Low-Income Data Diaries - How "Low-Tech" Data Experiences Can Inspire Accessible Data Skills and Tool Design

How would you communicate a data visualisation through radio or remotely teach data journalism to a team of freelance journalists with access to 1GB RAM laptops and spotty internet? How does a civic technologist without access to a credit card get access to cloud services for her community contracts monitoring app? How do you explain the importance of data privacy to a community of farmers who could not complete basic school. [Hopefully in 2020], most people will not deny the transformative power of data literacy in the digital age. Whether you’re a journalist, a business owner, a government official, an activist, a researcher or a student, knowing how to access the right data, transform them into information and leverage its insights for decision-making and action has become a life skill. Take a journey with me as we travel to and alongside several data community members working in low-income context and hear experiences of how their “low-tech” (LOW-TECHnical knowledge and LOW-TECHnological tools/resources) contexts, are elevating and challenging gaps in the current data community and driving opportunities to rethink and shape how the data community can make data skills and tools accessible to more.