Today is March 11, 2026. 15 years since the Tohoku earthquake in Fukushima Japan which led to the formation of Safecast and unquestionably changed my life forever. Given the weight of what happened then, since, and… well *waves hands wildly* I thought it was worth reflecting on it all for a moment.
At the time I was living in Los Angeles and had recently started (or more accurately helped start/willed into existence) the first hackerspace in town and was occasionally visiting another hackerspace in Tokyo when I was there to help organize the annual New Context Conference. It was fun.
The earthquake was unexpected, as earthquakes are, and turned everything upside down. Literally and figuratively. The quake triggered a tsunami which caused a nuclear meltdown. People often think of it as a single event but it was three separate overlapping and compounding disasters. Any one of them alone would have been a tragedy, all three together was something else. A lot of people died and a lot of lives were ruined, I don’t want to seem like I’m downplaying that in anyway. Like so many others I was left wondering what next, and is there any thing I could do to help?
I reached out to Joi Ito who I was working on NCC with and he had similar questions. Joi introduced me to Pieter Franken, another friend in Tokyo offering a hand, and a soldering iron if needed. Between the three of us we knew a lot of people with different skillsets and were willing to spend time on this, if it seemed like we could be useful. NCC was being planned for mid April but at that point asking people to come to Japan to talk about startups and the internet seemed off, so we immediately changed the whole theme of the conference to “what can we do to help?” People flew in from all over and that week we came up with a plan. This history has been told many times and I was going to try and list everyone involved but realized that would be impossible and I’d unintentionally forget someone which I really don’t want to do, but I will say that without the time, care, dedication and support of Ray Ozzie and Reid Hoffman it’s unlikely we would have been able to turn those plans into what became Safecast, and what it has become since. Helen King-Turvey and Karien Bezuidenhout also played incomprehensively important roles. So many incredible people jumped in along the way to make things happen, I remain honored to know them, and lucky to call them friends.
Of course I have to also mention my soulmate, the unstoppable, Dr Tara Tiger Brown who not only put up with all of my bullshit, the insane travel, and sleepless nights, but also directly helped build everything, on every level, hands on. She uprooted her life to move around the world with me, helped us think about what we were doing differently and never for a moment stopped encouraging, supporting and believing in both me and the greater mission.
In Japan, Safecast’s work on transparency and open environmental data forced change in policy around evacuations and public information. Globally, it changed how industry, governments, and ordinary people think of and expect environmental data to be collected and published. We still maintain the largest dataset of environmental radiation levels ever assembled, published entirely into the public domain, and collected almost entirely by volunteers paying out of their own pockets to do the work. It’s impossible to succinctly explain how big of a deal that is, but it’s absolutely unheard of before or since. It’s an incredible example of how people who don’t know each other can work together across borders (both real and imaginary). To try and help each other out, not just for today, but for future generations as well. Today, we’re still trying to help out where we can and always welcome any donations which continue to help make it all possible.
It’s very easy to look around the world right now, in 2026, and feel pretty bad about where things stand. But I refuse to believe that people working together can’t find a solution regardless of any stupid decisions the governments might make. People can and will come together to help each other. Some don’t believe this kind of thing is possible, I know it is and have seen it first hand. A better future is always possible, we just have to decide to make it happen.