Zara Rahman

I was in Buenos Aires over the past couple of weeks as part of a project I’m working on looking at citizen-generated data - essentially, datasets, whether qualitative or quantitative, that are actively contributed to by individual people.

Last week saw almost 5000 people converge on an old brick making factory just outside of Berlin, for the Chaos Communication Camp.

The third full episode of Collusion is online!

This week, I had the pleasure of attending and talking at the mind-blowing Chaos Communication Camp.

Today in Dhaka, Niloy Chakrabarti, or “Niloy-Neel” as he was known online, was murdered in his home.

A couple of weeks ago I was invited to speak at Datengarten, the Chaos Computer Club Berlin’s (CCCB) monthly meet up.

Hidden in the darkest and deepest corners of the web are secrets beyond what most of us would believe possible.

The second episode of Collusion is now up, focusing on the theme of water.

Last week, I was invited for an interview with Civic Radio.

Algorithms.

Facebook controls our Newsfeed- what we see, what we don’t, and we have little idea how it works.

Last week, I took part in a debate on the role of big data in development, at re:publica here in Berlin.

The first full episode of the new podcast I’m co-presenting and researching, Collusion, is now up, and you can listen directly below: Doing the research for this was incredibly interesting, and so just in case other people want to know what sources we drew

In the days since the tragic earthquake in Nepal, various forms of assistance have been offered from governments, charities, humanitarian response organisations, and by for-profit technology companies, whose reach and influence is bigger than ever before.

Last week, I attended the International Journalism Festival in Perugia.

I’m very excited to announce that together with Luiza Prado, I’ll be co-hosting a new monthly podcast exploring the relationship between power and technology.

The Syrian conflict is one of the worst tragedies of our time, and now, unlike during many tragedies of years gone by, now we have new ways of telling those stories in real time, reaching people who might be geographically far away, but who could (perhaps…

Last week, I took part in a workshop discussing “Impact Assessment for Data training”, with a number of different practitioners working on some aspect of improving data literacy in their communities.

I’ve noticed two somewhat distinct schools of thought, or action, around asserting digital rights online.

This weekend was the Art and Feminism Wikipedia Editathon- a campaign to improve coverage of women and the arts on Wikipedia.

The Responsible Data in Humanitarian Response meeting held last week in The Hague gave me a lot of food for thought; below, I’ve tried to summarise what my main learnings from the two days were.

Last week, I joined the Responsible Data for Humanitarian Response meeting in The Hague, where I had the pleasure of moderating a session on civic data streams, as well as talking about the International Aid Transparency Initiative process, together with…

Yesterday, I gave a talk at the Stiftung Neue Verantwortung here in Berlin, about the work I’ve been doing looking into how data is being used in international development.

This post is being updated with more links/corrections on an ongoing basis!

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about how civic tech tools need to be “less shiny, and more useful”.

I’ve been trying recently to think about the things I’m most interested in, and I realised that with regards to technology, there are a few terms that come to mind: civic technology, data journalism, and Information Communication Technologies for Developm…

This week, I had the pleasure of joining a group of about 100 people working on topics around ‘following the money’ at a two day workshop in Berlin.

The last few weeks have seen growing protests “against Islam” across Germany, which made me feel surprisingly uncomfortable here in Berlin - until I saw how willing and supportive Berliners were against such discriminatory, fascist behaviour.

My head is still spinning a little after returning from my first visit to the Chaos Communication Congress, aka 31C3, with the assigned motto ‘A New Dawn.’

There are so many talks up online from the Chaos Communication Congress that it can be a little hard to know where to start watching.

Full list of books I read at the bottom of this post!

Part two of a few of my favourite things from 2014, (see here for Part 1); this time Feminism, Diversity + Inclusivity, Bangladesh, and All-women lists.

Here are a few bits and pieces that I discovered this year and enjoyed especially.

All year, I’ve been keeping a custom Twitter timeline of cool acts of feminism that are happening in the ‘majority world’ - ie. low-income countries.

Earlier this weekend, I came across this reddit post, entitled ‘Being a black woman in Berlin’.

Band Aid 30.

I’ve spent the past week at the OGP Americas summit, in San Jose, Costa Rica.

One of my favourite things to do while travelling is to read a fictional novel set in the place I’m travelling in.

I just came across Josh Stearn’s post, Five Kinds of Listening for Newsrooms and Communities.

Hedy Lamarr, co-inventor of an early technique for frequency hopping, which was the predecessor for wireless communications, was born 100 years ago today.

Within international development and elsewhere, organisations are moving towards “evidence-based decision making”, or “data-driven” decision making, as a step towards more responsible and effective development programming.

I’ve been meaning to migrate my blog off Tumblr for a while now, and on to Github pages.

A couple of weeks ago, I had the chance to sit down with a few fabulous ladies who work in international development, to ask them about their experiences as feminists within their sector, and also their opinions on the role of feminism within global devel…

I’ve just spent the weekend at AdaCamp, a two day event aimed at increasing women’s participation in open technology and culture.

Last week, I took part in a 'booksprint', which involved bringing together a group of people from different disciplines, to collaboratively write a book from start to finish in just three days.

I woke up this morning to see this post by Jillian York, “Courage – it’s not just for white men”.

Across the global development sector, the idea of opening up data and becoming more transparent is taking hold.

A couple of weeks ago, one of my best friends handed in her PhD, in geology, and the TLD .rocks went on sale.

Yesterday, I went to a fantastic wedding.

On Monday, I co-presented a short show on Berlin Community Radio, with my friend Kate McCurdy, on a topic that has been fascinating us for a little while now – feminist science fiction.