This year’s second Open Tea event was extremely interesting, as, rather than merely sharing success stories, speakers were asked to present challenges they come across.
Lisette van ‘t Klooster and Maarten Oranje told us how Cordaid teaches local professionals to become data literate and challenged us to think about our own data literacy. Benjamin Dalmulder invited participants to present interesting cases to the Peace Tech Lab’s new Digital 100, a ‘think tank’ of technical data experts. Martijn Marijnis presented ICCO’s struggles and motivations behind a pilot programme using machine learning for automated data gathering as they look for new ways to detect food insecurity rather than costly door-to-door surveys. Finally, Judith Baart from Light for the World foundation posed the question: “How do we gather information about disability without using that word?” She challenged the audience to question their organisation’s inclusivity by performing a survey of function-based questions.
Audience participation presented some excellent opportunities for gathering new points of view and insight. Interesting discussions took place after the presentations and during the time for drinks and networking. We at Data4Development hope that valuable new connections have been made during the gathering so that we can continue to help each other to make data-informed decisions.
The four presentations of the event can be found here. Join D4D’s Meetup group of Data Professionals in the Development Sector to be the first one informed about new learning events.