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
Ona: Years 0 to 3
We did a few visualizations about Ona’s first three years. Huzzah!
Ona Mannequin Challenge
Mannequin challenge? Yes please! The Ona team took a break from all the hard engineering work to join in on the mannequin challenge.
My Summer Experience at Ona
Mekdim Ashebo is a junior at Harvard University who joined Ona as a software engineering intern. In this interview, Mek tells us about his experience at Ona, his projects and what he enjoyed about Nairobi. Mek sits at the center of attention on his last day. What projects were you involved in at Ona? The core
My Two Month Internship at Ona Kenya
by Anne The Application Process My journey towards working with Ona was a systematic. It began with wise counsel from a former lecturer. His advice was quite simple: “If you trust your programming skills, you can apply for the jobs at Ona. Female candidates are encouraged to apply”. It was both thrilling and unnerving considering the
The Perfect Kenyan Chapo
The Ona team convenes at Dickson’s home to learn the art of making chapo. Recipe and photos below. The Golden Ticket Since my first lunch in Nairobi, Dickson has insisted that all restaurant chapatis pale in comparison to his mother’s recipe. Here’s how every lunch would go when I’m in town: “This is great!” I’d
Small Data helps Big Data solve Big Problems
A recent article in the New York Times describes how organizations are using small survey based datasets to enrich the big data sets that usually get all the hype. Alex Peysakhovich and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz argue that survey data goes hand in hand with big data: Big data in the form of behaviors and small data in the