Perspective - September 12, 2018

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

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Press - July 30, 2018

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.

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Perspective - February 06, 2018

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

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Perspective - January 10, 2018

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

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Perspective - December 14, 2016

Ona: Years 0 to 3

We did a few visualizations about Ona’s first three years. Huzzah!

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Perspective - November 22, 2016

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.

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Perspective - August 23, 2016

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

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Perspective - August 03, 2015

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

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Perspective - July 09, 2015

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

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Perspective - May 08, 2015

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

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