Tagged in Opinions

Perspective - March 13, 2020

Ona's COVID-19 Response

To do our part in slowing the spread of SARS-CoV-2, we are closing our Kenyan offices effective March 14th and initiating a mandatory work from home policy. As a company working in public health, we feel it is critical for us to begin the practice of social distancing to help reduce the impact of COVID-19 on our

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Perspective - September 13, 2019

Impostor Syndrome – A Silent Topic Among New Engineers

by Elly Starting out as a software engineer is not easy. Tech companies are competitive and keeping up with the ever-evolving technology is challenging. When I started at Ona as an intern, surrounded by smart people and high expectations, I began to have feelings of inadequacy. Which is why I’m sharing my experience with imposter

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Press - April 02, 2019

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

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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 - 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 - 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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