ushahidi. However, the Ushahidi environment was not ideal for reporting video news. On April 13th, 2012, the value of StormCrowd was tested as an EF1 tornado hit the OU campus and the surrounding neighborhoods of Norman. Although WiFi systems were spotty at best, the mobile reporters using StormCrowd beat all professional news organizations in on-the-ground reporting of the storm. StormCrowd has been featured in PBS's MediaShift and was a semi-finalist in the Knight News Challenge grant for mobile journalism tools. In December of 2013, we began developing a web version of StormCrowd to handle video reporting from any mobile device. We are in the last days of launching this new, bare bones version of our vision. We believe that StormCrowd can revolutionize the way we all think, share, and consume news. StormCrowd - it's news for the people!
