Workshops

Designed for policy makers, development practitioners and statistical teams wanting to understand and learn how to leverage big data as they work towards achieving a more sustainable world.

About

Designed for professionals interested in taking a more active role in defining how data can help drive social progress. Covering both technical and public policy perspectives, these workshops aim at helping individuals and institutions become agents of positive social change using data in ways that reflect and promote core ethical principles of equity and empowerment.

Through our capacity-building workshops, participants will understand the main opportunities and challenges related to the use of Big Data; how it can support evidence/based policy making;, and how to advocate for its use in development interventions. Finally, technical-background participants will be introduced to data science methods and tools required to work with non-traditional sources of information, such as satellite images, call detail records (CDRs), bank transactional data, or web derived data.

Our training offer

Introductory workshops

Aimed at professionals working in sustainable development related areas, with little to no experience with Big Data, this workshop will better equip attendees with an understanding of the field, methods, opportunities and challenges of Big Data.

Technical workshops

Aimed at professionals who have a role in defining how data can drive social progress from a technical perspective, these workshops will introduce attendees to the skills needed to work with non-traditional sources of information and to the main challenges they present.

Past workshops

The workshop series

a) "Leveraging Big Data for Sustainable Development"

With the United Nations System Staff College (UNSSC)

Carried on in partnership with UNSSC, this series of courses aimed to help practitioners and policy-makers to develop and implement Big Data innovation projects, policies, and partnerships in support of sustainable development objectives. The workshops were delivered in Cambridge at MIT (June 2016), Bogotá (December 2016) and Nairobi (June 2017), Dakar (March 2018), Bangkok (March 2018) and the MIT Media Lab (October 2018).

b) "Big Data and the Digital Economy"

With the Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (UNECLAC) 

In partnership with UNECLAC, we offered a series of workshops more squarely focused on Big Data and the Digital Economy in the Latin American and the Caribbean region for UN and governmental staff and civil society members. Five editions were delivered in: Santiago de Chile (March 2016), São Paulo (September 2017), Mexico City (October 2017), Santo Domingo (April 2019), and Bogotá (May 2019).