Travel

4Dec

Data @ IFRC #7: Data with IFRC Africa, YouthMappers Nairobi

[ed. note: Data @ IFRC is a blog series to share highlights from data-driven Red Cross Red Crescent national societies, learning opportunities and thought pieces on all things data from ethics to evidence.]

Considering Data literacy journeys with IFRC Africa Region

IFRC Africa Strategy Meeting
Converting data literacy theory to practice needs a large infusion of reality. The more people I meet the more value is added as we plan for data literacy programs at the individual and institutional levels. Last week I joined my IFRC Africa colleagues from the regional office as well as the leaders for various country offices and cluster heads. There are 49 national societies (Red Cross/Red Crescent societies) represented by the IFRC Africa Regional office. Countries in the MENA region are supported by the IFRC Beirut office. We converged in Mount Kenya to dive into the strategic plan and roadmap for the coming year. By the end of the week, the walls were covered with charts, lists, and plans. Distilling some of the immediate and future needs, it was a great opportunity to sanity check my data literacy work plan for the coming year. We focused on how to engage youth while supporting some complex changes across countries and major thematic work such as disaster resilience and health. They inspire me with their hard, complex work accompanied by their earnest efforts to incorporate data literacy into their activities. The upcoming IFRC Data Playbook will be co-created across the regions, clusters, thematic areas by many people. Thankfully, we are building alliances with the data leaders, emerging data savvy and the data curious.

YouthMappers Nairobi

Kenyan Red Cross volunteer Esther Muiruri mentioned that the average age in Kenya is 18. If we are going to be data-driven and engage youth, then it is most fortunate that groups like YouthMappers, Map Kibera and Map Mathare are flourishing. From university students to local community leaders, I had an opportunity to connect with the Nairobi YouthMappers Chapter. There are 3 chapters across Kenya. Already they have supported a number of local and international humanitarians and development programs.

(map source: YouthMappers)

Modeling programs

There are many models for implementing shifts in a workplace. Some organizations host interns and fellowships to bring new areas of knowledge into organizations. To be honest, data use is all around IFRC. While assessing ‘data readiness’, my assumption is that there are a number of existing and emerging data leaders within the Federation. We must host skillshares or even consider internal mentorship programs. It really depends on the connections to curate an ecosystem map or, as humanitarians like to name, 3Ws (who, what, where). Slowly we are collecting data on ourselves.

While there are many frameworks to assess data readiness for countries, there are few for individuals or organization. Like any framework, there is a coldness in them, but it helps to give some focus on the data reality check as well as the socialization and feelings (eg. fear of change) that might be considered. Here is a sample of those competency frameworks:

Web Literacy via Mozilla (problem solving, collaboration, creativity and communication),
Digital Literacy via the World Economic Forum (digital identity, digital rights, digital literacy, digital communications, digital emotional intelligence, digital security, digital safety, and digital use), and
Critical Social Impact Skills (below) Social Impact competencies

Competencies for Social Impact:
Critical Social Impact Skills

(source: Stanford Social Innovation Review, November 23, 2016)

There are many skills leading up to being a ‘data journalist’ or a ‘data scientist’. Just like any functioning company or organization, we need both soft and hard skills to make this happen. I am most fascinated with building ways we can add small, medium and large tasks/learning opportunities. This means convening and deputizing advocates as I go.

The Netherlands Red Cross and colleagues created this diagram of ‘the Humanitarian Data Scientist’. I think it is really the ‘Humanitarian Data Team’ as many of the skills rest in individuals across the organization.

Humanitarian Data Scientist

(Credit: Maartin van der Veen, 510, Netherlands Red Cross)

Evidence-Based Decision-making

The reason we are focused on data literacy is to get data ready. We aim to improve evidence-based decision-making. In parallel, many colleagues are working on technology solutions to connect all the various data elements by topic and region. Humanitarians are very mindful that people come before data. As danah boyd rightfully pointed out this week, we do need to be sure the machines meet our values with algorithm accountability.

Short Video (5 minutes): “Transparency ≠ Accountability” (article)

There is a mailing list for computer scientists driving this agenda: “fairness, accountability, and transparency in machine learning” (FATML) (click to join)

(photo credits: Heather Leson, CCby)

19Aug

Expats Watch The Hip

On Saturday night, the Tragically Hip will play its last show of the Man Machine Poem Tour. Gord Downie, the lead singer, is ill so it is expected to be the last show. All around Canada people are planning Tragically Hip listening parties. My social stream is full of memories, videos and plans. The Hip, as one dear friend pointed out, is the soundtrack of some of our lives. Canadian. It strikes the core of our quiet nationalism, understated but passionate. A Slate article helps explains it some. But over 30 years of life and music memories including of one of my favourites of Gord “swimming” on the Ontario Place rotating stage to “New Orleans is Sinking” (August 1991!). It is hard to explain or enumerate how the music just layered and supported our own stories. Thank you.

Click here to get listening options.

CLOSED For Hockey

Watching from afar

The CBC is broadcasting the show across radio, tv and youtube. I emailed them hoping that the livestream would not be blocked. They assured me that there is no geofencing, that stream is open for the world. You see, as an expat, we are already far away. Shared experiences become even more precious. The concert starts at 03:30am AST in Qatar. For a friend in Hong Kong, it is 5 hours ahead. Each of us plans to find a stream and watch. Our ‘Canadian’ family and friends are timezones away. Yet, we can participate thanks to the CBC, the band and, surely, the lawyers making it possible.

Saturday nights, in season, is always Hockey Night in Canada. This time the main show will be music. In 2010, Canada had a huge hockey game in the Winter Olympics. Literally, there were signs all over my Toronto neighbourhood. I took a picture and posted to Twitter that Neighbourhood, City and Country was Closed for Hockey. Across Canada people will have a large shared and in person time to watch the Hip. It will be well-known that this is happening. For those of us abroad, we’ll be online. Thank goodness for the internet to help connect us. If you see a sad expat Canadian on August 20/21, ask us about the show.

My thoughts are with the band, their friends and their families.

Time for some Courage. #homesick

(Images in the sign are from Noun Project. CCBY. The “x” is by Doejo and the “sign” is by Kate T. The sign was made with Canva.)

29Jun

What is in your Travel Go Bag?

There are many frequent travelers in my life. After yesterday’s incident at the Istanbul airport, I asked them what they have in their travel bags. (My thoughts are with the families and travelers affected by this horrible event.) As the night turned to morning, our collective list of items grew. One friend encouraged me to share it more widely so that others are prepared. While there may be many lists online, I am sharing because brilliant travelers in my network may have some new ideas for you. Frankly, I am going shopping this weekend to fill in some of my ‘go bag gaps.’

Traveling is better when you are prepared, especially with all the variables at play. Some of this won’t help in a crisis but maybe having a plan will keep things calmer:

Currency

Local Currency for destination
Currency for the stop-over
Back-up currency (eg. USD, Euro, Pounds)
Back up credit card, clear card for emergencies

There is no guarantee that the airport will have working ATMs. Plus, people can be targeted for thief at machines. After some fun traveling in Kenya (Bank cards would not work for some dumb reason), I try to carry USD to exchange in case of emergencies.

Supplies

spare medicine, ibuprofen
Bandaids
tensor bandage
paracord
metallic pen (glass breaker)
Bring a change of basic cloths (undergarments)
Have a ‘backup wallet’ with expired cards, pointless cards and small currency. (why – To give up if robbed.)
protein bars
water purification tablets, http://lifestraw.com/
Deck of cards
foldable water bottles (e.g. http://hydrapak.com )
antiviral face mask
nitrile gloves
a knifeless multitool
handwipes
PVC insulation tape
selection of cableties
pocket mask (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocket_mask)

Technology

headlight, flashlight
spare batteries
1 – 2 Working SIM cards with international roaming where ever you go
Backup phone
Global Charger
1 – 2 backup power chargers
charger(s) for my portable and mobile devices
offline map tools like OSMAnd

Habits

Contact your family/friends at each stopover, destination
Use social media at each stop. Some consider this a privacy risk, but then more people could help in case of an emergency so I default to posting just in case
Try to not check your bag. Pack light, pack smart.
Review the airport map before you go. Look like you ‘know’ where you are going. Chin up, no paper maps or travel guides
Have an emergency plan, share with your friends/family. Make sure they know all your flight details
Mediate on the plane on the tarmac. Be as calm as possible when you land
And keep spare money in your shoe or Bra
In some places, I keep a note in my bra with the address, emergency contact numbers.
paper copies of all your documents separate from the originals.
USB stick with passport and other documents copies
I also backup my computer’s data and carry the backup with me.
Comfortable shoes
Scarf- it is also a towel, a blanket
earplugs

Um, nitrile gloves and buttons as flashlights. Friends, you are amazing

18Sep

Infusing Ethics into Data Projects

Education, assistance and enforcement are needed to build better, ethically balanced data-driven projects. The Ethics of Data workshop on the Data lifecycle discussed ethical scenarios and key aspects of a data-driven project. This lead to many sticky notes and attempts to create the big asks and some outputs. The participants came from many different disciplines, which helped us quality check and inform our review.

Our group together created 3 asks for further review:

Resources: This should be a center online for people and NGOs to share and find guides on building ethical data driven projects.
Tool/Template: There should be a data risk/benefits/costs template as part of every grant application to build better ethical projects from front to back.
Review: Could there be a non-profit assistance group that provides free, consultation on ethical questions? How would they enforce standards? Could it be like a review board for research projects?

Milestones for an Ethical Data Project:

We created over 100 ideas and grouped them into categories as milestones. There should be checklists for each milestone including key questions for the team. While the EoD team started on the mini-ethical checklists, this really needs more iteration. We also highlighted some milestones that are often overlooked or underfunded such as: a data collection checklist, pilot, quality control, verification, documentation, secondary use and impact/monitoring & evaluation. One other observation in our conversations was proper project management skills to scope many of the ethical minefields in advance of the project pilot.

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Without trying to influence the room, the key project milestones resemble the toolkits we created at Ushahidi. Toolkits, including the Ushahidi one, do need to include more ethical statements/checklists to improve the success of building better projects. But, toolkits are only as useful as those who use and enforce them.

Infuse with Ethical Checklists

We gifted the Responsible Data Forum with a list of 70 questions, terms and ideas for the key milestones. If all the various milestones of a data-driven project are infused with ethical questions, checklists, and recommendations, this resource would be incredibly useful. Participants suggested that the checklists start with very generic items, but be broken out into topical domain recommendations/checklist items. This is to ensure adoption and remix in diverse fields from human rights to health to science. Some of the questions that really drove conversations included:
Data analysis: What do you do when your data analysis provides negative results (from your hypothesis)? Quality Control: Can the data be re-identified? Resourcing: Who can collect the data and why? Secondary data: What is the time horizon on the data and future use criteria?

Ethics of Data – Resource Center / Review Board:

One of the outputs of our first day of brainstorming was the need to have an Ethical Resource and Review Board. The team split off to debate the pros and cons of this idea. They even determined some of the needed services such as legal referral.

More resources:

The EofD team recreated a list of additional Ethics reading. It might keep you up all night with worry, but better to be ‘in the know’.

As well, here is a compilation on Domain-specific digital ethics, practices, and conventions. The one that really opened my mind was the Bellagio Framework: “Big Data, Communities and Ethical Resilience: A Framework for Action.” They provided criteria to consider: Governance, Place, Socio-Cultural Context, Science, and Technology.

Thank you

Thanks to our hosts at Stanford Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society (Kim Meredith, Lucy Bernholz, Rob Reich and Sam Spiewak) for making the Ethics of Data event possible. Thanks to my co-host Patrick Vinck of Harvard Humanitarian Initiative for great conversations. As always, Aspiration (Gunner and Misty) supported us with facilitation that inspired a collaborative and productive event for all. And, lastly, thank you to all the participants for being so thoughtful and inspiring teachers as we all trundle down this journey to bring better decision-making to all of our work.

(Note: It is my hope that we can infuse HOT with some of this work and trial some ideas in our work. I’ll be sharing it with my fellow Board members and the HOT Community.)

7Nov

Putting on our Training Hats!

You’re invited to a skillshare pre-conference day with fellow Crisismappers. The International Conference of CrisisMappers (ICCM) will be held November 18 – 22, 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. (About the full ICCM Conference.)

If you just want to attend the pre-conference training, you are very welcome! It is open to EVERYONE for a small fee ($50.00) paid to the ICCM conference. The trainers and speakers are local and national leaders. We hope you will join us at the ihub on Tuesday, November 19, 2013.

(Photo by Ushahidi)

See more ihub and Ushahidi pics

About the Training

ICCM Training Day will have 4 tracks: Mobile/Security, Maps, Data and Knowledge. Each track will have sub-sessions and directed training. Participants can elect to join in one whole track or pick the individual sessions within the tracks. The purpose of this to give more hands-on training and allow folks to learn/share in smaller groups.

This is our ICCM Pre-conference day Draft Schedule. (Note it will be updated in the coming days)
We will add more details about the sessions and the bios of the speakers/trainers here.

How can I join?

To Join you can sign up for the Crisismappers Network, then click “ICCM 2013″. There you will find details about the registration login.

If you have any outstanding questions, send a note to Heatherleson @ gmail DOT com with the subject line – ICCM Pre-Conference Help wanted. Then, complete the registration. If you have questions about the full conference – please contact melissa at crisismappers dot net.

Outreach help wanted

We have more space open for the pre-conference training, Can you reblog my post or tweet this to your local communities? The sessions will offer a breadth of knowledge and expertise from security to research to map and data. We know folks will want to dig in and learn.

TWEET ME:
Join @crisismappers Pre-conference training- Nairobi – Nov. 19th. All welcome. Please register. Details: http://bit.ly/17fSDeE

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Thanks a million to my fellow trainers, to ihub/ ihub research for hosting us and for Ushahidi (love you guys) for keeping us in food and drink!

22Oct

Global Community: the road to learning

For the past 3 years, I have focused on building global community via maps, hacks and data. The journey has introduced me to a number of communities plus I’ve been fortunate to lead efforts in a few great spaces.

For the past month, I’ve been head down at Open Knowledge Foundation working on the Open Data Partnership for Development project as well as learning all about Open Knowledge Foundations’ communities and networks. We have the amazing opportunity to activate everything from open data to open government to open science to open glam (galleries, libraries, archives and museums.) Having library training background, I’ve always thought that the Internet opens up large borderless communities, much like the old Mechanics Institutes*. It gives us a chance to connect with fellow leaders and support the unusual suspects who want to use new technologies to disrupt and activate change.

(Stools by Ai WeiWei)

Some might consider it a tall order to involve citizens and technology to activate change. I see it as an art. What if we looked at it differently? Many of us are focusing on building stuff and showing the potential of opening data, creating apps and convening at hackathons/sprints. Others are focused on analyzing our methods. Great! We need to have real-time analysis/research in all our projects. Giving evidence and showing impact is mandatory as we move forward. ABC: Always be communicating/changing. Some folks make a career out of highlighting the faults in the old systems and faults in attempts to use new technology to see the world and the information overload in a new way. Also, great. The truth is: None of us are getting it right, yet. But, we are trying.

Meeting, Making and Showing

In the next month, I am going on a whirlwind of meeting, making and showing. Each of these spaces involve communities of folks trying to use policy, information, maps, hacks, data and more to open up our world. It is a huge privilege to participate and learn. I’ll try to post some ‘Dispatches’ as I have done at previous events:

1. Mozilla Festival – London, UK October 25-27, 2013.
MozFest is a home for me. I’ve attended each of the fests including its predecessor (Drumbeat). Imagine rooms full of brilliance in everything from Open Hardware to Open News to Open Internet. My brain and heart will burst with happiness in seeing old friends and digging into learning while making stuff. There are few events that are this interactive. The Open Knowledge Team will be hosting a few sessions (Building collaboration across the open space and a Data Expedition)

2. Open Government Partnership Summit – London, UK October 29 – November 1, 2013
The OGP summit connects governments and civil society communities to discuss policy and demonstrate the latest actions by country, topic and movement. The Open Data Partnership for Development is focused on helping connect governments and civil society folks. My goal will be to meet others on this journey and see how I can help support their efforts. As well, the Open Knowledge Foundation team will be supporting the Civil Society Day.

3. International Conference of Crisis Mappers – Nairobi, Kenya November 18 – 22, 2013
The Crisis Mappers community is one of the most amazing ones that I’ve encountered. Each of us from business to open source to government and academic want to learn the best ways to use data, mobiles, informatics and maps to aid crisis response. We will meet for a week of training, ignite talks and collaboration/simulation. The opportunity to do this in Kenya is amazing. My heart remains in East Africa. Ushahidi was born there and has inspired so many of us to consider how citizens can and should be involved in the conversation. I’ll be running a full day training session with 4 tracks: Maps, data, mobile and knowledge. There are many community leaders helping out, including my colleague Michael Bauer of the School of Data.

I am really look forward to involving more people in each of these communities.

Here’s to amazing building and making. I am more than certain that the next weeks will shape the coming year and far beyond!

*On Mechanic’s Institutes: I had a membership at the Atwater Mechanic’s Institute in Montreal, Canada. I loved that I could use a library and get training. It is the way forward: we need to train a digital network of new leaders to use the power of technical skills to tell stories and use data/software to activate new ideas/change in their communities.

3Aug

Cameras as Evidence

(Cross-posted from the Ushahidi blog)

Deep in the mountains of Italy, Centro d’Ompio, we sat in a circle brainstorming Cameras as Evidence. What would it take to collect a good and actionable citizen report using photos or video? Lead by Chris Michael of Witness, we discussed and brainstormed. The Witness team and some of the participants have amazing experience in building human rights cases. Inspired by the beautiful setting for Info Activism Camp, we collectively pulled out all the stops to consider how we can help activists and citizen reporters create valuable and usable content for their mandates. While our session aim was not tool specific (e.g.Ushahidi), it remains very applicable for Ushahidians: our software, our community.

(Photo by Heather Leson, Venice Biennale. Art by Magdalena Campos-Pons)

3.0, Rich media content: Categories and custom forms

Some Ushahidi deployers use the power of rich media content, including video to give voice and document their projects. As we journey down the 3.0 road, we are thinking about how to improve.

The path to building 3.0 is very much considering how should categories be used and how can we make custom forms as flexible as possible. See our current discussion about the future of categories on the developers mailing list. This is a critical juncture, so you input will help us serve you better.

People are using both categories and custom forms to drive their data colletions missions. We’ve seen items that could be either a category or a custom form item. To be honest, I think that sometimes people use categories as work-around because custom forms have sometimes been buggy or are hard to use.

I will say that I am grappling with the different Ushahidi users – those who want to collect and analysis data and those who simply want to file a report. As you can imagine, this is a balance. Our community has discussed too many categories, very unclean/unclear data in the past.

If you are collecting videos and/or photos as part of an evidence-based project, here are some of the recommended data points to consider:

Title (useful)
Description
Location/GeoCode
Time and Date
Time point Highlights
Reference or corroborating information
License (use, consent, eg. creative commons)
Chain of Custody
visual geolocation (land marks)
clock, timeline, length
context – before and after
violations
weapons – materials
identification of people in footage, groups involved
other contextual videos
verbal information – context, language
security concerns
other filmakers
translator – references
timeline
details, serial #, clothes, id, tattoos, wounds
length of video
filmaker name and contact details
device details
surrounding scenes
locations of all involved
original video
bitrot – is it playable
posting information – all, originals, copies
missing clips, edited?
transcribed?
file format
resolution
frame rate
livestreaming?
who has it been sent to, who has the files, where to share and not to share
purpose of video? – eg. change situation, document, share, influence, action
Unique id
categorization by file
sound quality, notes about sound (eg. guns, shouting, tone)

Alright, that list makes me contemplate: how are we going to incorporate this without scaring off reporters? How can we make video useful as part of the map mandate?

What do you think? What is missing? Do you think we should have a suggested custom form for video reports?

Some resources

Ushahidi Toolkits
Witness Toolkits

Thanks to Tactical Tech Collective for bringing us together to collaborate.

26Jun

Camping with Info Activism

Lake Orta, Novara, Piedmont, Italy.

Eddie, the peacock, is in the courtyard at Centro d’ompio. We are eating breakfast and getting ready for another day of learning and sharing. I’m at Info Activism camp with 138 other folks from 48 countries. Participatory sessions range from Documentation, Curation, Investigation and Beautiful Troublemakers. I’ve joined documentation because I want to focus on storytelling with purpose. Afternoons are full of skillshares. So far I’ve been in a PGP and digital security learn-in as well as a Data cleanup workshop getting regex 101. Sublime Text and I are are now friends.

Every day I send the Tactical Tech’s Security in a Box to community members. I’m here to polish up and learn new skills to keep on that journey. Global events really inspire me. We, the beautiful troublemakers, work around the world to connect humans and tech for social good. It is sometimes lonely path, so these times that we are together are precious from sunrise to sunset.

5Jun

Personal Democracy Forum is 10!

Personal Democracy Forum is one of my favourite events of the year. Geeks and political savvy convene in NYC for this 2-day brain feast. Last year, I had the honour of being a Google PDF Fellow.

Why PDF?

PDF sessions, keynotes and, most importantly, the chance ‘lobby conference’ include a high caliber of local, national and global thinkers who are keen to discuss the intersections of politics and technology.

Meeting or reconnecting with bright minds who work in the global tech for good space, is one of the best parts of PDF. Ichi, one of the founders of sinsai.info (a crisismap in response to the triple disaster which affected Japan in 2010) is in town from Japan:

Hiroyasu Ichikawa with his Social Good Guide

Hiroyasu “Ichi” Ichikawa with his Social Good Guide

Talking with strangers is very much encouraged. You never know where it will lead. Last year over lunch, Meighan Stone and I had a long talk about changing the landscape of who can attend events. She went on to build GlobalXGood, which Ushahidi sponsored. Meighan truly felt passionate about this gap and made a huge difference by addressing it.

To summarize – have an idea, network with like minds, build it. I wonder if anyone has ever done a trackback on the power of connections related to PDF chance experiences. This is part of why I am so excited to attend and brain collide.

If you can’t be in NYC, you can watch the hashtag #PDF13 or the livestream. Check out the PDF agenda and don’t miss out.

See you soon! (Look for the bright red hair, if we haven’t met before.)

18Jun

Studying at Oxford

Everywhere I turn there is storied history and a sense of inspired education. For the next two weeks, I am a student at University of Oxford as part of the Annenberg-Oxford Media Policy Summer Institute.

The Institute has 30 participants from around the globe, many journalists, academics and a few civil society/NGOs. I’m completely inspired by their work already. We are each one of 1000 selected to share in this experience.

It did not really strike me that I was 1. studying at Oxford and 2. at Oxford until I walked by the Bodelian. I’ve been so engrossed with work (Election Hackathon and Open Internet of Things Assembly) that the shock set in walking down Turl Street. Then after reading the brochure, I realized that Harry Potter and Lawrence of Arabia have deep roots on these grounds. I imagine I will be able to explore at some point.

For now, back to braining!

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