Schalk Venter and Lailah Ryklief speaks to Adi Eyal, CEO of Cape Town based civic tech non-profit, OpenUp (https://openup.org.za/).

We talk about the following topics:

- Adi's journey from his time as a data manager in a project that cataloged medicine prices in Southern Africa, to the Open Data and Democracy Initiative, and finally his current endeavors into the field of civic technology. 

- That it is not enough merely to open and share data with the public. We, as technologists, need to build (and drive demand for) tooling that makes use of the data and exposes it to the wider public.

- The importance of relationship-building (bringing a human face to technology) in order to identify and understand what civic/social issues on the ground can be addressed with technology.

- The value of civic technology is not only in the building of tooling with technology, but also the sharing of software development methodologies (like Agile and Lean) with civil society and the civil service realm.

- One can not anticipate how open data and tooling around open data will be used, when we're building projects we need to ready ourselves to be suprised.

- How can we make the field of civic technology more accessible. What are ways of getting more non-tech individuals excited and involved in civic technology?

Mentioned in discussion:
- Civic Technology: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civic_technology
- Coding for Democracy: https://blog.okfn.org/2012/08/16/the-very-first-open-data-and-democracy-initiative-hackathon-south-africa/
- Parliamentary Monitoring Group: https://pmg.org.za/
- MFMA Mirror: https://mfmamirror.github.io/
- Open By-laws: https://openbylaws.org.za/
- Medicine Price Registry: https://mpr.code4sa.org/
- Equal Education: https://equaleducation.org.za/

codebridge

Civic Technology, Open Data and Democracy with Adi Eyal

Schalk Venter and Lailah Ryklief speaks to Codebridge community member and University of Cape Town HIV researcher, Colin Anthony.

We talk about the following topics:

- Colin's self-taught journey from a background in genetics and medical biochemistry into the world of the command line, programming and the Python language.

- The importance of transforming complex research data into visualisations that aid interpretation.

- How learning to code transformed the types of questions that Colin asks, and is able to ask, in his research?

- How Colin applied his professional data visualisation skillset to contribute to volunteer-driven tooling that helps make sense of the state of sexual and domestic violence in South Africa.

- The conceptualisation of the tool, called Seeking Shelter (https://codebridge-za.github.io/seeking-shelter/), at a Women's Day Codebridge event.

- How the volunteer-driven team behind Seeking Shelter works with NGOs like the Heinrich Böll Foundation in order to identify how technology can be used to address needs at the grassroots level.

- How best can we harness the internet, as a tool that easily helps us propagate information, in order to make certain aspects of modern civil life more accessible?

- Lailah mentions how ubiquitous the legal system is in a current day democracy like South Africa, and how those employing technology for social good should seek to empower themselves with foundational legal/civic knowledge (often self-taught).

- Someone quotes Uncle Ben: "With great power comes great responsibility"

- If you want to do something meaningful/impactful with technology you need to immerse yourself in the subject matter that your work touches on - we can not be single domain experts.

- An acknowledgement that we are humbly called not to be domain experts when working in the world of civic-tech but the best facilitators/contributors that we can be.

Mentioned in discussion:
- Seeking Shelter Project: https://codebridge-za.github.io/seeking-shelter/
- Seeking Shelter Github repository: https://github.com/codebridge-za/seeking-shelter
- Visualizing Viral Evolution talk by Colin: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1EuymjA48zn0wWoyRA-lW2t12LyzivaWZ/view
- Women's Shelter Movement: http://wcwsm.org.za/
- Article by contributor on Seeking Shelter project: http://www.leadsa.co.za/articles/293218/study-shows-how-shelters-save-women-s-lives
- Cape Diff: https://cape-diff.gitlab.io
- Civic Tech Book: https://www.civictechs.com/
- Vulekamali (project for National Treasury): https://vulekamali.gov.za/

Tech against HIV and Domestic Violence with Colin Anthony

Codebridge is an open community at the intersection of technology and social change in South Africa.

Through these audio discussions we hope to unpack how our collective interest in technology and social change can be used to serve local communities and explore alternate ways of addressing South African social problems.

Codebridge Community