I got a Creality Ender 3 printer for Christmas and have set myself to work to maake for myself a sick pair of shade.
Developed a Global Data Collection & Visualization Infrastructure
Innovation for Change is a global network for civil society organizations and activists campaigning to protect civic space. I built a data collection program that collects information about activities via WordPress, centralizes it, and visualizes it in real time using Tableau and Kumu.
Trained Activists and Campaigners on 2FA Digital Security
On behalf of Ragtag, I trained activists and campaigners at Spread the Vote, Activist Afternoons, and campaigns for office on how to use Two-Factor Authentication to protect themselves and their data online.
Spoke at University of Maryland: "Tools of Empathy and War"
I spoke at the University of Maryland on my research on Games for Peacebuilding. Specifically I looked at how games function, and how they can be applied to conflict resolution (and perpetuating conflict).
Volunteered as Data Analyst for Hurricane Florence Emergy Response Efforts
I volunteered with the Standby Task Force, a volunteer community dedicated to responding to disasters to support emergency response and recovery efforts. On one of the first nights of the storm I supported a crowdsourced data collection effort to determine the status for senior centers, hospitals, and other medical facilities.
Mycroft AI in a Book
I embedded Mycroft AI in a book box. For fun.
Built a Data-Scraping Skill for Mycroft
I developed a Python script for Mycroft that registers a vocal intent, looks up a website, and delivers a status update of the civic space of a country.
Developed a Social Media scraping Twitter Bot - using entirely free tools
@PeaceTechBot was developed for International Peace Day to share #peacetech articles. Written in Python, the bot reviews recent posts on Twitter and finds articles, maps conversations, and identifies key peacetech speakers on Twitter. Upon request, the bot visualizes ACLED data pulled from an API using MatPlotLib. The bot stores this information online in Google Sheets. The logo was developed using open source images and Pixlr editor. The bot runs on a Heroku free server.
Mapped Daycares and Childcare Centers in Northern Virginia
My wife and I have a one year old and are looking into childcare centers in Northern Virginia. I did a little research, found a list of facilities, cleaned it, prepared it, and visualized it. My findings? Childcare is expensive.
Published "Adventures in Civic Tech: Visualizing the Iraqi Budget"
Ran a Crowdfunding Campaign for a South Sudanese Peace Games Developer
I connected with Lula Mayen after seeing an article about his work in The Next Web. After reading that his goal was to attend GDC 2017, I organized a crowdfunding campaign with Global Game Jam to raise the funds to purchase Lual's plane ticket and hotels in San Fransisco. The campaign met its $2,500 in just over 24 hours. In the process I managed to convince Generosity that South Sudan and Sudan are, in fact, two different countries.
Hosted PTX Costa Rica
From February 8-10, my colleagues and I organized a PeaceTech Exchange on technology for transparency and accountability. 46 activists, journalists, and civil society representatives from across Central America and Mexico came to Costa Rica for a 3-day conference on data visualization, communication strategy, data collection and anonymous leaking.
Did the Graphic design for PeaceTech Exchange Costa Rica
Accepted into the Civic Tech Leadership Program
I've been accepted into the National Democratic Institute's Civic Tech Leadership Program. It's a seven-week competition, training program, and accelerator for civic-tech ideas, in which I'll be working to translate and propagate civic technology in Arabic.
Visualized Iraq's 2016 Budget
A visualization of Iraq's budget in 2016. Prior to this, the Iraq 2016 budget existed mainy as a scanned pdf copy of a paper document buried on a website. We turned it into a visualized, downloadable database. Translation by Waseem Ahmed, visualization by me. Our next goal is to publish it in Iraq.
Visualizing the budget only helped to reveal to me how much information is missing from Iraq's budget. The information only goes down to the Ministry level - it would be fantastic to get to the project level.
I ended up completing the Stanford Technology for Accountability Lab "with distinction."
Wrapped PTX Islamabad
September 30 to October 2 was PeaceTech Exchange: Islamabad, an event where PeaceTech Lab connected small peacebuilding non-profits based in Islamabad to low-cost, easy to use tech for their work on preventing radicalization and violence. I ended up training on engageSPARK and helping participants use SMS and IVR to communicate with their audiences.
Co-Founded the Peace Games Exchange Group
I and other participants from the Build Peace conference launched the Peace Games Exchange Group - a Google Group dedicated to sharing resources, news, and events around games for peacebuilding.
Visualized FBI Hate Crime Data
Data-based decision-making is important. This map was one of the visualizations I made of my research on violent extremism in the US, to help our team decide where to focus our efforts. The data is from the FBI's crime statistics from 2014.
Quoted in Cisco: Newsroom on PeaceTech
I was interviewed about the applications of technology to peacebuilding.
Launched the PeaceTech Wiki
This month I launched the PeaceTech Wiki, a free learning resource hosted by the PeaceTech Lab. The Wiki will be incorporated into the Lab's PeaceTech Exchange program as a way for peacebuilders around the world to learn more about the tools that apply to their work. Getting it up and running required installing MediaWiki on an AWS instance, integrating extensions like Semantic MediaWiki, fun stuff like logo design, and hard stuff like data structuring. It'll be a long process, but my goal is for the wiki to become a powerful tools database updated by technologists and peacebuilders alike.