CrisisCamp began as an idea for an event to bring together people who were interested in leveraging technology and telecommunications systems to assist communities in times of crisis. In June 2009 the first CrisisCamp was held in Washington DC as an open forum for practitioners, first responders, humanitarian aid workers, technologies, academia and the private sector to come to together to explore opportunities to enhance the capabilities of citizens, communities and crisis response organizations capability and capacity to response to, recover from, mitigate against and prepare for crises. CrisisCommons is a global community of volunteers from technology, crisis response organizations, government agencies, and citizens that are working together to build and use technology tools to help respond to disasters and improve resiliency and response before a crisis.