Joining our solutions team: My time at Ona so far
by Bilhah Ona staff having lunch on the kitchen island Every day at Ona presents a new learning opportunity — more so when working in the Client Solutions and Support team. Working on this team has greatly contributed to my learning of the Ona system, since clients bring up issues and requests that require a
A Dive into The World of Data at Ona
by Husna It’s been an engaging and enlightening week. I came into the Ona offices certain that the internship would demand from me nothing short of diligence and strong work ethics. But I did not expect that to be the case from my first day. I expected a day of orientation, but that lasted for
My Journey in Functional Programming at Ona
by Racheal Day one If someone told me last year I would be doing a different programming language in 2019, I would have shrugged it off. I had no prior experience with Functional Programming before I joined Ona. Yes! You heard me right, this was a completely new concept to me coming from an Object
Ona featured on the Code Louder Podcast
Just posted yesterday, checkout our podcast interview with Code Louder. In this episode, we talk with Dickson Ukang’a, co-founder and head of engineering at Ona, at their office in Nairobi. Ona is building a platform for smart data collection and analysis to enable governments and development organizations to make data-driven decisions. We discuss working with geographic
Presenting on Machine Learning for Healthcare at the Royal Academy of Engineers
This past week we were in Vietnam for the Royal Academy of Engineers Frontiers of Development symposium, which is brought together engineering leaders in academia and industry to solve global development issues. I presented on ways to re-think how we can utilize machine learning and engineering in low and middle income countries to create more
2018 Retreat + A New Mission + Ona is 5 Years Old
Last week, our team spent three days in beautiful Watamu, Kenya for the annual company retreat. We took stock of our first five years and also spent a good deal of time planning for 2019 and beyond. Here are some highlights: A New Mission CEO Matt Berg unveiled the new company mission: “Ensure equitable access to
Reflecting On My Internship Experience
by Davis Internships: a chance for university students to sit at desks doing menial tasks that contribute close to nothing while watching professionals work on meaningful projects. This was my initial thinking coming into Ona — I did not expect my experience interning to be anything memorable. However, I’m glad my experience was the opposite
Ona On The Data Engineering Podcast
I was recently interviewed by Tobias Macey for the Data Engineering Podcast, the podcast about modern data management. We talked about the history of Ona and some of the technical challenges we’ve had to address to build global data collection platforms in humanitarian, international development, and global health verticals. You can check it out below.
Kenneth Ponders His Time as an Ona Intern
Kenneth joined us three months ago as our youngest ever intern. In this post, he writes about getting a sense of what being a software engineer at Ona is all about. Prologue When I got an email from Ona inviting me for an interview, I couldn’t believe my luck. Though I just finished a full-time
Applying the Principles for Digital Development to Data Platforms
In Streaming Ona Data with NiFi, Kafka, Druid, and Superset, we went into detail on our technical approach to building a streaming data architecture, yet we skipped over why this is important. Simply put, we think the widespread practice of building custom software solutions in international development is a waste of time and money. This isn’t