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Data Academy: Close to Data And Far From the Academy

Data Academy Datathon 58Salma Hayek feared she was carrying childwith down syndrome Peter foley/epa salma hayek was warned that her then unborn daughter might have down syndrome, her husband revealed in court friday.After a difficult pregnancy, valentina was born syndrome free and healthy in sept.2007. Related stories salma hayek feared she was carrying child with down syndrome linda evangelista says zip as child support deal is signed and sealed supermodel linda evangelista and billionaire ex boyfriend francois henri pinault reach agreement in child support case supermodel linda evangelista’s ex flame francois henri pinault may be insanely wealthy, but he’s still a chump Hayek’s billionaire husband revealed his wife’s up till now private agony friday while testifying during his high stakes court battle over child support with supermodel linda evangelista. “She was having a very difficult pregnancy,”Francois henri pinault said of hayek. “In fact, we were told the baby had down syndrome until late may 2007. ” Pinault, who got evangelista pregant during a four month affair before he married hayek, was explaining in court the tricky timing. “I asked linda to delay the legal recognition process(Of son augustin)Until after the birth of valentina,”He said. “It was christian louboutin shoes uk a very difficult pregnancy.She almost lost the baby. ” Asked by evangelista’s lawyer whether she agreed, pinault answered”Yes. ” “Were you grateful? “Asked attorney william beslow. Hayek was not in the courtroom to hear her ordeal laid bare as evangelista presses pinault to cough up as much as $46, 000 a month in child support for 5 year old augustin. Evangelista is battling with francois henri pinault over child support for their son. (Susan watts/new york daily news) Valentina was born syndrome free and healthy in sept.2007 almost a year after Augie. The voluptuous actress, who became a mom at age 41, has spoken in the past about her difficult pregnancy, revealing that she suffered from gestational diabetes. But the frightening down syndrome warning which has christian louboutin mens lace upsprompted some parents to terminate their pregnancies is new. Evangelista, one of the world’s most famous faces, took the stand in manhattan family court later friday, dressed to do battle in a white pencil skirt and python christian louboutin stilettos paired with a matching cream colored chanel bag.She also wore a slate grey linen blouson jacket along with the same double cross pendant she wore the day before. On thursday, her lawyer claimed pinault told evangelista to get an abortion when she told him she was pregnant a claim pinault’s people hotly denied. Pinault also suggested that evangelista might have”Taken steps”To get pregnant and his lawyer called the supermodel’s decision to take him to court”A classic case of someone trying to bootstrap herself into disguised alimony. ” Evangelista, 46, who has graced more than 600 magazine magazines during her modeling career, says augie needs armed bodyguards and a round the clock nanny.She also wants pinault to provide their son a home on par with the $12 million california mansion he put in a trust for his now 4 year old valentina. While evangelista is said to be worth $8 million, pinault is the heir to a $11.5 billion family estate and presides over a fashion empire. Pinault, 49, also has two other children from a previous marriage. Editors’ picks gracie gold asked to prom by california teen:’You’re the only gold I see’ High school senior Dyer Pettijohn is the latest to post a YouTube prom proposal to a celebrity.The malibu teen put together an elaborate video asking the olympic figure skater to join him for the high school event on may 16. Ai weiwei brings controversial exhibit to brooklyn embattled chinese artist ai weiwei famous for his art denouncing his country’s oppressive government christian louboutin outlet is bringing his controversial works to the brooklyn museum for a new exhibition that will fill more than 13, 000 square feet of gallery space. Lisa kudrow loses $1.6M in lawsuit filed by ex manager The verdict is in and actress Lisa Kudrow has lost the legal battle with ex manager, Scott Howard.The santa monica court ruled in favor of howard on tuesday and ordered the former”Friends”Star to pay him his asking price of $1.6 million of her residual earnings from the NBC hit comedy. Why was brooke burke charvet replaced by erin andrews on ‘dwts’?Brooke burke charvet may have been fired because wasn’t hot enough for the male viewing audience, reports us weekly.The 42 year old tv personality held down her post on”Dancing with the stars”For seven years and is reportedly”In shock”About her abrupt exit and the entrance of erin andrews, 35. Pippa middleton talks about famous dress she wore at royal wedding pippa middleton has a sense of humor about the bridesmaid dress that made her a star.She discussed the famous gown she wore as her sister kate’s maid of honor at the 2011 royal wedding while speaking at a london dinner tuesday night, according to e! Editors’ picks kim kardashian dotes on north west at airport so sweet!Kim kardashian was spotted tuesday at jfk airport in new york getting ready to jet off to paris with her little teddy bear, north west. Muppet selfies kim kardashian does it.The pope does it.Even hillary clinton has snapped the occasional selfie before.So why shouldn’t the muppets get in on the action too? “Muppets most wanted”Heads to theaters march 21, but these hilarious instagram photos ought to tide you over until then. On the set of ‘Sharknado 2:The second one’ in new york ian ziering, tara reid and vivica a.Fox bite into their roles for the second”Sharknado”Movie. North west’s adorable baby album squeal!Forgive us while we fawn over north west who could quite possibly be the cutest baby in hollywood!Kim kardashian and kanye may cop a fair bit of criticism but they certainly got it right when it came to baby north.See her adorable baby album here.

In August 2014 we started a project called Data Academy. The goal was to teach transparency and accountability organizations in the region how best use data in their work. We embraced the learning by doing approach. Meet-ups and workshops we organized were tool-centric with a different tool and work methods chosen for each organization and data they had access to.

We first played with Bosnian elections data during the datathon meeting. World class experts on working with elections data came to Sarajevo and build this thing. They also got their brains around understanding what story (watch the film!) could be told with a smart use of all available data and a very complicated elections system it is organized within. The entire thing was overseen by the leader of the project – UG Zasto ne.

Later on, in December, we gathered a team of trainers and experts and thought about how to shape the rest of the workshops organized in the countries covered by the ACTION SEE Network, Zasto ne’s partners in crime. First one took part in Skopje, then we worked in Podgorica and Belgrade with a final workshop in Sarajevo. Each of the workshops lasted three-days and was lead by regional experts when it comes to the data topic.

 

The closure of the project was the Data Academy Datathon, a closing event of the POINT 4.0 Conference in Sarajevo on May 23-24. What is a datathon?

In this case Datathon stood for 1,5 days of intense work on whatever could be achieved with a help of specialists hanging out after the conference and staying there to help. I know that in every other case counting on people to simply stay around to support others’ work is a little naive. But in case of tech for good events it really works. And so does flexibility.

Every project achieved its own goals and was approached from a different angle.

Serbian team came to Sarajevo with data scraped, cleaned and refined with a focus on further developing data visualizations on the already existing site. Apart from polishing the code they focused on making their #dataviz work and implementing a little more of a storytelling approach there. One of the key-learnings there was that putting a site up doesn’t really mean that people will use it. Tech project is like every other project, no magic simply happens and you need to think it through: why do you want to do it, what is the behavioral change you’d like to achieve, how will you get there and then measure success. A good way of looking at it is this DIY toolkit on the theory of change. You want to see what they did? Here comes the github repository of the Serbian team code. The leader of the Sauza project, since this is how the site is called, is CRTA – a Center for Research Transparency and Accountability and the ACTION SEE member.

The Macedonian crew also followed a lead of an ACTION SEE member –Metamorphosis, but was composed by a team of social techies – accidental and not.The work here looked different. It wasn’t that much of a question about how to fit technology within the work and goals of a bigger organism. It was more about applying a project strategy to all the code and app related ideas. Macedonian team focused on creating a crowdsourcing app which evaluates few public toilets there are in Skopje. The tool is based on Open Street Map and uses open data on toilets locations. The tool will first create a hype around an issue and help gather the public support for the petition to build more public toilets and better maintain the existing ones. If the goal is achieved, the app will also serve as a guide for the government executing the change. Take a look at what the Macedonian team has up on Github and make sure to check out the graphic materials too!

Last, but not least: Montenegro. Again, what was done here is remarkable and looks completely different from what the other teams achieved. An enormous amount of data on PMs financial statements has been scraped, the most interesting data categories where identified so that this data could be cleaned and refined first. The team then looked at the data and tried to figure out what are the most interesting stories to be found out there and how. The entire documentation of how to clean the remaining chunks of data (as well as all the data available) is documented and well described. Since CDT – the Center for Democratic Transition might not have the capacity to further lead such a complex technology project, the next steps and the needed budget have been clearly defined thanks to the help of one of the project partners: the engine room. After working together with experts on designing and pushing the project through, the organization can now understand what is needed in the similar future endeavours and how to talk to public actors likely to take the project on.

The github repositories of the Data Academy project are to be found here. The project officially comes to an end in May 2015. Contact us if you have any further questions. We are happy to share our knowledge and help conduct similar data-driven projects in the future!

Data Academy is conducted by ACTION SEE network (Accountability, Technology and Institutional Openness Network in South-East Europe) composed by UG Zasto Ne from BiH, CRTA from Serbia, Metamorphosis Foundation from Macedonia and Center for Democratic Transition from Montenegro in partnership with Techsoup Europe. Among other regional projects we have collaborated on the truth-o-meter project, annual POINT conferences and most recently with TechSoup Europe’s www.communityboostr.orgprogram. Data Academy project along with the data-thon is supported by the US Embassy in Sarajevo.