Marginalised Communities


In this talk I gave at TEDXEastEnd Salon on December 10th, 2015, I explore how my understanding of anonymity and privacy was formed during the HIV/AIDS crisis of the 1980’s and how since that time our sense of privacy has been manipulated by our use of new technologies. I also look at how […]

Privacy, new technologies and turning the tables on the state


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


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



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 ...


Grateful thanks to Heather Leson (@HeatherLeson) and Maya Ganesh (@mayameme) from Tactical Tech for their valuable insights and input into this blog post. I’m working with Eurasian Harm Reduction Network on a project addressing police violence against women who use drugs in Eastern Europe. The overall goal of this project […]

What I’ve Learned About Mapping Violence


I was recently in Kiev, for Tactical Studios, running a training on Social Media for the Eurasian Harm Reduction Network, GIZ and Deutsche AIDS-Hilfe. To be fair, not everyone in the training was a drug user – there were advocates from a variety of different marginalised communities that were being […]

What I Learned from Drug Users



Greenpeace is at a very interesting cross-roads, as it restructures to more nimbly shift resources to support campaigns in the global south.  The Digital Mobilisation Skill-share, which took place in the mountains outside of Barcelona and was run by Greenpeace’s Mobilisation Lab , exemplified an organisation that is trying to […]

What I learned at the Greenpeace Digital Mobilisation Skill-share #GPDMS


In November and December of 2012, I spent six weeks traveling to seven different countries on three different continents.  During this time, I facilitated at six different training/workshop events.  Since 1998, trainings have been a core part of what I do, but I am far from the perfect trainer (If […]

Lessons from the Road: Six Things I learned about Training