Data Advocacy

Assuring the evidence used in your social change campaign engages rather than alienates. This training is for activists and advocates who want to integrate data into their campaign or improve the ability of their campaign data to engage their stakeholders. Overview Campaigns will only win when we capture the hearts […]

Effective Data Tactics in a Post-Fact World

2016 wasn’t all bad. Here at FabRiders, 2016 was a great year of learning. Every event and project that goes by we find ourselves building and sharing on a body of knowledge that is contributed to and enabled by a fantastic set of partners and allies. Despite all the setbacks faced last year, we are […]

Building a Better 2017

This is a day-long training that we’ve run in at least a dozen countries for a variety of individuals involved in social change at various levels of ‘data literacy.’  Big thanks to all the participants that have provided feedback, along with: School of Data for all their curriculum on data literacy, […]

A Data Strategy Workshop Curriculum

Introduction In 2015, FabRiders helped School of Data undertake its first research project to understand data literacy efforts around the world.  We published a series of blog posts on the School of Data website to share our findings. This is a repost of the Introduction, the links below will take you […]

Data Literacy Research Findings

2015 was a banner year for FabRiders. Here is what our current projects have us positioned to learn in 2016: We’ve explored hacking user centred design for social change efforts with the help of Aspiration and the International Budget Partnership.  Look for our next post in the FabBlog on designing tech projects that will engage your stakeholders. We’ve been […]

What We Will Learn in 2016

This was originally posted in the School of Data blog and was written by Mariel Garcia As we shared a few months back, School of Data is working on a research project to understand data literacy efforts around the world. We are using a framework which is informed by the principles of […]

Data Literacy Research Update

What are effective ways of achieving data literacy in social change? Who is doing what and how? How is this work being sustained? How is impact being determined? FabRiders is pleased to announce a new research project we are implementing for School of Data, exploring the intersection of data literacy and social […]

We are learning about ‘data literacy’

Why we did it By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. If you haven’t, please read the introduction to this series. Tactical Tech’s initial goal was to learn how use of technology can impact and improve the advocacy efforts of marginalised communities.  In this section, we will define ‘marginalisation’, […]

Leave Your Potatoes at Home, Pt I

What we learned By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater This series began with the post ‘Why We Did It‘, which provided background and context, including a definition of marginalisation, Tactical Tech’s objectives for the project and background on WNU and sex worker issues in Cambodia.  Our previous post […]

Leave Your Potatoes at Home, Pt. III

What we did By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. Our previous post ‘Why We Did It‘, provides background and context, including a definition of marginalisation, Tactical Tech’s objectives for the project and background on WNU and sex worker issues in Cambodia. In this post we provide details about […]

Leave Your Potatoes at Home, pt. II

Or ‘how to work with marginalised communities on using data and technology in advocacy’ By Maya Ganesh, Beatrice Martini and Dirk Slater. “You are welcome anytime, you’re not like others who come with their own bag of potatoes” It’s with these words that the chair of Women’s Network for Unity (WNU), […]

Leave Your Potatoes At Home, Intro

What is a data visualization? Data visualization is a visual representation of data that has been abstracted in some schematic form, meaning it has been put into a table, picture or diagram. A primary goal of data visualization is to communicate information clearly and efficiently to users. Effective visualization helps […]

Data Advocacy Essentials, Pt IV: FAQs on Visualising Data

Data Sources You have two options for finding data to use in your advocacy work: use existing data or collect it yourself.  Data that already exists has the benefit of not needing to be collected, but it may not be formatted, organised or aggregated in a way that is helpful.  […]

Data Advocacy Essentials Pt III: Data Sources

The data pipeline We are very grateful to the School of Data for their clear explanation on how the data pipeline works! Once you have a clear understanding of your data action cycle, stakeholders and targets, you can begin manipulating data. The process of working with data can be broken […]

Data Advocacy Essentials, Pt II: The Data Pipeline

What is data? How can we use it for advocacy? Advocacy is a process by which people, groups, networks and coalitions seek to bring about positive change by influencing policies, as well as the actions and opinions of others. In evidence based advocacy, facts in the form of data are […]

Data Advocacy Essentials, Pt I: Action Cycles and Stakeholders

I recently spent two days facilitating a workshop on how to evaluate the impact of data training and learning endeavors for Open Knowledge, several School of Data chapters and like minded organisations including DataKind UK,  SocialTIC from Mexico City, Code4SA from South Africa, and Metamorphosis from Macedonia.  At the end […]

What I’ve Learned about Impact Assessment

What is it like to bring over 100 individuals together in a room to talk about the issues surrounding ‘Follow the Money’ (FTM) and the impact that technology and data have on it? On January 21st and 22nd in Berlin, FabRiders was fortunate to be able to support the efforts […]

What I learned at #FTMTech

[print_link] Why maps? Because maps can take data about what has happened to individuals and instantly transform it into data about what is happening to a community. In our media-rich world, visual representations of data are well understood by most audiences. Maps are accessible. In today’s world of online services […]

What I’ve Learned about Maps

[print_link] Long before I got involved with the digital world, I learned an important lesson about privacy and anonymity, and about the kinds of security that are truly meaningful. This lesson had nothing to do with computers or the internet, but what I learned back then holds some valuable insights […]

What I’ve Learned about Privacy, Data & Digital Tools

This list of questions was derived during a session at the Responsible Data Forum in Oakland on March, 6th 2014. Our desire was to create a list of questions to ask yourself when working as an intermediary with marginalised communities. The answers you will come up with, might or might […]

Questions to Ask Frequently (QAFs) when working with Data and ...

A very special thanks to Lucy Chambers from Open Knowledge Foundation for inspiration, review and advice on this blog post. You can find Lucy on twitter @lucyfedia. Over the last two decades of helping advocates and activists use technologies more effectively, the use of data in campaigns has always been […]

What I’ve Learned about Data Advocacy