Maps, Data with the Knight Mozilla OpenNews Fellowship @ Ushahidi

In the global babelfish, maps and data activate the potential for human sense-making across borders and knowledge with any device. SMS, email, social media and sensors make it possible to collect knowledge, tell a different story or capture news tips or even sentiment. In keeping with this mission, Ushahidi is sharing a Knight Mozilla OpenNews Fellow with Internews. About the fellowship:

Ushahidi != a newsroom

Ushahidi is not a traditional workspace or even a newsroom. We have a number of software and hardware projects in the works. See our github repos and some of our product documents for Crowdmap, Swift River, SMSSync and Ushahidi 3.0 or Brck. Ushahidians live in New Zealand, Korea, Japan, Canada, United States (East/West), and Kenya. So, essentially, you can be online with us 24/7 coworking. Depending on the project, you may need to time shift.

Fellowship of the Map

One of our core goals is to connect citizen voices to action. Sometimes this makes us professional tinkers, but it also means that you can dive in into data and maps from around the world on various topics from crisis response, election monitoring or civil society communities like anti-corruption or anti-harassment or environmental action. Curating citizen data with layers of open or sensor data can unlock more interactive news. Map projects that are most successful have a strong data plan. Brisbane Storm (Australia, government) and Krizovamapa (Czech Republic, news channel) both had programs tied to traditional institutions. Uchaguzi was an election monitoring map project built by Ushahidi, partners and strong community participation. All three very different projects included additional ways to visualize data and analyze the story in near real-time. We aim to made this more seamless for journalists and citizen groups.

Choose your own Adventure

We are big scifi geeks at Ushahidi. This is demonstrated by our map tracking our reading habits. Being a Knight Mozilla Fellow with us means you could potentially be working on map focused API hacking or Data Dives. You are in charge to choose your path. But hold onto your hat, we move fast and expect tech chops with a smile. This summer we have been collaborating with the Data Science for Social Good Fellows to test machine learning for human rights tools. The team interviewed staff and community members, then, scoured datasets and built out tests. The experience has been highly interactive with much freedom for the fellows to explore. Plus, Ushahidi has learned from them - we love this! In the next 6 months, we will have full APIs available for new Crowdmap and Ushahidi 3.x. We see the role of the OpenNews Fellow as a chance to discover and create. Apply to be an Knight Mozilla Open New Fellow by August 17, 2013.