Aidnography

Hi all, Your Friday and weekend deserve some new, critical reading suggestions! Development news on Thomas Friedman’s ‘just ask two people’ journalism; Barbie Savior is fun-so what? @UN is slowly catching up on social media discussions; a new short documentary to ‘Kick at the Darkness’ of aid worker stress; advocating against ‘conflict minerals’-it’s complicated; EdTech in Africa under neoliberal conditions; ICT4D and the absence of ‘the poor’; inside the development innovation machine; Nepal misses yet another opportunity to recover from crisis; Our digital lives on designing tech not just for men; the ‘polite’ open data movement is often politely ignored; video advocacy as evidence. Academia : Feminist hacking & Making and a critical look at the ‘slow professor’ manifesto. Enjoy! New from aidnography A former ‘frustrated senior aid official’ talks-and the Daily Mail is happy to spin a story of waste and lying bureaucrats But the question is whether talking to an outlet like t...

As part of my engagement with popular and public (re)presentation of development issues, I have commented throughout the years on how mainstream media, e.g. CNN , NYT , BBC , the SUN , Oprah Magazine or Globe & Mail report aid-related topics and what we can learn from these shortcomings for development communication. Kilian Kleinschmidt, a self-confessed ‘frustrated senior aid official’ recently spoke to the Daily Mail and the result is an interesting case study and teachable moment for those interested in communication for and about development: UN refugee camp chief: We wasted millions. Why? Because - reveals whistleblower in a stunning admission - we were obsessed by photos of stars in our T-shirts The headline is probably algorithmically enhanced and not meant to win a Pulitzer prize, but it creates a nice causal chain around the issues at hand; it seems to be about the ‘UN’, ‘waste’ and ‘stars’ in T-shirts , stuff conservative news media’s anti-development dreams are m...

Hi all, After a busy week of teaching, blogging and ranting about #allmalepanels let's enjoy the new week with fresh food for thought! Development news features a great think-piece on how empowerment became a product for women to buy; more input for the World Humanitarian Summit; special ICT4D section feat open data challenges, hashtag fails, challenging platform capitalism & the story behind hacking Hacking Team; Our digital lives with a new Twitter tracking app; Etsy's struggle to be a perfect marketplace; how Instagram is ruining vacations (and soon development communication?). New readings including new open access book on Africa; handbook for modern development data peeps; using useful evidence & the bottom of the data pyramid. Finally, in Academia a look at a new MOOC study on job skills and MOOC users in developing countries. Enjoy! New from aidnography Keep uploading papers to ResearchGate so its founder can pursue his beach volleyball ambitions There i...

At least my tweet on the recent high-level World Bank Global Infrastructure Forum 2016 made it into the top 5 tweets for the hashtag #investininfra: Nothing says "inclusive #globaldev " clearer than a quasi- #allmalepanel @WorldBank on #InvestInInfra feat 11 suits pic.twitter.com/893qo9GQzC — Tobias Denskus (@aidnography) April 16, 2016 But #allmalepanel tweets (or quasi-#allmalepanels as Zeinab Badawi moderated the event) are about more than just pointing out the fact that 11 men dominated the stage at this particular event. #allmalepanels as communication challenges Let’s put it very bluntly: The more men are in a group shot, the worse it looks; if you are organizing an event or communicate about it make sure you actually avoid the group photo; break up panels, add a female moderator, make sure at least one men does not wear a dark suit and tie. This is window-dressing, absolutely, but at least you may be able to mitigate short-term social media comm...

It is an interesting coincidence that just as I am finishing Dan Lyons’ book Disrupted-My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble ( review in the New York Times , my own to follow soon), the German tech blog t3n published a ‘day in the life of…’ portrait of ResearchGate founder Ijad Madisch . In case you do not read German: ‘ Bill Gates ’ golden boy ’ s ’ day consists of talking to investors, exercising, attending a few meetings, talking to journalists and playing sports-both live and in front of his PlayStation -before talking to investors again… As I said, I really enjoyed reading Dan Lyons book and I am sure that there is a bit of HubSpot in most digital economy companies and the portrait of Ijad Madisch is not exactly over-the-top crazy-founders can simply survive on very few hours of sleep and lots of exercise… But there is a particular reason why this story caught my attention: Madisch never mentions the people who work for him in the entire article. No, I do not mean his hip B...

Hi all, Time for some fresh reading recommendations for the upcoming weekend! Development news on exploitative immer sive experiences; why you should be smarter than becoming a volountourist in Nepal; parachute research & public health emergencies; Urban education heroes, Teach for America’s top-down management & Habitat for Humanity’s gentrification venture in NYC-3 stories from the U.S. about ‘development’; safe & meaningful participation of girls at the decision-making table; more on expat pay; Our digital lives with new research on why filter bubbles may not matter; Academia with a reading list on critical algorithm studies for nerds; the ethics of using hacked data for your research. Enjoy! New from aidnography How great development discussions look like on facebook - Build Africa’s “Time Machine” video edition There is always space for more snark, memes, satire or ironic commentary on development-related topics, so it is worth documenting a great teachable mom...