The Civic Hacker Podcast

Caleb is an explorer of digital spaces and has researched and applied various technologies to address election violence, good governance, extremism and conflict mitigation. Being from Kenya, he has worked with different peace actors across Africa to respond to violent conflict applying digital tools. He has skills in social media monitoring, data, network and narrative analysis and community building. At Build Up, Caleb supports digital conflict programs, social media analysis and depolarization projects. He is also a faculty member at the United Nations Systems Staff college where he teaches a course on data analytics for sustaining peace. He also dedicates time to support community based organizations to develop infographics and data visualizations on development issues.

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David Corliss is the founder and Director of Peace-Work, an all-volunteer cooperative of statisticians and data scientists applying statistical methods to issue-driven advocacy in poverty, education, social justice, and providing analytic support for charitable groups. In his interview, David describes how Peace-work was born and then delves into the data protocol he developed for those in the human trafficking space, and discusses the impact that data analysis had on public policy during the Covid-19 pandemic.

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Melvin Anderson is the developer of a comprehensive SaaS/cloud based platform called ExploreSkillz that offers next generation career discovery apps and solutions. In his interview, Melvin explains ExploreSkillz's unique process of showing children a wide variety of career possibilities unknown to them, helping them develop and follow their individual passions in areas like movies, sports, influencers or brands. ExploreSkillz focuses primarily on helping children in HUD communities and donates their funds back to these communities to continue supporting economic projects.

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Flavio Azevedo covers many important topics, including open science vs. open scholarship, DEIA in academic research, the social justice lens on changing the norms and structures in science and science training, and what advocates and activists can bring into their practice from this work.

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Chris Fabian is the CEO and Co-founder of Resource Exploration. During his session, Chris speaks about personal experiences and how data can be used to help governments take informed actions to reduce harms that can result from budget decisions and prepare for future recession.

David Van Riper is the director of Spatial Analysis at the Institute of Social Research and Data Innovation at the University of Minnesota. During his session, David walks through how to get started with the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS), which provides historical and contemporary small-area census data and GIS mapping files for the United States. He also shows examples of how the data can be used to explore and expose social issues. 

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Darío García de Viedma and the team at Citibeats are using technology to help municipal decision-makers prevent and mitigate crises  by analyzing open source data with NLP algorithms. He led the design of the Social Indicators, thanks to an alliance with Princeton and NYU scholars. These are metrics, reported real-time, that measure deep feelings in society such as civic unrest, polarization, perception of inflation, empowerment, and distrust.

In this interview, Darío discusses ethical data collection and examples of how the use of NLP algorithms has demonstrated one powerful role technology can play in addressing societal challenges. 

This interview is also available in Spanish on our YouTube Channel.

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Jack Beck is the Founder and Executive Director of TurnOut, a nonprofit dedicated to mobilizing communities to power queer and trans movements. TurnOut works year-round to recruit volunteers, staff, and board members for queer and trans nonprofits, providing the training and support they need to maximize their impact in CA communities. In his interview, Jack shares his experiences starting a nonprofit, how their programs and offerings grew organically, their path to sustainability, and valuable lessons that he learned along the way about how to treat volunteers like the important assets they are. Links to info and resources:

This episode features the insight and wisdom of Alanna Irving, Executive Director of Open Collective Foundation and Chief Operating Officer of Open Collective, Inc. You will learn about the resources and support available for your initiative through the Open Collective platform, and hear an in-depth discussion about the benefits of joining a network of people and organizations with shared values and a vision for making the world better by leveraging tech to enable anyone, anywhere to work in solidarity with their community.

Links to info and resources:

• https://opencollective.foundation/

• https://www.oscollective.org/

• https://opencollective.com/

This episode features Samuel Singyangwe, the data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence, the Police Scorecard and co-founded Campaign Zero to advance data-driven solutions to end police violence in America. Samuel shares with us how he and a team of volunteers are gathering data to illuminate the extent of police violence in America, and the ways that we can utilize this data to make real changes within our communities.

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Today’s episode features a discussion with Deb Halliday who is a prominent community builder, writer, artist and a nationally recognized leader for multi sector collaborations. Through her firm Halliday and Associates, she regularly speaks with groups large and small about how we can work together in order to have a real impact on our communities and the lives we share. Deb shares some concepts, strategies and philosophies that can help us effectively share and use data to initiate social impact in important social welfare issues like housing, health and education.

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In today’s episode we connect with Andrew Means who is the founder of the Goodtech Fest conference, co-founder of Brighthive, senior Director for Global Impact Data Strategy at Salesforce.org, and founder of Data Analysts for Social Good. He shares with us what he has learned from dedicating his career towards developing data tools and technologies that help organizations improve their impact, and the ways that you can join him in achieving these goals.

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Support The Civic Hacker Podcast: https://opencollective.com/civichackers

This discussion features Jan Ainali, who served as the CEO of Wikimedia Sverige after co-founding the chapter and being its chairman. Besides his current project with Govdirectory he is also the co-founder of Wikimedians for Sustainable Development, a user group in the Wikimedia movement coordinating sustainability efforts across languages. In this episode, Jan shares his knowledge about Wikidata, how it underpins Govdirectory and his vision for the future impact of Wikidata and similar open data platforms on the world.

Links to info and resources:

Support Civic Hacker Podcast: https://opencollective.com/civichackers

Today we speak with Max Lynam who is the founder of isgood, an organization that he created to lead an intelligence revolution in the way we measure value. Max shares with us how he came to the work of impact measurement, and his vision for “AI Guided Social Impact” that uses thousands of indicators and millions of data points to enable outcomes that can only be achieved when we focus on what really matters.

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Today’s conversation is with Dr. Christina J. Colclough, founder of the Why Not Lab and co-creator of WeClock. She shares how they are working towards putting workers at the center of digital change. Christina works with unions, interest organizations and governments across the world on issues such as AI governance, workers' data rights and human rights, and the development of responsible digital technology.

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Today’s featured conversation is with Ricardo Miron who is an avid civic hacker, regular mentor and organizer of hackathons and a community leader at Microsoft, Future Lab. Ricardo discusses his role as Lead Project Manager at Codeando México, and their projects which focus on civic tech, open data, public policy and creating positive social impact in México and beyond. 

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In this special bonus episode, we are featuring a conversation between two phenomenal past Civic Hacker Summit speakers; they are Allen Hillery, data storyteller, instructor, and cofounder of Be Data Lit, an educational resource for data literacy advocates, and Samuel Sinyangwe, a data scientist and policy analyst who founded Mapping Police Violence and the Police Scorecard, and co-founded Campaign Zero, to advance data-driven solutions to end police violence in America.

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Today’s episode features a discussion with Kathy Cheng who is using data and technology to improve access to affordable housing. Kathy is the senior product manager for Exygy and has experience in early stage high growth startups, as well as digital agency work in sectors ranging from e-commerce to education to digital health. Today she shares with us the platform Bloom Housing by Exygy. We talk about how the platform is designed to improve access to affordable housing across jurisdictions, and its potential to spark changes in housing policy.

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Today’s episode features the founder of Karmalize, the world's first and only online directory of socially responsible businesses, searchable by social cause, and completely crowdsourced from people who care about making a better future. After a 30+ year career in the consulting, technology, and software industries, today’s guest, Rich Yap, turned in a corporate career for a different mission: to help people spread good karma by supporting socially responsible businesses. Rich takes us behind the scenes of building a tech product with a social impact mission as the focus, and shares lessons from his experience along with practical advice we can all use in our projects.

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The U.S. Census Bureau open data is a key ingredient in important civic tech projects and policy advocacy work. In this episode we get to hear directly from a Census Bureau expert, Lia Bolden, as she answers questions from the Civic Hacker Network members and demystifies the new data being released after the 2020 census.  Lia shares with us specific tools and features that make it easy to access the Census data so that we can utilize it in ways that create social impact within our communities.

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In this episode, you will listen to Matt Scott who leads storytelling at Project Drawdown which is the world’s leading climate solutions resource project. Matt is also the creator of inclusive impact storytelling project Let's Care, and the film 20’s and Change: San Francisco. He shares with us his expertise and exclusive knowledge that he has learned throughout his career in the digital space.

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Today we speak with Rachel Brown who is the Founder and Executive Director of Over Zero, an organization that merges research and practice to prevent identity-based violence and other forms of group-targeted harm. She shares with us how communication can be a weapon for identity based violence, and how Over Zero aims to counteract this harmful communication. Rachel also provides many strategies and resources that you can implement in your own life to combat hateful speech. 

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In today’s episode we get the opportunity to hear from Alexandra Pittman who is the founder and CEO of ImpactMapper and HERO Index. She shares with us how ImpactMapper facilitates change measurement for a variety of organizations by helping them to understand and effectively use both qualitative and quantitative data to support social causes in areas like gender equality, human rights and more.

In today's episode we hear from Hugo Seureau who is the CEO and co-founder of Essteem. We learn about their unique approach to hackathons that led to the invention of the “Equalithon”, as well as their mission; to connect people, start-ups, nonprofits and a variety of companies in the technology industry with the goal of improving business performance while simultaneously implementing specific strategies and tools that increase equality and inclusion within each workforce.

In today's episode we speak with Anthony Starks, an independent developer and designer interested in data visualization, combining Art+Code and building open-sourced tools such SVGo (SVG generation), deck/decksh, and dchart. He gives us empowering information on the ways that we can use data as a tool for advocacy, and advice and examples for those of you that are interested in building your own data tools and visualizations. We talk about his involvement in the data visualization community’s online initiative, the Du Bois Challenge, including how he reproduced all of the hand drawn Du Bois data portraits with his modern digital tools. Anthony reminds us of the context of Du Bois’s original work, and the importance of its lessons for us today as we wield modern data to push for change.

Links to info and resources:

VIDEO CLIP: https://civic-hackers.org/resources/art-code-and-black-data-stories-civic-hacker-podcast-season-2-episode-2/

society6.com/ajstarks 

Today’s conversation is with Allen Hillery who is the Co-Founder of Be Data Lit, a platform that promotes education for data literacy advocates, and a co-creator of the surprise data visualization sensation, the “DuBois Challenge”. He takes us behind the scenes of the challenge and leaves us with the clear message that data literacy is for everyone.

This episode is being released in January, which is Human Trafficking Awareness Month, so we are featuring a conversation from the original Civic Hacker Summit that focused on innovative tools designed to help law enforcement build cases against trafficking rings using data gleaned from the web. Civic Hacker Network Director, Lori McNeill, discusses the history, context and outcomes of a US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) program called Memex with then program manager, Wade Shen. Learn about this important approach to using technology to bolster law enforcement's ability to stop criminals engaged in heinous crimes of exploitation, and how you can help continue developing the open source products. 

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We recently hosted a webinar titled, “Impact Blockers: 4 mistakes standing between you and the change you want to see”. This BONUS EPISODE features the audio from that webinar.

If questions about the impact of your work make you feel like a deer stuck in headlights, you're not alone. So many people working to create change in their community aren't sure about whether or not they're getting the outcomes they want, at the scale that's needed. In this webinar, our director, Lori McNeill covered 4 mistakes that often lie at the root of shortcomings in a range of social impact initiatives, civic tech and tech-for-good products, non-profit programs, and even grassroots community projects. If you're ready to gain confidence in the impact and direction of your work, this episode is a must listen!

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Today's episode features a conversation with Rebecca Rumbul, Head of Research at mySociety, a U.K. based not-for-profit organization that helps people be active citizens using civic technology, research and data across 40 countries. mySociety’s research team seeks to discover what works — and what doesn’t — when it comes to civic technologies. In this conversation Rebecca shares some of her research observations and tips for how civic tech can be developed to make an in impact more in responsible and equitable ways.

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Learn more about mySociety's research at mysociety.org

For Episode 05 of the Civic Hacker Podcast, "AI for Good", we are featuring a conversation with Friederike Schüür to talk about how we can use data and AI for good, AI capabilities and ethics considerations, and some simple concepts that can help you make a bigger impact in your civic and social good projects. At the time of this recording, Friederike was a data scientist with the applied machine learning research firm, Fast Forward Labs. She walks us through some of the prototypes they built, and discusses what these apps reveal about the underlying data and algorithms.   

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This week we are joining in the international celebration of GIS technology by bringing you a very special GIS-focused talk from the Civic Hacker Summit Archives, "3 Questions You Can Answer With Maps".

This session was presented by Esther Needham, Project Manager on the Data Analytics team at Azavea, a certified B Corp that applies geospatial analytics, software, and research for positive civic, social, and environmental impact.

We have made the video of Azavea's presentation available to ALL Civic Hacker Network members (not just paid members) for a limited time: https://civic-hackers.org/2017-civic-hacker-summit-archive/esther-needham-and-patrick-han/

Go on over to our website Civic-hackers.org and sign up for your free membership to be able to access this video and SEE the awesome examples that the folks from Azavea were talking about.

Amy Bach founded Measures for Justice in 2011 as a follow-up to her acclaimed book Ordinary Injustice: How America Holds Court. The book won the 2010 Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and was succeeded by an Op-Ed piece in The New York Times titled Justice by the Numbers. In this episode of the Civic Hacker Podcast, hear more about this organization and their ambitious plans to collect and organize the criminal justice system data from all 3,000 U.S. counties, and make standardized metrics available to any and all users who may wish to access the information.

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How much do you know about how to get people experiencing homelessness into housing and connected with appropriate resources? In this episode of The Civic Hacker Podcast, hear inspiring details about the data-driven solution to homelessness being advanced by the Built for Zero program from Community Solutions. Their Deputy Director of Data and Performance Management takes us through Built for Zero’s process and how they're using a data-driven approach to end homelessness.

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