Me |

Responsible AI in RSE - a living register to support practitioners, leaders and policymakers

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Note

This collaborative post was originally published at the and was authored by some of the Responsible AI Study Group members: Joseph Shingleton, Carlos Cámara-Menoyo, Oscar Seip, Stephan Druskat, Sam Harrison, Arielle Bennett and B. Almarzouq.

The research software community is nothing if not diverse. It brings together practitioners loosely connected by their relationship with the broad and sometimes nebulous idea of ‘research software’. The day-to-day experience of, say, an engineer developing and maintaining computational fluid dynamics simulations is very different from that of a data architect supporting clinical data pipelines. It is unsurprising, then, that this diversity of experience gives rise to a wide range of hopes, concerns, and uncertainties - particularly within the context of Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI).

Research software’s rich diversity of experience is explicitly recognised in the Alliance for Data Science and AI’s (ADSA) and US-RSE’s recent community in the RSE workplace:

“The conversation around software engineering in the age of GenAI has […] left relatively little space for nuanced discussions of […] the complexities of developing research software in a future where GenAI is widely available.”

The nuance and complexity identified by ADSA make the development of GenAI guidance and policy particularly challenging. In the context of a highly diverse, reactive, and evolving discipline like research software engineering, there is no “one-size-fits-all” approach to GenAI governance. Rather, we must develop systems that capture the nuanced and shifting concerns of practitioners, leaders, funders and other stakeholders; systems that can also act as an evolving reference for best practice. The (RAIRR) is intended as one such system.

RAIRR is a living register designed to support open discussion of how GenAI adoption is affecting research software practice. It allows contributors to document risks identified in their day-to-day work, alongside possible mitigations, examples, and shared responsibility for responding to them. We expect the register to become a useful resource to inform the development of AI policies that are grounded in the actual experience of RSE practitioners, rather than hype, promises, expectations or unfounded fears. RAIRR is open for anyone to use and contribute to, being particularly relevant to practitioners, leaders and policymakers.

Pilot and technical implementation

We introduced RAIRR at the as an opportunity to test the idea in practice. Working in small groups, attendees were asked to identify the ways in which GenAI adoption might lead to harm, failure, or undesirable outcomes in their professional work. Crucially, they were also asked to consider valid approaches to mitigation of these risks, and suggest examples of best practices they have seen, either in institutional guidance or individual practice. This provides a pragmatic and actionable account of practitioners’ perception of AI risk in research software.

An example of one such risk is shown below ( ), which highlights the potential for the accidental reuse of licensed code in software with incompatible licenses (e.g. the use of copyleft-licensed code within more permissively licensed software). Given the provenance of AI-generated code is not visible to developers using GenAI (i.e. there is no way of knowing whether the generated code is mostly or entirely based on code with a restrictive license), there is a real risk that such code will be unintentionally reused in violation of licenses.

Risks can be added to and updated in the register through issue templates provided in the repository. As well as adding new risks or updating existing ones, the templates also allow users to add relevant or interesting resources. Since each risk is directly associated with a GitHub issue, users wishing to discuss a risk further can easily do so by adding a comment to the issue. This facilitates open discussion and allows users to add additional context or framing to existing risks. Of course, some users may wish to submit more sensitive risks – in such cases, an alternate route for anonymous contributions via an online form is also available.

What’s next?

The register is open to new contributions describing risks around AI adoption within research software practices. We also welcome discussion of existing risks via their associated GitHub Issues, and encourage people to add examples of how risks can be mitigated, and to point to examples of best practice. We will be running a further workshop at RSECon26 in Sheffield, so please keep an eye out for opportunities for collaborative contribution sessions.

Contributing to RAIRR

You can view the full register and contribute to it . Please make sure to read the and for more information about what makes a good contribution to the register.

The register is maintained by the SSI Responsible AI Study Group – a recently established group interested in understanding ways in which AI may be adopted safely, fairly, and constructively within research software practices. The group is open to new members from both within the SSI and externally – if you’re interested in joining, then please contact joseph.shingleton[at]glasgow.ac.uk or oscar.seip[at]manchester.ac.uk.

Whose Knowledge Counts? Analysing Diversity and Exclusion in OpenStreetMap's Tagging Proposals Process

Sat, 11 Jul 2026 18:37:59 +0000

Mapping and evaluating dRTP’s contributions to computing skills’pedagogies

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 17:39:53 +0000

On the 29th of June, we will be giving a lightning talk and a poster presentation at STEP-UP London Conference 2026, the 7th regional community conference for digital Research Technical Professionals (dRTPs) in London and the South East, supported by STEP-UP, a UK-based research project funded under the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC)’s 2023 Strategic Technical Platforms call.

Abstract:

Our research – funded by the UKRI’s DisCouRSE+ network - seeks to map and analyse the provision of digital research competencies (DRC) which are led by or involve dRTP’s across Higher Education institutions in the UK. The teaching of computational methods has spread across disciplines, spawning numerous pedagogical approaches and a wide variety of methods, software, products, and environments. However, the role of dRTP’s in the proliferation teaching DRC remains unclear. dRTP’s responsibilities are primarily focused on research and infrastructure and expectations around involvement in training and teaching vary widely across the sector. Furthermore, choices as to which approaches and delivery modes to adopt in teaching and training are often driven by trends, licensing constraints or trainer’s familiarity rather than pedagogical criteria or context suitability.

Our research, therefore, seeks to investigate what training and teaching is being delivered by dRTP’s? What skills and competencies are being taught? What pedagogical approaches are being taken? How does thisdiffer across audiences, infrastructures, and institutions? We will use this lightning talk (and the poster we are also proposing) to report on our preliminary findings from a survey we have been running and audit of curricula and training involving dRTP’s listed on university websites and to further develop conversations with the dRTP community over their involvement in education and training.

Slides

See

The UK must use the Break Clause and Terminate its Contract with Palantir

Sun, 14 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Note

This collaborative post was written by the Rights and Tech Group at the University of Warwick and was originally published at

As the digital transformation of health continues to reshape health systems globally, states face a stark choice: how to strengthen cash-strapped health systems and get command of health data? While some might think high-income countries are better at protecting their sensitive health data than low-income countries, in fact the UK’s current problems with security and defence firm Palantir show no one is immune to the pressures of the private sector. In this piece, we outline some of the key concerns that emerge through the outsourcing of critical infrastructure to the private sector in the case of the UK. We make an argument that given these concerns, the UK should exercise its break clause and terminate Palantir’s contract in 2027.

Photo by

In 2023, the NHS awarded U.S. data analytics firm Palantir a to provide software and manage the NHS Federated Data Platform to connect fragmented NHS databases and allow data from different systems to be shared and analysed. While the digital transformation of health has sped forward, it has led to a proliferation of tools and platforms, creating siloed pockets of health data that cannot easily be shared from clinic to hospital to decision-maker. This fragmentation creates multiple challenges, ranging from sharing lab results in time with doctors who need them, to spotting the next epidemic in time to prevent its spread. For cash-strapped health agencies, the appeal of Palantir is its promise to improve efficiency by integrating data and making it easier for diverse platforms to connect, communicate, and use the data for public health.

Health data, however, is extremely sensitive, and without building necessary governance safeguards, purpose limitations, and transparent data processing methodologies, the creation of large and centralised data infrastructures poses serious risks for everyone; in particular, for marginalised groups at greater risk of violence, discrimination and inequitable access to healthcare. These populations are the ones whose trust the NHS most needs to keep. The , is an illustration of how such incidents can undermine trust and drive those away from health services who need them most.

As a group of scholars working on digital rights at the University of Warwick, we are concerned and echo civil society calls for the UK government to exercise the break clause in the contract and terminate the agreement with Palantir for the reasons set out below:

Ideological incompatibility

Palantir’s appeal for those who manage public services is that it provides efficiencies at scale. However, as the recently published by the co-founder, Alex Karp, articulates a world view that is imperialist, US-centric, anti-democratic, anti-pluralist, and openly hostile to public institutions, including . Reflecting on the Palantir manifesto, philosopher Mark argues that ‘efficiency’ is framed as a political value, which takes precedence over values of pluralism, democratic deliberation and institutional independence.

This demonstrates that Palantir is not merely a tech company offering a technical solution, but an ideological project that is fundamentally at odds with the values of a democratic and multicultural UK. In addition, Palantir’s close ties with the US military and whose technology has been key to target citizens in warfare and border control in the US and internationally raises serious questions about its political independence and ethics. For the UK government, continuing the NHS contract, therefore, requires reflection on how it can justify working with a company whose stated principles undermine the very norms upon which public services depend.

Institutional dependency and loss of sovereignty

The continuation of Palantir’s role within the NHS must also be understood in the broader context of the company’s expanding deals with other wings of government. Palantir now provides or is in talks to provide services to the , the , , and . These institutions have distinct functions, mandates and forms of expertise. Yet the increasingly blur these boundaries and erode institutional independence.

The fact that Palantir is being used in other UK sectors means that it can require the NHS or local governments to extend their contracts to those areas to “increase functionality”. This participates in a race of tech companies for the monopolisation of public services, especially as this is where the “big money” is. Although it might provide faster access to records (for example, during an emergency surgery), the risks of hyper-centralised data infrastructures are substantial. These include increased vulnerability to hacking, physical fragility (where the failure of a single node can disrupt the entire system), and the potential for co-option by “unwanted” or “unelected” actors.

Further, through the outsourcing of such critical department functions to Palantir, the state cedes its sovereignty to private enterprises. Critical media scholars Grohman and Barbosa call this as . The successive adoption of Palantir across sectors renders the sovereignty of the UK state to be now purchased and offered on the terms of a platform as part of its proprietary offering.

Take the promise of interoperability. Although companies claim that they can deal with many different datasets from different sources, the proprietary condition of their software means that they are not interoperable with other platforms and datasets. This means in practice that the client is made dependant on their services across governmental areas and over time. This results in transnational big tech companies monopolising local and national services, eliminating competition and locking governments to pay for unsolicited updates and upgrades of their systems. It is, therefore, critical that the UK government does not become just a consumer of outsourced services. As a democratic state, the UK government derives legitimacy from the public and must retain the capacity to collaborate with multiple suppliers rather than surrendering control to a single platform provider whose CEO has publicly declared (and demonstrated) their allegiance to the US. The case of NHS and Palantir poses a further geopolitical question, which is whether critical infrastructures such as public health providers can be in the hands of powerful transnational companies.

Erosion of trust, especially among marginalised groups

Allowing Palantir access to data on patients, and in particular on patients from marginalised communities, also raises serious concerns. For instance, racialised communities and people with insecure legal status already worry about sharing data between the NHS and the Home Office. This has happened in the US, where Palantir’s systems facilitated data sharing and identification to ), which was then used in raids to unlawfully target and deport migrants. Palantir’s capacity to cross personal data with surveillance technologies or to share it with other bodies, like the police, increases fear and anxiety among vulnerable populations, damaging their trust in the public health system. As a result, they may avoid seeking healthcare altogether: for example, a migrant with an infectious disease might stay away from their GP out of fear of being interrogated or deported. This loss of trust undermines the right to healthcare for all.

Maldistribution of resources

Finally, the substantial sums allocated to Palantir to facilitate managerial decisions in the NHS are drawn from wider public budgets. This diverts resources way from welfare provision and eliminates services that are essential for addressing social inequality and supporting the most vulnerable members of society. The promises of combining large amounts of data and having speedy decision-making cannot replace the need for adequate healthcare infrastructure or the labour of care provided by healthcare professionals, from doctors and nurses to cleaners and other employees. These raise pressing questions. What are the broader implications of these cuts and repurposing of public resources? Are any of the savings that the use of Palantir is promising to be ploughed back into the healthcare system, for example by fixing hospitals, hiring more healthcare workers, or improving working conditions? There is a serious risk that this approach will amplify existing inequalities in access to, and quality of, healthcare across the UK (see or a survey from ). Palantir is monetising these inequalities and presenting technological solutions as quick fixes for deeply structural problems, which risk being exacerbated.

Palantir’s involvement in NHS databases has received significant reaction from civil society. Campaigns led by organisations, such as the and highlight the lack of transparency and human rights due diligence in the contractual process, as well as the dangers of infrastructural lock-in. Palantir’s purported is also called into question. These concerns provide compelling grounds for the UK government to exercise the break clause and terminate its agreement with Palantir, as system has. The decision should be based not only on technical considerations, but also on fundamental issues of ideological incompatibility, institutional dependency, digital sovereignty, public trust and unjust distribution of public resources.

Call to action

February 2027 marks a window of opportunity . For the reasons argued here (ideological incompatibility; loss of sovereignty; erosion of trust; and maldistribution of resources), we enjoin the UK government to exercise the break clause in the contract and terminate the agreement with Palantir as a first and immediate step towards ensuring that the rights and data of all UK citizens (and particularly, the most vulnerable) are protected. However, this should not be the end goal: other actors may come and pose similar threats. The case of Palantir has surfaced a series of structural issues when it comes to digital rights and technology providers. We have highlighted a few: how can digital sovereignty for critical infrastructures be preserved? How can vendor lock-in can be avoided? How can data from subjects be protected from unlawful or nefarious purposes? Who benefits the most with these contracts? How can any efficiency savings be redirected to underfunded and under-resourced critical services? We contend that technological decisions are also political and, therefore, call on the UK government to ensure these issues are addressed.

The case of the UK and Palantir is not unique, but it is paradigmatic of a global trend in turning data, and particularly, health data, into commodities that threaten the human subjects that lie behind those figures. As the World Health Organization drafts its new Global Strategy on Digital Health 2028-33, the challenges faced by the UK should spark broader discussions about health data governance, with development of new and clearer standards so that all countries establish clearer guardrails to ensure that the public sector continues to serve the public interest.

Author’s bios

Siddharth Peter de Souza is an Assistant Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. His research and teaching focus on how data is governed globally in contested, and plural settings. He is the author of Designing Indicators for a Plural Legal World (Cambridge 2022)

Derya Ozkul is an Associate Professor and Co-Director of the Social Theory Centre at the Department of Sociology, University of Warwick. Her teaching and research focus on the politics of migration and (im)mobility in the digital age.

Serena Natile is an Associate Professor at Warwick Law School. Her work on digital technology is mainly concerned with questions of social reproduction and maldistribution, at the intersection of law, feminist political economy, labour, and finance. She is the author of (Routledge 2020) and is currently completing the ISRF project .

Carlos Cámara-Menoyo is a Senior Research Software Engineer at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. He is an interdisciplinary researcher whose work sits at the intersection of technology and society, with a particular focus on the ways in which worldviews embedded in technology shape the experiences of under-represented communities.

Nerea Calvillo Gonzalez is a Reader at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick. They work on digital infrastructures, environmental pollution and queer ecologies, and they are author of Aeropolis: Queering air in toxipolluted worlds (Columbia, 2023).

Sara (Meg) Davis is a Professor at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick; and Principal Investigator for the Digital Health and Rights Project, an international consortium of academics, health advocates, human rights lawyers, and communities of people living with and affected by HIV. She is author of The Uncounted: Politics of data in global health (Cambridge 2020).

No Vibes, Just Struggle: Notes From a Research Software Engineer on Vive Coding

Thu, 11 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last 14th May, I participated in the workshop “Convivial Code: The Politics and Pedagogies of Vibe Coding”, organised by the and the at the University of Warwick. The workshop takes a cue from Illich’s notion of convivial tools: technics that expand autonomous, imaginative use without requiring prior certification or imposing compulsory dependence and moved beyond vibe-coding specifically to further ask what a politics of convivial code might look like today? (e.g., publicly-led, democratic governance of technology capable of attending to the challenges of the current conjuncture: pluralization versus monopolization, autonomy versus dependence, and situated invention versus the norm-seeking tendencies of generative output).

The workshop was a hybrid session combining methods workshop, studio and (see recording below) to chart this domain; where staff and student participants tested AI infrastructures, discussed their implications and develop a shared critical understanding of the potentials, limits and harms of AI-assisted programming. I had the opportunity to give a short talk in which I shared my positionality and concerns in relation to AI in general and vive coding in particular. The talk was controversial, insofar it raised some opposition, but also interesting questions and reactions, so I wanted to share it here, hopefully to continue discussions.

No Vibes, Just Struggle: Notes From a Research Software Engineer

I’m going to share a couple of struggles that I’m experiencing in my everyday work as a Senior Research Software Engineer at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies. But before doing so, I need to disclose my positionality in relation to AI and vive coding, particularly about its meaning and how I use it.

Positionality

Coding is a very polisemic word, and people may assign different meanings depending on their background or context. As a Research Software Engineer, when I think about coding I am mainly referring to the action of creating scripts or software that can be used in an academic setting. This setting is very important to me because it comes with a series of values and requirements that are different from other settings (e.g. hobbysts or industry), such as reproducibility, provenance, or correctly citing sources as an integral part of academic integrity.

I have never vive coded. I’ve seldom used vector-mediated coding: when I use it, I do it reluctantly or triggered by curiosity. Either case, I always feel it as a defeat. This is not because I’m so proud that I feel my ego threatened, or because I’m a good or fast coder that doesn’t need such aids. I’m actually neither. Probably because of that, through commons-based peer production, I’ve learnt a series of techniques, good practices and cultural norms that helped me to overcome my individual limitations. Two paradigmatic examples are to use and adapt code and frameworks that other, smarter people, have created and decided to share it with others through open licenses; and to rely on processes and automations¹ to reduce errors, to understand when something doesn’t work and to seek help when I can’t find the answer, and to do so, to be able to explain to others what I want to do and what I’ve done.

Why I’m struggling with AI

Now that my stance is clear, I’m in a better condition to share my struggles with AI in general and AI-assisted coding.

The first has to do with the fact that technology is never neutral, and AI has been built through extractive and exploitive practices that are assumed, validated and reproduced when using them. Examples of this can be seen in how LLMs have been trained by systematically stealing IP, or by employing humans to manually tag content in terrible working conditions and at the expense of their mental health.

And not to mention the large amount of resources this technology and the required infrastructure (i.e., datacentres) require for functioning, such as energy, water, oil but also hardware such as RAM or SSDs and Hard drives. Even though the tech and the companies behind ofuscate date to make it really difficult to quantify the environmental costs (and therefore, making it easier to be disregarded), we are already seeing their effects. This week alone news echoed how Maryland taxpayers would need to pay $2 billion dollars to upgrade the power grid to host data centers, or that important SSD and HDD manufacturers have sold all their production until 2029 exclusively to serve Data center needs, creating new forms of scarcity.

But probably, the clearer example about the worldviews and political agenda that are encapsulated in this technology is how AI companies are directly or indirectly promoting surveillance, and even genocides, and how their CEOs feel empowered enough to publish supremacist manifestos in the name of their companies ².

The combination of these factors makes me feel that every time I use AI-tools I’m forced to disregard my values and the political and moral beliefs that I stand for, and makes me feel closer to a world and a society I wouldn’t wannt anyone to live in. And this is not an easy pill to swallow.

The second one has to do with AI assisted coding, or vector coding. It is easy to be flashed by the ability to produce something that works in a reduced amount of time and with few or little knowledge on coding. It is really impressing to see that what would take a lot of time is accomplished (at least in appearance) in a matter of minutes, and with little effort. I can see how many people (particularly those who do not know how to code or are in early stages) may see it as a way to overcome their limitations and how this seems like it’s democratising coding. I really do, I would believe it myself it wasn’t because it is the opposite.

Vive coding produces code, but it does not make programmers, it makes prompters. This is not just a semantic difference. I contend that the former is empowering, whereas the latter is disempowering. Vive coding epitomises neoliberal worldviews by stating that only the outputs matter³, disregarding decades of disciplinary and interdisciplinary knowledge built over decades. Coding is not about just producing code, it is also a cultural and social practice, a method. Equally as important than the output are issues related to:

Correctly attributing everybody’s work, and complying with licences. Using AI can easily lead to copyright infringements and flags questions about Intellecutal Property and accountability: Who is the author of the code? Can we make sure that we are complying with the licence terms of the code that the AI is reproducing?Can we be sure that we are not leaking any personal or sensitive information (either in the code or the prompts)?.
Writing understandable and explainable code, not just to make it easier for us to maintain and improve it over time and for others to contribute to or scrutinise (again, this is important in an academic setting). If we cannot explain what the code does, how can our research rely on it? Can we use it in research if we cannot write a basic methods section?
Considering and addressing failure. Any relatively complex piece of code will, inevitabily, fail. Far from approaching failuire from a nihilistic standpoint, software engineer need to actively address them by putting measures to minimise the errors (e.g. automated testing), or to be able to debug them when they ocurr so they are easily fixable. Or, as Cory Doctorov : “Writing code” is about making code that runs well. “Software engineering” is about making code that fails well". How are we going to maintain the software in the medium and long term? What will we do when it fails? (because inevitabily, all code fails) Shall we start over again? Is then efficient?
Saving resources, both material and human. Is it fair to ask others to read, understand, test, and improve code that can be generated at faster pace than any human can review? Many projects⁴, such as drupal⁵ or some GNU/Linux distributions, are not accepting contributions if the authors cannot explain them, as it suposes a liability but also a waste of resources and time from a team that has already a lot on their plate.

But probably the most important flaw in this framing is how it shifts the paradigm away from processes. Because programing is a never-ending task, it requires constant iteration, improvement, learning… it is, above all, a process. And so it is the learning process that makes you be a (good) programmer. Admittedly, coding is challenging, it requires a series of skills that take time to learn, and even more to master. But once learnt, they are ours, nobody can take that from us. This is what is really empowering. On the other hand, being a promter means relying on something external (AI) to generate code. What will a prompter do if they lose access to those tools? Considering the track history of enshitification and lack of human consideration of these companies, this is not a hypothetical question.

Code linters, Continuous Integration, Automated testing… are examples of such automations that are not AI-powered and have been commonplace in software development. ↩︎
See excerpts from Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska’s The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West at Palantir’s X account: ↩︎
Open-AI cofounder Andrej Karpathy coined the concept of vive coding as this ( ):

There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like “decrease the padding on the sidebar by half” because I’m too lazy to find it. I “Accept All” always, I don’t read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I’d have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can’t fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.

↩︎
Refer to the for a complete list of software that are not accepting any form of AI, and an exhaustive rationale for not doing that. ↩︎
Drupal’s founder’s blog: “ ” ↩︎

No Vibes, Just Struggle: Notes From a Research Software Engineer

Thu, 14 May 2026 17:11:53 +0000

Now, that my stance is clear, I’m in a better condition to share my struggles with AI in general and AI-assisted coding.

Correctly attributing everybody’s work, and complying with licences. Using AI can easily lead to copyright infringements and flags questions about Intellecutal Property and accountability: Who is the author of the code? Can we make sure that we are complying with the licence terms of the code that the AI is reproducing?Can we be sure that we are not leaking any personal or sensitive information (either in the code or the prompts)?.
Writing understandable and explainable code, not just to make it easier for us to maintain and improve it over time and for others to contribute to or scrutinise (again, this is important in an academic setting). If we cannot explain what the code does, how can our research rely on it? Can we use it in research if we cannot write a basic methods section?
Considering and addressing failure. Any relatively complex piece of code will, inevitabily, fail. Far from approaching failuire from a nihilistic standpoint, software engineer need to actively address them by putting measures to minimise the errors (e.g. automated testing), or to be able to debug them when they ocurr so they are easily fixable. Or, as Cory Doctorov : “Writing code” is about making code that runs well. “Software engineering” is about making code that fails well". How are we going to maintain the software in the medium and long term? What will we do when it fails? (because inevitabily, all code fails) Shall we start over again? Is then efficient?
Saving resources, both material and human. Is it fair to ask others to read, understand, test, and improve code that can be generated at faster pace than any human can review? Many projects⁴, such as drupal⁵ or some GNU/Linux distributions, are not accepting contributions if the authors cannot explain them, as it suposes a liability but also a waste of resources and time from a team that has already a lot on their plate.

Code linters, Continuous Integration, Automated testing… are examples of such automations that are not AI-powered and have been commonplace in software development. ↩︎
See excerpts from Alexander C. Karp & Nicholas W. Zamiska’s The Technological Republic: Hard Power, Soft Belief, and the Future of the West at Palantir’s X account: ↩︎
Open-AI cofounder Andrej Karpathy coined the concept of vive coding as this ( ):

There’s a new kind of coding I call “vibe coding”, where you fully give in to the vibes, embrace exponentials, and forget that the code even exists. It’s possible because the LLMs (e.g. Cursor Composer w Sonnet) are getting too good. Also I just talk to Composer with SuperWhisper so I barely even touch the keyboard. I ask for the dumbest things like “decrease the padding on the sidebar by half” because I’m too lazy to find it. I “Accept All” always, I don’t read the diffs anymore. When I get error messages I just copy paste them in with no comment, usually that fixes it. The code grows beyond my usual comprehension, I’d have to really read through it for a while. Sometimes the LLMs can’t fix a bug so I just work around it or ask for random changes until it goes away. It’s not too bad for throwaway weekend projects, but still quite amusing. I’m building a project or webapp, but it’s not really coding - I just see stuff, say stuff, run stuff, and copy paste stuff, and it mostly works.

↩︎
Refer to the for a complete list of software that are not accepting any form of AI, and an exhaustive rationale for not doing that. ↩︎
Drupal’s founder’s blog: “ ” ↩︎

Digital Sovereignty - Lexicon Entry

Thu, 30 Apr 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Last 21st April, I attended to a workshop on Developing a Governance Lexicon for Digital Public Infrastructures, organised by my colleague Siddharth de Souza and Emrys Schoemaker at the University of Warwick (see details below). The workshop brought together researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the UK and beyond to examine, unpack and build a lexicon for governance approaches needed to ensure that DPIs are public, inclusive, and accessible.

In this post, I’m sharing the first version of the entry for Digital Sovereightny, which I authored with Emrys.

Preamble: Sovereignty, sovereignties

Sovereignty refers to the ultimate authority someone has over things. Historically, sovereignty has been used to refer to the power of States to exert independent control and lawmaking over their territories (i.e. without the involvement of any other party in such decisions and enforcement).

However, with the rise of social movements advocating for alter-globalisation, climate justice, social justice, or the Commons, the subject of such authority has also been applied to other smaller units beyond Nations (such as regions or communities), and its meaning has permeated to many other contexts, such as physical resources (food¹, energy, water) and, more recently, digital resources (infrastructure, data, platforms, AI…).

Regardless of their scale or domain, these new forms of sovereignties share an aim to protect communities from external shocks and coercion by demanding that critical systems are completely governed without depending on any external agent with a different agenda. This is usually achieved through favouring the conditions for these systems to be produced locally and democratically and the empowerment of all the communities involved in their production, distribution, and consumption. These demands are usually rooted in the following pillars: a rejection of globalisation and neoliberal dogmas about markets, and a pursuit of fairer, more democratic and resilient systems.

Digital Sovereignty

Digital sovereignty² refers to the political perspective in which the digital technologies and infrastructures that are essential for competitiveness and welfare are in accordance with the laws and interests of a particular community or region (usually, but not always, a nation). This is typically achieved through favouring , open formats and protocols, federated platforms or self-hosting, or, the creation of [[Digital Public Infrastructures]] (DPI), particularly in public organisations and governments.

Digital sovereignty is increasingly supported, demanded and enforced by governments (e.g. France³, Canada⁴), organisations, or social movements and communities of users, and their motivations range from economic motivation, justice (e.g. [[Digital Rights]]) or -more recently, due to the complex geopolitics context- security and privacy.

The reason can be found in the following: today, almost every facet of our lives is mediated by the digital. There are few (if any) instances in the way we work, socialise, consume and access to leisure or culture that do not require any kind of digital infrastructure (e.g. servers, hardware), technology (e.g. software) or data. At a national level, this means that the economy is more and more dependent on such technologies, the vast majority of which is provided by a handful of big techs from the US (with China gaining momentum). Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet (Google) alone “control almost 70% of the cloud market, and over half of the world’s undersea cables once Meta is included. The accelerated adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) has only made the situation more acute”⁵. These companies, along with Apple, Nvidia and Tesla (known as the “Magnificent seven” due to their high performance in the stock market) have a combined market capitalisation of $20.8 trillion, surpassing the GDP of the European Union (approximately $19.4 trillion).

This over-representation of US big tech along with their monopolistic practices often collide with EU’s interests and regulations. Some recent examples of these tensions are the number of lawsuits⁶ against US big techs for not complying with EU regulations (e.g. , , and ), which triggered heated reactions from their CEOs. The US-president, Donald Trump, threatened to impose tariffs⁷ as a form of retaliation against what he considers to be “discriminatory” against American companies and, therefore, “unfair”. Other examples include Microsoft blocking email accounts based on U.S. sanction over investigations of Israel⁸. Given the growing hostilities with the USA, Digital sovereignty has become a strategic priority for the many countries, including the EU⁹, where it is supported by leaders like Ursula von der Leyen (European Commission) and Mario Draghi (European Central Bank).

Who is working on Digital sovereignty?

Governmental

European Commission — Digital Sovereignty Strategy: The EU’s overarching framework including the GDPR, Digital Markets Act, Digital Services Act, and AI Act. Aims to regulate Big Tech, protect citizens’ data, and reduce Europe’s dependency on foreign digital infrastructure.
France–Germany Digital Sovereignty Task Force: Joint Franco-German initiative launched in November 2025 to develop a common definition of European digital services, sovereignty indicators for cloud and AI, and measures to promote European competitiveness and tech independence.
Canada’s Digital Sovereignty Framework: a framework aimed to improve Canada’s “digital readiness” to “manage and protect its data, systems and infrastructure to operate securely and independently in a globally connected environment”.

Organisations and grassroots

Open Rights Group: UK-based digital campaigning organisation protecting privacy and free speech. Challenges government surveillance legislation, mass data collection, and censorship through legal action and public advocacy.
The Digital Sovereignty Coalition: a coalition to protect civil liberties, democratise technological power, and ensure that the future of artificial intelligence, data, and digital infrastructure reflects the values of freedom, equity, and self-determination.

Initiatives

DPI and Digital Sovereignty

Digital Public Infrastructure (DPI) has emerged as one of the most prominent policy instruments through which states, particularly in the Global South, seek to translate [[Digital Sovereignty|digital sovereignty]] commitments into operational practice.

The DPI approach centres on foundational digital systems (identity, payments, data exchange) built on open standards, open-source software, and interoperable architectures, with the explicit aim of enabling states to exercise genuine authority over the technologies their societies depend on, rather than outsourcing that authority to foreign commercial providers (Massally, Matthan & Chaudhuri, 2023; Varma et al., 2024). By moving from siloed, vendor-specific solutions to shared public infrastructure, DPI promises to convert digital dependency into digital choice, restoring, in principle, the conditions for critical systems to be governed in the interests of the communities they serve (TechPolicy.Press, 2025).

The structural irony of this promise is that DPI systems require substantial cloud computing capacity to function at scale, and for most governments deploying DPI to reduce foreign dependency, that capacity runs on the very same hyperscalers identified above: Microsoft, Amazon, and Google (Rest of World, 2026). India’s own case is telling, while the India Stack represents domestically designed and governed foundational systems, the cloud and AI backend sustaining those systems is provided by Microsoft, Google, Amazon, and Nvidia (TechPolicy.Press, 2025). These companies have responded to the sovereignty moment not by retreating but by expanding, launching “sovereign cloud” offerings that repackage dependency as a product feature (Lawfare, 2025), deploying them directly in markets where governments are undertaking DPI programmes (Fierce Network, 2024). The concept of sovereignty that mainstream DPI discourse mobilises also sits in tension with the pluralist, community-rooted understanding described above.

Dominant DPI framings operate from a Westphalian, state-centred conception: sovereignty as the capacity of national governments to assert control and set the terms of digital governance within their territory (Pohle & Thiel, 2020). As Pohle (2024) argues, this framing displaces other legitimate sovereignty claims, from sub-national communities, civil society, and indigenous peoples, that the broader concept could and should accommodate. The sovereignty DPI delivers is sovereignty for the state, often mediated through infrastructure that remains, at its operational core, in someone else’s hands.

References

Fierce Network (2024) ‘Google, AWS, Microsoft invest in sovereign cloud in Asia-Pac’, 11 July. Lawfare (2025) ‘Tech’s “Sovereignty Washing” in Europe Will Ripple in the Global South’, 9 October.

Massally, K.N., Matthan, R. and Chaudhuri, R. (2023) ‘What is the DPI Approach?’, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 15 May.

Pohle, J. (2024) ‘Unthinking Digital Sovereignty’, Policy & Internet, 16(1).

Pohle, J. and Thiel, T. (2020) ‘Digital sovereignty’, Internet Policy Review, 9(4).

Rest of World (2026) ‘India AI Impact Summit pitches “third way” beyond U.S. and China’, 11 February.

TechPolicy.Press (2025) ‘India’s Digital Infrastructure Is Going Global. What Kind of Power Is It Building?’, 22 July.

Varma, P. et al. (2024) The Future of Digital Public Infrastructure, Carnegie India.

About the workshop

Across the world, there is increasing interest and urgent concern in building state capacity to meet the opportunities of digitalization, and to confront the challenges of the concentration of power from big tech. Digital public infrastructures (DPI) refer to large state led digital systems that are used in domains related to health, social security, finance, and through their implementation are argued to improve administrative efficiency, create possibilities for economic growth, and enable better delivery of public services. These foundational digital infrastructures are recognized as important because they are argued to create value from the exchange of data for all involved parties and argued to work for the ‘common good’ (Mazzucato, 2023).

With the increasing popularity of DPI across the world, as is evidenced in the DPI Map produced by UCL, or the adoption of the DPI Safeguards by UNDP partners, it is critical to develop a vocabulary around governance, that foregrounds how to build an inclusive, collaborative process around the development of DPIs. Such attention is particularly significant to reflect the interests of marginalized and excluded groups, and to ensure the stability of support for digital systems.

With the increasing interest in DPI, there is a need for approaches to governance that are plural, contextual, and reflective of contexts in the global Majority.

This workshop aims bring together researchers, practitioners and policy makers in the UK and beyond to examine, unpack and build a lexicon for governance approaches needed to ensure that DPIs are public, inclusive, and accessible.

Food sovereignty was coined in 1996 by Via Campesina (“the peasants way”), an international organisation formed by 182 organisations in 81 countries that describes themselves as “an international movement which coordinates peasant organisations of small and middle-scale producers, agricultural workers, rural women, and indigenous communities from Asia, Africa, America, and Europe”. The term refers to a system where the people who produce, distribute and consume food also have control the mechanisms and policies that regulate those processes. Usually, this means that food is produced locally. ↩︎
The term is often used interchangeably with Technological sovereignty and there are some overlaps with Data Sovereignty, Cloud sovereignty or AI Sovereignty, albeit this term aims to be more inclusive, as the latter refer to specific ways in which the digital is operationalised. ↩︎
Last 8th April, France government (At the initiative of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Action and Public Accounts, and the Minister Delegate for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Affairs, the Inter-Ministerial Directorate of Digital Affairs ) organised a seminar to discuss how to to reduce their non-European digital dependencies. In their official announcement, the term “digital sovereignty” is explicitly mentioned several times. Specific, immediate plans include migrating the operating systems of their government PCs and laptops from Windows to GNU/Linux. Source: ↩︎
Canada has recently implemented a Digital Sovereignty Framework to improve their “digital readiness” to “to manage and protect its data, systems and infrastructure to operate securely and independently in a globally connected environment”. Source: ↩︎
Rikap C., Durand, C., Paraná, E., Gerbaudo, P. and Marx P. (2024). Reclaiming digital sovereignty: A roadmap to build a digital stack for people and the planet. Available at: ↩︎
Refer to ↩︎
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Academic as Activist: The role of academics in facilitating social change

Tue, 09 Dec 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Eventful migration: Rethinking social media migration with help from Elon Musk’s sink

Sun, 29 Jun 2025 16:19:14 +0000

Co-designing participatory data visualizations to evaluate OpenStreetMap’s equity: The Good, The Neutral and The Ugly

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

This talk will present the implementation of a participatory codesign process to surface how neutrality is operationalised in OpenStreetMap [OSM] as well as some preliminary results about how it is succeeding or failing to foster equity and inclusion.

OSM is the largest and more successful collaborative map of the world. Like Wikipedia, it is based on principles of participation, openness, and neutrality to “map the world as it exists” . To that end, more than 10 million volunteers from different geographies and backgrounds contribute with their local knowledge to add new map features or improve existing ones. Its data, covering the entire globe, is so exhaustive and precise that it complements official data sources and populates thousands of tools and popular services. Moreover, the UN-backed Digital Public Good Alliance recognised in February 2024 OSM as a global Digital Public Good. Enquiring about the world-views embedded in such a crucial project and their mechanisms to avoid inequities against vulnerable communities is critical to understand the values that it produces and reproduces. This is especially relevant in the case of OSM for two reasons. First, because maps shape reality as much as they are shaped by it, for example by influencing the perception of the world, exerting political power and control or affecting mobility, accessibility and consumption patterns, among others. Second, because OSM’s community is estimated to be highly biased towards specific and hegemonic demographics, where white men from Europe and the US are overrepresented.

Our interdisciplinary research draws from critical geography and feminism to investigate how neutrality can be applied to either support or hinder equity. To achieve this, we are teaming up with Geochicas, a community-led organization from Latin America whose mission is to close the gender gap in the OSM community. Together, we are implementing a transformative participatory process aimed at co-designing data visualizations.

For us, data visualizations are not just an output to communicate findings, but a research method used to mediate and provoke ideas, discussions, and reactions that arise from thinking with and about data and its representation, while producing and exploring the data and designing a visualization. Conversely, we understand participation and co-design as a way to consider the particularities of data, tasks, users, context of use and world-views of the participants, which is a condition for creating visualizations which are actually capable of being transformative. The resulting visualizations will be different insofar they will be based on lived experiences and will be informed by feminist principles. As a result, they will be better suited to assess how minoritized demographics—such as gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation—are involved, recognized, or excluded in data production and decision-making within OSM, while also empowering our participants.

We expect our findings to be returned to OSM and inform potential transformation in OSM’s governance, database, and representation that are guided by equity principles. More broadly, we expect the findings to be adapted to other cases of digital goods and initiate similar transformations.

Maps, world-views and neutrality: squaring the circle?

Wed, 01 Jan 2025 13:00:00 +0000

Map-making is a serious business. There’s a science devoted to that, and only highly specialised companies and organisations can endeavour to translate every feature on Earth into a feature on a map with the right size and location. But that’s what make maps reliable, too. So much so that, besides being part of our everyday lives, scientists use them to assess the effects of drought and deforestation, identify migration patterns or making predictions, amongst others. And yet, all maps are wrong. All of them make assumptions on how the world is or should be, and in so doing, maps have particular built-in world views and become political. They define what is included and what is not, what can and can’t be done with them, and the stories that they convey. In other words: maps shape the world as much as they are shaped by them. In this talk, we will explain how maps are made to understand how they have been used to exert power and how they are still doing so. We will then focus on OpenStreetMap, a collective effort to “map the world as it is”, and how are they succeeding or failing in doing so in an equitable way.

Can Digital Goods be Neutral? Evaluating OpenStreetMap’s equity through participatory data visualisation

Sun, 01 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The project

Equity is a fundamental pillar of any digital innovation aiming to produce positive societal impacts that characterises any digital good.

Digital goods have typically been framed as mere technological artefacts, by consciously putting aside any human consideration to pursue a neutral approach. Conversely, Neutrality has been portrayed as a positive aspiration that prevents any form of bias that could pervert the fulfilment of the digital goods’ mission. We contend that, as well-intentioned as this aspiration may be, this apparently neutral standpoint that ignores how these goods are governed, may be inadvertently producing and reproducing new types of oppression and colonialism.

This is especially critical in projects whose community are extremely biased towards specific and hegemonic demographics, like the case of OSM. The election of OSM as study case is relevant and timely: OSM is the largest and more successful collaborative map of the world, and in February 2024, it was recognised as a global Digital Public Good by the UN-backed Digital Public Good Alliance. Like Wikipedia, OSM is based on principles of collaboration, openness and neutrality, and its data, contributed by a global community of volunteers, complements official data sources, and populates thousands of popular tools and services.

Our project examines and evaluates how the principle of neutrality driving many digital goods promotes or hampers equity by implementing a participatory process with Geochicas, a collective of women and LGBT+ mappers.

We will implement a transformative participatory process to evaluate and surface how minoritised demographics are involved, recognised, or excluded from data production and decision-making in OSM while empowering its participants. We will do so in two stages. First, we will identify “gender controversies” in OSM, this is, specific examples of existing or missing map features and the decisions leading to that which are problematic from a gendered lens. Second, we will combine lived experiences with expertise in data visualisation to co-design a tool to represent, quantify and communicate those gender controversies to enquiry on how neutrality is being operationalised in OSM.

Team

Dr , (PI)
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick

Dr , (Co-I)
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick

Dr Selene Yang, (Advisory Board)
Geochicas (Founder), Wikimedia Foundation, Research fellow at Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society

Dr Jorge Leon-Casero, (Advisory Board)
Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain)

Dr Rachel Palmen, (Advisory Board)
Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya

Prof. , (Advisory Board)
Centre for Interdisciplinary Methodologies, University of Warwick

Funder

This project has been funded by

Digital tools for knowledge exchange and sustainable public food procurement in community kindergartens: A case study in Słupsk, Poland

Sun, 30 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Co-designing grounded visualisations of the Food-Water-Energy nexus to enable urban sustainability transformations

Tue, 09 Apr 2024 15:53:19 +0000

Quarto: a library to run them all? A collaborative exercise to use, learn and assess quarto for authoring reproducible documents in different scenarios

Thu, 01 Sep 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Using literate programming is a widespread practice amongst data scientists. This practice not only encourages data scientists to produce transparent, rich and reflective accounts of their analysis without the extra overhead of switching between tools, but also leads to artefacts (i.e., notebooks) that are increasingly becoming a medium for dissemination, reproducibility and education. Rmarkdown or Jupyter notebooks, are two of the most well known and used options. While both solutions can be used with multiple programming languages, the decision of whether to use one or the other is almost certain to be exclusively based on that. At least until now, with Quarto being mature enough to become a game-changer.

Quarto is a language-agnostic software based on Pandoc to render files combining markdown and code into multiple ranges of formats and outputs. As a result, it can be used with either R, Python or Julia without any other dependencies.

This collaborative workshop will be structured as follows:

a brief theoretical introduction and instructions;
a task that participants may choose from the different use cases provided (i.e. generating a single document, migrating from Rmarkdown or Jupyter, creating a book or generating interactive content); and
a group discussion and conclusions.

Participants in this workshop have fun while gaining enough depth of breath and practice to evaluate how feasible it is to use Quarto in different scenarios and, ultimately, if it can become the one tool for authoring reproducible scientific or technical documents, regardless of your language of choice.

Expertise level

Practitioner
Expert

Audience

This workshop is targeted to anyone interested in reproducible publishing, especially if they are looking for a single solution to use regardless of their programming language and are willing to explore with others quarto’s pros and cons, contributing to a group discussion.

Managing R script dependencies: automagic and renv

Thu, 14 Jul 2022 13:00:06 +0000

At the end of the we had an interesting discussion on the need for reproducibility. This talk introduces the concept of reproducibility and focuses on one of it’s many facets: that of managing R script’s dependencies.

In order to do so, two different methods will be presented, compared and discussed: the simple yet works-out-of-the-box {automagic} and the more complex, yet backed up by RStudio, {renv}

At the end of the session, points in common as well as limitations will be highlighted, hopefully leading to a discussion and opening the door for the second talk of the reproducibility series.

Visualisation tool for a grounded FEW Nexus

Fri, 20 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Ethical-political elements in research and intervention: reflections from social psychology

Mon, 09 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Towards an urban agenda of the commons: a case study of the political demands of the urban commons in Barcelona

Sun, 02 Jan 2022 00:00:00 +0000

Streetscape Perception Modelling – Theoretical Considerations and Methodological Possibilities

Fri, 17 Dec 2021 13:00:06 +0000

The influence of features and properties of the urban built-up environment on people’s sense of safety and perception of beauty, social vibrancy, and walkability is a topic of interest of urban geographers, designers, planners, and environmental psychologists alike. Along with emerging forms of data and the computational paradigm of Artificial Intelligence, current GIS, citizen science, and sensor technologies offer exciting technical and methodological possibilities for extracting, representing, and modelling aspects of people’s perception of streetscapes. This workshop aims to explore these possibilities, exchange research experiences, and discuss the theoretical grounds based on which we can operationalise, i.e., model, streetscape perception, particularly based on geospatial technologies.

The workshop will offer an open and interactive environment for researchers of all levels to discuss questions including, but not limited to:

What theoretical frameworks can guide us in extracting, representing, and modelling different streetscape perception aspects of people from different social groups and cultural backgrounds?
Which variables, parameters, and indicators these theoretical frameworks suggest and how can they be reliably extracted based on different digital technologies and participation methods?
Which GIS interfaces, data structures, and visualisations are effective in representing people’s perception of streetscapes as to foster theory development and inform planning and policy design towards more sustainable and inclusive urban spaces?

An outcome of the workshop will be a written summary of the discussed ideas authored by all participants and published in the PLATIAL’21 proceedings. The indicative programme is as follows:

Introduction by the organisers (20 min)
Crash presentations by participants (optional) (20 min)
Break-out group discussions (30 min) + World Café (30 min)
Paper writing outlook (20 min)

Co-creating visualisations about the urban nexus. Some results

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:00:06 +0000

In this talk we present how we have implemented a co-design process with our partners and stakeholders for the creation of “grounded” FEW nexus’ visualisations that enforce decision making on FEW nexus.

Creating Interfaces tools & maps; visualization process

Wed, 15 Sep 2021 13:00:06 +0000

What is the food-water-energy nexus? How could we make linkages understandable to the stakeholders including city government, academia, business community and civil society when it comes to the food-energy-water nexus?

How do we facilitate cooperation and knowledge exchange among the stakeholders? Is there any tools and methods that can complement each other for a more sustainable and resilient community and governance models?

In this workshop, the project team will present approaches, tools and visualizations developed in the project and discuss with you the replicability and usability for your local context. These are namely ‘Story Maps’ which are forms of visualization for the food-water-energy nexus in cities and our citizen science tool for data collection.

We will provide insights into experiences and lessons learned and support the exchange and networking regarding initiatives for local resilience and sustainability governance. Representatives of municipalities, private sector, academia, and local citizens are welcome to participate and share your feedback and experiences or approaches as well. We will also discuss how different tools and methods can complement each other for a more sustainable and resilient community.

Problematizing Urban Commons: Towards a “Provincialised” Approach

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 00:00:00 +0000

Crowdsourcing research: Accessible Zaragoza and PEST Project

Mon, 18 Jan 2021 13:00:06 +0000

In this seminar I will present two research projects that share a crowdsourced approach: and . Accessible Zaragoza is an action-research project of collaborative mapping about urban accessibility in the city of Zaragoza (Spain) I led while I was lecturing at the School of Architecture and Technology at San Jorge University. Accessible Zaragoza was aimed to create a collaborative online map that contributes to increase the autonomy of people with functional diversity and hence, their social integration and living standards. PEST Project is the project led by Tim Jones and Ben Spencer at which aims to coproduce an indicators matrix to increase understanding of place-based policy and activity in relation to active travel in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The Precariousness Of Urban Commons In The Face Of European Public Law

Tue, 15 Dec 2020 00:00:00 +0000

QGIS.es Website. A (brief) technical overview

Fri, 27 Nov 2020 08:00:06 +0000

In this QGIS OpenDay I shared an overview about the technical implementation I developed for the QGIS Spanish Association’s website using the Static Site Generator

Full screen version for the slides

Some R Packages I would love to explore (October 2020)

Tue, 20 Oct 2020 00:00:00 +0000

These are some packages I have just discovered which I would like to try/use in the future. For future reference, I have added a brief description and links to source code:

Data munging:

: has simple functions for examining and cleaning dirty data. It was built with beginning and intermediate R users in mind and is optimized for user-friendliness. Advanced R users can already do everything covered here, but with janitor they can do it faster and save their thinking for the fun stuff.
makes writing regular expressions easier by using a friendlier syntax. I always have some difficulties memorizing regex expressions and usually have to use the (a great resource, by the way) as a reminder.
the + + + team. These group of packages from the same author seem to work as a team. validate validates data’s structure (It can even validate data written in yaml), errorlocate finds the faulty observations, which can later be corrected by either dcmodify or deductive (from predefinded rules)

Visualization:

provides additional Themes and Theme Components for my beloved ggplot2.
provides additional color palettes and backgrounds for ggplot
: positioning annotations in ggplot.

Geospatial:

: a mapzen API client for R ( ). I am always looking for good geocoding services (currently using ), and this package uses Mapzen’s Pelias geocoding (amongst other things).
parses messy coordinates and converts from different formats to decimal. Also, provides helper functions such as getting hemisphere.

Participation and COVID

Fri, 19 Jun 2020 08:00:06 +0000

Open debate in which we will talk about citizen participation in the times of Covid-19, how the health alarm affects the capacity for participation, how you can see participatory processes and actions transformed, what new tools we should start to introduce, who risks being left behind, and much more.

What's urgent vs what's important: a reflection from the urban geographies of the pandemic

Wed, 22 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Ivan Serrano^1,², Carlos Cámara¹, Hug March^1,³, Ramon Ribera-Fumaz¹, Isabel Ruiz-Mallén¹, Mar Satorras¹

¹Laboratorio de Transformación Urbana y Cambio Global, Internet Interdisciplinary Institute (IN3), Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. ²Estudios de Derecho y Ciencia Política, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. ³Estudios de Economía y Empresa, Universitat Oberta de Catalunya s

There has arisen in our time a most singular fancy: the fancy that when things go very wrong we need a practical man. It would be far truer to say, that when things go very wrong we need an unpractical man. Certainly, at least, we need a theorist. A practical man means a man accustomed to mere daily practice, to the way things commonly work. When things will not work, you must have the thinker, the man who has some doctrine about why they work at all. It is wrong to fiddle while Rome is burning; but it is quite right to study the theory of hydraulics while Rome is burning.
G.K. Chesterton. ¹

The management of what started as a health crisis —but which is now becoming systemic— caused by the expansion of COVID-19 has focused all government attention and resources mainly on the following aspects: controlling the epidemic, regulating health systems to avoid their collapse and social behaviour strategies that create a less favourable environment for the spread of the virus.

Evoking the image that Chesterton recreated from the legend of Nero contemplating the fire in Rome, we have gone from a certain initial indolence regarding the path that the virus was going to take (‘it is only a flu’, ‘it is an outbreak concentrated in Asia like the previous viruses’, ’nothing needs to be done because group immunity will do the job’) to a state of emergency that tries to manage the immediate effects of the crisis on various scales, from local to global (social confinement, economic paralysis, exceptional political and fiscal measures), often without the expected success in the short term. This situation that we are experiencing indicates that things ‘are just not working’, that many implicit assumptions that we had about the gears of the contemporary world have confirmed some doubts that were raised from academia and other areas. When Rome burns, it is essential that we rethink aspects that will define the global future in the short, medium and long term, and that will interact with many other relevant factors that are now in danger of being overlooked, from the challenges derived from climate change, the resilience of our political and social systems or the effects of the intense technological development experienced in recent years.

All these factors have an undoubted geographical dimension, as wide, diverse and complex as those that make us speak of ‘geographies’. A short-term vision of the virus would make us mitigate its immediate effects without paying attention to the material conditions on which its circulation is based and reproduced, as well as (in a radically unequal way) the impacts of this pandemic and others that may come.

A short-sighted view would, for example, make us forget that in this pandemic there is an obvious urban and natural connection, where development models and growing urbanisation, apparently isolated from ’nature’, expose their vulnerability to zoonotic phenomena. The pandemic thus exposes the urban geographies of the disease, socio-environmental geographies which, as Harvey famously coined, reaffirm that “there is nothing unnatural about New York City”² or any other city. Understanding these processes is fundamental for the long-term management of this and other crises to come. The virus is not, therefore, an exogenous shock as a meteor would be, but it has particular geographies linked to key aspects of modern urbanism since the times of Haussman or Cerdà. The current urban model is closely related to the way in which the virus has spread, a model based on mobility, on the circulation of goods, services and people, in short. The development of capitalism under the paradigm of large urban concentrations as a solution or rather a key factor in capitalist development based on the intensive use of technology has led —perhaps not as paradoxically as we might think— to greater levels of mobility.

On the other hand, it has become dramatically clear how unequal development and urban segregation reflect the unequal impact of social, economic and public health crises. The combination of internationalised economies and large urban centres has played a fundamental role in accelerating the spread of the virus, which calls into question some over-optimistic views of the current development model, at least in terms of the dominant discourses on globalisation in the economic and political sphere. Even so, a hasty diagnosis could bring us back to debates such as the contrast between the dangers of urban density and the benefits of suburbanisation, which are still two sides of the same coin. What’s more, if anything exposes the virus, it’s precisely on the edges of cities, between urbanisation and suburbanisation, where outbreaks start and spread (in factory farms, airports, etc.) ³ And in relative terms, the negative impacts of the pandemic are greater in rural or low-density areas, Empty Spain, for example, where investment in health infrastructure is precarious ⁴

It is in the face of these processes of pandemic crisis when the temptation to adopt an excessively simplifying pragmatism is greater. However, as tempting as it may be, we must avoid this approach that self-deludes believing that the creation of ad-hoc solutions for any of its multiple effects can fix everything as a whole. But ff there is a fertile field for solutionism it is in the world of technology. As we have seen, in recent weeks a myriad of mobile applications designed to control the pandemic have appeared all over the world. These are designed and implemented very quickly. ⁵ A great example of the practical. The urgency to control the pandemic means that they are supported by regional, national and international administrations and institutions as well as accepted by society. Applications that have been explained in the media as examples of the power of digital technologies and the benefits of the Smart City. It may not be evident, but all of them imply profound changes in the control and monitoring of our lives —supported by legislative changes or suspensions— that affect our privacy under the discourse of security. Unfortunately, we don’t have to especulate that much: China has long been implementing facial recognition and good citizenship points card, and now a new step has been taken by developing infection cards classifying people according to their risk of infection, thread rating, etc. Urgency presents us with a false dichotomy between security and privacy as Nicky Case shows us. ⁶ Urgency, which without reflection can chronify dystopian urban models, since as Naomi Klein argues during moments of catastrophe, windows of opportunity open up for the masters of disaster to take advantage of apocalyptic reality and carry out their political agenda quickly and by avoiding public debate. ⁷

Instead, we must analyse the paradoxes that the current situation shows us, and take it as a global indication —in the sense that it has reached the heart of the developed societies of the global north— to confront the contradictions that we face, and to think towards which models of social, political and economic organisation we want, or rather should orient ourselves. We must revisit the tensions reflected in the current situation with regard to issues widely studied in our disciplines such as the relationship between high density and contagion, urban sprawl and lack of public resources. Or to also face the limitations and unexpected effects of paradigms such as the emergence of the ‘Smart Cities’ and the effects on the increase of social control, of surveillance, of the reduction of freedoms, of the growing role of private corporations on the public. We must address questions about public space, housing, segregation, the desirability of a model based on global cities or on sustainable urban models, perhaps of medium size, with better levels of habitability and self-sufficiency, but also with better infrastructure and health services.

If we do not critically revisit these and other issues, with their limits and paradoxes, if we do not consider in a normative way what kind of societies we want to develop, we may extinguish the fire that we are dealing with right now, but a false sense of ‘return to normality’ will make us more vulnerable to the challenges that will come in the immediate future. Given the urgency of what we are already facing, geography and the rest of the social sciences have more than ever the task of thinking with a perspective beyond immediacy or “practicality” and of elaborating a common agenda on which we can consider “what’s wrong with the world”. An agenda that is intrinsically geographical.

Chesterton, What’s wrong with the world (Auckland, NZ: The Floating Press, 2011 [1910], 16). ↩︎
D. Harvey, “The nature of environment: dialectics of social and environmental change”, en R. Miliband and L. Panitch, eds., Real Problems, False Solutions. A special issue of the Socialist Register (Londres: The Merlin Press, 1993, 31). ↩︎
R. Keil, C. Conolly y S. Harris Ali, Outbreaks like coronavirus start in and spread from the edges of cities, ↩︎
Ejerique, R., & Sánchez, R. ¿Por qué Canarias resiste al coronavirus y Soria no? eldiario.es. (Madrid: 2020) Recuperado 22 de abril de 2020, de ↩︎
It is not by chance that one of the methodologies currently used is called “agile”, which consists of making small and frequent developments that cover limited and specific aspects in an iterative and incremental way. As a result, the application development not just becomes faster but also resilient, allowing modifications and redefinitions. ↩︎
↩︎
N. Klein, No is not enough. Defeating the New Shock Politics(Londres: Allen Lane, 2017). ↩︎

Considerations on the importance of data and science in data science

Sun, 05 Apr 2020 00:00:00 +0000

I must confess: during these days of lockdown, I have been toying with dashboards and infographics about COVID-19 outbreak, just like everyone else. with nice plots, some formatted tables and even some (basic) maps. It’s shiny and nice, you can spend some time playing with it turning layers on and off, hovering, zooming… And, honestly, I have to admit that I am proud of some of the results I have achieved. And yet, it is flawed. Just like everyone else’s (or almost). And yet, I will keep improving it, even though I’m afraid it will always be flawed and even though I acknowledge that it will never be a contribution to improve knowledge on the topic.

Why, then, am I persisting on keeping working on it if I know I cannot change its fate? Admittedly, at some point, I asked myself that very question and I even considered quitting. Not only I didn’t want to lose my time (even in these days when we are locked down at home there are plenty of things we can do), but I didn’t want to contribute to generating noise, misinformation and even more dramatism about an already important drama. Because that’s what flawed graphics do. But in the end, I realised that working on a dashboard like that could be a great opportunity for learning by doing.

Many types of lessons can be learnt from it, like those related to technical skills, or those related to how data is gathered, visualized and analyzed. Today, when data and figures on COVID-19 are everywhere, I want to share some reflections on the science (or lack of it) in data science.

1. Get the (right) data.

As obvious as it sounds, there is no data visualization nor data science without data to visualize or analyze. Therefore, the first thing that anyone who wants to make any type of data visualization or data analysis is to get the data. Second: we cannot use any type of data. We need to use good data, and by good I mean reliable, usable (in terms of licences, formats and structure), up-to-date and frequently updated, and, hopefully, official data that is representative enough to explain the phenomenon we are studying. While this is usually non-trivial, it is even more crucial if we are to explain a completely new phenomenon that it is happening as we speak and it does at a global scale like COVID-19.

Usually, there are only two possible options¹: either gather data by ourselves or rely on others’ data. Whereas gathering our own data might be the best choice for some scenarios, in the case of COVID-19, it is unlikely that we are in a position to gather the kind of data that might be useful for us (in fact, even governments are struggling to do so, as we will see). Therefore, we are left to just one option. Of course, we cannot rely on some random person or institution, we need to rely on someone we can trust, like universities (because they tend to provide rigorous data), governments (because they provide official data) or organizations (like the ). But where do we get the data from?

WHO’s COVID-19 dashboard (Screenshot from 02-04-2020)

While most governments provide data in open licences that allow its use and reuse for any purpose, they usually fail to address another important issue: the file format and data structure. As a result, in countries like the UK or Spain, data is not ready to consume as it is, without manual work². Others, such as WHO, provide nice dashboards with data, but they do not provide the raw data to be consumed by 3rd parties. The good news is that there are people and institutions who are working in releasing clean data with open licences, such as , that gathers data from different governments and WHO, and even that fetches data from UJH and provides a nice data frame for developers and data scientists to use in their projects.

As a result, it is no wonder that most infographics and dashboards worldwide rely on the same data sources. It seems a sensible decision: not only we get data which is ready to use, but we do it from trustful sources. And yet, as I will argue, it is because of that reason that most of them are wrong. But what could possibly go wrong?

2. Don’t take data too seriously

Now that we know where to get the data from, there is something we have to be aware of: by relying on data generated by others we have not solved the (main) problem of data gathering, we have simply transferred the responsibility to somebody else, but someone still has to deal with what we have been trying to avoid. And, surprise, not every country gathers the data in the same way.

Take the case of the most basic and crucial question: how are the number of confirmed cases defined. Since COVID-19’s symptoms are very similar to those of influenza and the only way to know if someone is infected by it is by testing positive in the tests³. This seems a great definition: we have an objective test which is same the for everyone and all countries seem to use the same criteria. Unfortunately, those tests require equipment which is scarce (compared to the current worldwide demand), can only be made in hospitals, and require up to two days to get the results. Therefore, there are many other scenarios that are not considered within this test, such as those shown in figure 2a. So yes, every government provides that figure, yet all of them are much lower than the real figure. How much lower? There is no way to know.

Confirmed figures ≠ actual figures. There are many more cases than the official ones. How many more? We can’t possibly know

Let’s focus on another example: the number of deaths by COVID 19. Apparently, this should be easier. Every country keeps a record on the number of deaths per day and its cause of death, so it should be easy to filter those who died from COVID-19 amongst all the possible causes. Well, no. As we have seen, if we can’t define with precision the number of people who are infected by COVID-19, we will not be able to know the number of people who have died as a result of it.

But it can be even trickier if we consider that every country has different criteria on how they count the number of deaths of people who were tested positive⁴. Take the case of UK’s definition:

The figures on deaths relate in almost all cases to patients who have died in hospital and who have tested positive for COVID-19.[…] These figures do not include deaths outside hospital, such as those in care homes, except as indicated above.⁵

So, again: real figures are much higher than those reported, no matter which country made the measurements. All of them are wrong. Some people argue that governments do not want to provide real figures not to create even more social alarm, lose popularity with their voters or even to look better than other countries. However, often the simpler answer is the most probable one⁶: it is not that governments want to hide information from us, it is just that no country has the means to face this outbreak, nor to mention to take accurate metrics. And here lies another drama of COVID-19 that goes beyond the personal tragedy: no country in the world is prepared for the stress test that COVID-19 represents.

It is not that Governments are conspiring hiding information, it is just that they do not have the means to get better figures. And here lies the tragedy!

But let’s go back to our path: that of data and figures. At this point, we have to acknowledge that all the data is flawed and we cannot get a perfect picture of the real situation out of them. If we wanted to do so, we would need to use other data sources, like comparing the record of total daily deaths⁷ with the same period last year(s). Of course, this will need more time, and, in turn, this also has other implications and problems (for example, it will not give an accurate number of deaths by COVID-19, as there is no way to know their cause of death, but the significant difference between periods could be a good proxy).

So we have two options now, either losing faith completely in all COVID-19 infographics and metrics or to acknowledge their limitations and assume that they are just a rough approximation to reality.

We have two options: either losing faith completely in all COVID-19 infographics or assuming they are no more than a rough approximation to reality

3. Choose the right figures and visuals

Great! If you are reading this it means that you are ok assuming that reality is (as always) far more complex than what nice dashboards can ever show, no matter how fancy they are. And speaking of that: beware of fancy visuals!

I’m sure that at this point you may have seen plenty of neat infographics of any type, like the ones above: some of them use boxplots, other lines, other scatterplots… some of them have smooth edges, others have axis with logarithmic scales. Even there are some that want to introduce geospatial analysis and present maps of different kinds (choropleths, bubbles, sizes)… and if you are like me, you can enjoy watching them and interacting with them during hours. But are they really effective to display useful data? Unfortunately, most of them are not (even some of my own).

One of the most basic yet frequent is to display a big figure of the total cases within a country. Big figures are really catchy and easy to understand, but they usually lack some context to make them really meaningful. Of course, anyone can understand that a 7-figure number is a big one, but it is really difficult to know how big it is. We need to compare it to something else to wholly grasp its real magnitude. Also, since we are dealing with a cumulative figure, knowing the analysed time span is a must, as it is not the same to reach a certain figure in one day, one week, one month or one year.

A common variation of that is to provide a line plot of cumulative cases, with the dates on the X-axis and total cases in Y-Axis. There are several variations of that: displaying relative data (eg: number of cases/population), with logarithmic scale (in order to make it easier to see the variations of the first days when compared to most recent ones), displaying several categories, either representing different regions or type of cases… Whereas they are really effective and most of them are right from a technical standpoint (especially considering that some of these variations make a great difference), it is the representation of figure itself that may be of little or no use. Is it really representative of something? What kind of questions can we answer by providing a number that, by definition, will always grow?

Line plot displaying cumulative cases. Is it really meaningful? Source:

It is for that reason that some have decided to use other indicators in order to assess the evolution of the pandemic, such as the number of new cases per day, as they allow us to easily identify if figures are better or worse than the previous day. Again, the same variations of the previous plots can be made in order to make this even more insightful, such as the following barplot, which displays the daily variation of cases, grouped by types. Not only we can see that they are starting to lower, but also, that the number of recovered cases is increasing over the deaths or active cases.

Daily cases, by type. Source:

This is indeed more useful than cumulative cases, although it is somewhat volatile and can lead to confusion. Take the image below, as an example:

Can you see that weird unexpected variation? It is the weekend effect! (That’s why in the next dashboard version I will be highlighting the weekends). Source:

Can you see how all figures suffer from a dramatic fall on 29th and 30th March just before peaking again the day after? This is indeed an unexpected behaviour and really difficult to explain. Unless we realise that those days were Saturday and Sunday, and due to the fact that there are fewer people working at hospitals, data is not taken as fast as usual and therefore, accumulates on Monday. This phenomenon has been called “the weekend effect” (Did I mention that you should not take data too seriously? 😉)

It is because of that that some others, such as from Financial Times, prefer to use a rolling average of a fixed period (such as 3 or 5 days), which is a more stable figure, such as that shown in the figure below.

Source:

Other techniques used to fix those outliers and display tendencies are to use smooth line plots based on the actual data, like the following plot made by .

Smoothed lines based on actual data. Source:

4. Do not make hasty comparisons

Surely, the most frequent type of visual is that comparing how COVID-19 is affecting different regions, either within a country or comparing different countries (usually using China or Wuchan as a reference -after all, it is where it all started). While this kind of plots could provide answers to questions such as how a specific region is doing regarding another one (and therefore, replicating or avoiding their measures against COVID-19, for example), those comparisons are really problematic. For starters, the fact that population or size is largely different invalidates any comparison in absolute terms.

But even when using relative values (eg: number of cases per inhabitant), there are other key factors that have a direct impact on the evolution of the disease and its effects are assumed to be the same, while in reality can differ in several orders of magnitude, such as demography⁸, geography, urban settlements or health systems (in terms of human and financial resources), just to name a few.

Histogram of cases and mortality rates by age and country. Most cases in Italy were from 70-90, as opposed to 20-30 in South Korea, hence the enormous difference in the total of deaths. Source:

Amongst all those differences, though, the most relevant well may be the number of tests done to detect COVID-19, a figure that is not just different but also usually unknown. This is by no means trivial, as we have seen that the number of cases is defined using this parameter. Therefore, if a country performed a really low number of tests, it will also have an extremely low number of cases. Out of sight, out of mind.

So, the biggest problem here is that without taking into consideration those factors, comparisons may render plenty of biased conclusions that have nothing to do with reality, such as come countries may be dodging COVID-19 or are kind of immune, or that COVID-19 only affects countries with a bad health system, unorganized governments, or undeveloped countries. As a result, there is a risk of developing a narrative of moral superiority⁹ based on totally wrong foundations like what some politicians have started to do in their own self-interest¹⁰.

Don’t be like Wopke Hoekstra doing hasty comparison, or you risk reaching repugnant conclusions like him. Photo:

5. Take predictions even less seriously

The last group of plots, and the most complex ones, are those that make predictions. While they are really appealing and, apparently, provide answers to one of our main concerns (“When is this going to end?” / Will this last any longer?) in a very understandable way, they are really tricky. There are several ways to make predictions, such as using linear regression or models. While a model can be as easy¹¹ or as complex as we want it to be (and as a result, their accuracy will differ dramatically), they mostly rely on having a good set of historic data or knowing the logics of the phenomenon they want to describe. Unfortunately, since COVID-19 is a new phenomenon, we are lacking of both, and therefore, predictions at this stage are prone to errors. Some predictions are based on what has happened in other places where the outbreak started before, but we have seen how problematic this can be.

If we can’t see (nor understand) the model behind a prediction, it can be as useful and reliable as that of a fortune teller.

Last, but not least, we should not forget that they require a large amount of knowledge of a particular field something like most of the people who are doing those nice visualizations (including myself) lack of. Therefore, since I have openly admitted that this is something beyond my knowledge, at this point I can only but recommend to be sceptical about any prediction that is not made by an authority on the field. And even in that case (provided I could understand it), I would recommend caution. Or even better: just rely on predictions if they were made by epidemiologists and you are one of them.

Wrapping up

As argued, if data visualization is never easy, it is even less so in the case of a novel phenomenon such as COVID-19. Therefore, when facing any type of visuals, we should proceed with caution. If you are doing (or planning to do) any type of visualization, ask yourself what question do you want to answer and which is the best way to do it, take into account the aforementioned considerations and make them evident to your readers¹². Also, make your analysis reproducible, so anyone could tell you if you did something wrong or even fix it by themselves. If you are simply watching them, look for all those explanations, and if you can’t find them, ask for them, help the author or simply ignore it and look for an alternative. But in any case, you should always remember not to take data too seriously or too blindly. Data by itself is not what really matters, is what we do with it and how we do it in order to achieve knowledge what really matters. And here’s when science plays its role.

There is a third scenario: to infer or calculate the data from other datasets. ↩︎
For example, , without a clean structure. Not only they use a proprietary format, but they mix data with metadata on the same file, even in the same sheet, instead of using a wide format where every column is a field and every row is an observation or a long format where keys and values are stored as in a dictionary. On the other hand, Spain decided to release the data in PDF. PDFs are great for visualization because they are an ISO format and can be opened with plenty of different softwares. Unfortunately, it is not great for consuming data, as it is not structured in any way. ↩︎
At the time of writing this post, and according to ’s page, the . The standard method of testing is real-time reverse transcription polymerase chain reaction (rRT-PCR), typically done on respiratory samples obtained by a nasopharyngeal swab and results are generally available within a few hours to two days. ↩︎
This article from El Pais (in Spanish) ↩︎
↩︎
This is the commonly phrased version of principle. ↩︎
In Spain ↩︎
Refer to this ( -in Spanish) which focuses on the fact that coronavirus mortality rate differs enormously according to the age. ↩︎
Refer to (Publico, in Spanish) ↩︎
Take as an example the unfortunate words by Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra, who suggested the EU “should investigate countries like Spain that say they have no budgetary margin to deal with the effects of the crisis provoked by the new coronavirus in spite of the fact that the eurozone has grown for seven consecutive years”, a statement that was later qualified as “repugnant” by Portugal’s Primer Minister, António Costa. (Source: ) ↩︎
Just to give you an example of how easy can be to implement a prediction in R, refer to this article: ↩︎
Also, reading this post may be useful: ↩︎

Looking for the 'perfect' presentations' solution (for me)

Sat, 08 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

During the last 10 years in various contexts due to my job as a lecturer: either lectures for my students, conferences, workshops or even much more informal events, usually speaking about cities, commons, or accessibility. I enjoy it because I love sharing knowledge with others but also because it is when I am preparing presentations (by summarising and highlighting the main topics or thinking of the storytelling) where I reflect and learn the most. It is for that reason that I am always looking for the right software that allows me to create appealing slides in a relatively fast way. In this post, I will be sharing some of the decisions I have made and the results I got regarding that matter.

In order to prepare my presentations I have used and tested several presentation softwares and services, such as the classic Powerpoint, LibreOffice Impress ( ), Google Slides or, Prezi ( , ). All of them are really good pieces of software and you can create great presentations with them. However, as time goes by, I have become more concerned with techno-politics and data autonomy on the one hand, and with efficiency on the other. As a result, I have come to outline the following list of requirements that my software of choice should have:

It must allow me to own my (own) data and to easily reuse and share it with others for any purpose.
It should be opensource.
It must allow offline editing and displaying.
It must allow adding content without having to worry about formatting it. Ideally, I should be able to write in plain text or markdown (or the like) which will later be formatted and converted into a final good-looking format. I want to focus on adding content very fast for scaffolding it: I want to edit it in plain text or markdown.
It should look good (uh!)

So, with those requirements in mind, I started to look for candidates that would fit in those selection criteria. After a while, I ended up with the following shortlist¹:

: a conventional desktop software for presentations. It is opensource and multiplatform and it is part of the LibreOffice suite.
: a presentation framework based on the power of CSS3 transforms and transitions in modern browsers and inspired by the idea behind prezi.com. It allows moving through an infinite canvas, like the former, but also in 3D!
: an HTML presentation framework. Halfway between the two others, as it creates slides’ decks that can be opened with any web browser with a two-axis’ navigation (unlike regular presentation software that only allows linear navigation).

Let’s see how the competitors behave regarding each of my requirements:

	LO Impress	impress.js	reveal.js
# 1: Own data	Yes	Yes	Yes
# 2: FLOSS	Yes	Yes	Yes
# 3: Offline	Yes (ODP or PDF)	Yes (Local html)	Yes (Local html file or PDF)
# 4: Format-hassle-free	No (although using styles makes things easier and are almost as valid workaround)	Yes, using	Yes (multiple approaches)
# 5: Appealing	With effort	Somewhat	Yes!

And now, let me further elaborate this summary table.

LibreOffice Impress

LibreOffice is a traditional desktop software that could be considered as the opensource replacement for Powerpoint. It creates regular slides’ deck and offers several templates with designs and layouts. Although I acknowledge that from LO foundation have put an effort into designing new templates and the stock defaults have improved dramatically, I cannot but help to consider that they still look somewhat oldies/traditional. However, I also admit that this is a completely subjective matter and can be fixed by either or by creating our own. After all, and to be completely honest, I have done so for many years.

Since it is a regular desktop software that means that it has to be installed in your computer if you want to edit your presentation. But if you do not have it installed, you can use any of the many softwares capable of reading ODP format, which is an open ISO standard or you can bring your own that can be run from a USB stick or the like without installing it in the computer. But if you only want to visualize the presentation, you can always export to PDF using the built-in feature (just one click), which is always an insurance that your presentation will always look the way you wanted it to be (custom fonts, I am looking at you!).

In order to add content you need to create text boxes, insert images, tables… add transitions, slides… using its GUI. This may seem a good thing, as it allows you to easily align objects and modify them on the fly. However, in my experience I found that approach to be very time consuming, as it often requires resizing objects, changing text-sizes, aligning, changing image properties… The good news is that LibreOffice’s styles are a really powerful tool when used correctly. Styles allow customizing anything we want, starting from layouts but also paragraph styles, lists, images, tables… It may take some time to customize every style, but once you’re done, it pays the effort: all your objects will look consistently and exactly the way you want without doing anything else. And if you ever change your mind… they will update automatically, preserving their consistency. Great, isn’t it?!

Another inconvenient for me is that it is not easy to work with media other than images (like videos, websites, maps…), especially if they are not stored locally or require some interaction.

Pros:

✅ Ease of use
✅ Compatibility (in terms of format an collaboration)
✅ Customization
✅ Risk-free: export to PDF for your peace of mind
✅ Presenter’s console

Cons:

❌ Content editing is time consuming
❌ No GIFs! or other interactive media
❌ Outdated (default) appearance from the 90s
❌ Only linear presentations

Impress.js

Clic on the text and use arrows to browse the presentation

I have to admit that I love Prezi because, unlike all the others, instead of working with independent slides that are displayed linearly, you can work with an infinite canvas that works at different scales at the same time. This allows plenty of completely different possibilities: you can literally go from the big picture to the smallest of the details. Or even the other way round: you can start with details that slowly conform a broader reality. Or, if you want, you can also use traditional slides. Everything seemed perfect, except that it is not opensource and all your data is locked in a closed platform and does not comply with any of my requirements.

A sample presentation I did for Digital Tools' course at Universidad San Jorge using Prezi

Admittedly, I am so in love with it that I did my best looking for a good replacement. After discarding I discovered . Impress.js is a framework that benefits from Javascript and CSS3 properties and transitions that can virtually mimic Prezi in everything (plus the addition of being able to add 3D transitions and transformations). Since it produces HTML files, they can be opened by any web browser and can include any type of media (even other embedded websites!). Also, it means that anything can be tweaked by using CSS. However, writing HTML is far from being fast, as it requires a lot of tags that need to be opened and closed.

The good news is that there is ! Hovercraft lets you write your content in , which is very similar to markdown and, hence, very fast to write and read and it converts your text into a fully functional impress.js’ website. It really has the good features of the two worlds, as it combines ease of editing with impressive results.

The only drawback is that it is not easy to create custom navigations (eg. following a path) nor to tweak the default (and basic) CSS styles².

Pros:

✅ Non-linear presentations
✅ Easy to add content by writing RST files
✅ Can be displayed in any web browser
✅ Presenter’s console
✅ Accepts any type of media

Cons:

❌ Basic CSS styles
❌ Difficult to edit paths
❌ You need to have hovercraft installed in your computer to create the output files
❌ I have not succeeded in achieving the same results as with Prezi (in terms of navigation, expressiveness and story-telling)

Reveal.js

And here it comes my currently preferred software for creating my presentations: Reveal.js. Like Impress.js it is a framework that creates an html file (with some javascript to do its magic -hence the .js suffix) that can be displayed in any device with a web browser. Also, since it follows HTML and CSS standards, and it is responsive by default, this means that can be seen in any computer, tablet or smartphone, with minor differences³.

Another feature I like a lot about reveal.js is that whereas it does not allow to design custom and complex paths like impress.js it allows using nested slides, which provides two-axis of displacement: you can move to the right-left like in regular slides’ decks and also top-down. This means that, when used wisely and consistently, it provides plenty of visual resources, which is very useful for communication purposes (at least for all of those who, like me, have a very visual memory).

Also, since it is relatively new, and it is a very popular opensource project with many contributors⁴ I find their slides to be very appealing and contemporary. And talking about its appearance, reveal.js can be customized in several ways: either changing the transitions between the slides and/or choosing from one of the several default themes (all of which look quite good) or easily customize them (or even create our own) by using .scss language, as I did below:

A presentation I made using reveal.js for the Urban Studies I course at Universidad San Jorge. You can see it [fullscreen here](https://ccamara.github.io/slides/02-Greek-roman-cities) (which is where it shines!)

I know what you may be thinking now: “But hey! you’ve talked about .html, .css, .js and .scss, which are languages that are quite verbose and therefore it does not comply with your requirement #4, as writing a presentation in .html can be really cumbersome.” You’re right. And wrong. While this is true by default, the good news is that there are several ways to write in markdown, a language that I have come to love due to its simplicity, speed and versatility (in fact, this whole website is written in markdown). But since there are several ways to do it and this has resulted in an already long post, I will talk about it in an upcoming one.

Pros:

✅ Can be displayed in any web browser
✅ Looks great (nice default SCSS templates, which can be easily extended)
✅ Presenter’s console (you know, with a timer, presenter notes and next-slide preview)
✅ Accepts any type of media
✅ Can create sections and sub-sections
✅ Easy to add content by writing in markdown plain text (there are many approaches to generate the HTML files from plain text -more on that in an upcoming blog post)

Cons:

❌ Not for everyone (may not be ideal if you are to collaborate with other people not familiar with markdown, html, css, git…) (but hey! there is also an as a freemium service)
❌ Requires some time to set up
❌ May not look the same in every device
❌ PDF export requires Chrome/Chromium, and still doesn’t look as nice as the original

I am also aware of the existence of other solutions that may meet my requirements, but I haven’t had the time to try them out, such as or . If you happen to know more that may fit on my requirements, please feel free to share them with me in the comments. ↩︎
You can see some of the attempts I made on . ↩︎
The truth is that depending on the screen resolution and the use of custom fonts, the result may differ slightly (or greatly). ↩︎
At the time of writing this post, 255 different people have contributed to reveal.js in more than 2,400 different commits. Source: ↩︎

Digital Privacy Workshop: a chronicle

Sat, 01 Feb 2020 00:00:00 +0000

Last Friday, I attended to a workshop aimed to discuss, learn and raise awareness on our Digital Privacy, organized by , a group of “feminist cybersecurity advocates and researchers seeking to engage with groups excluded from tech”. I didn’t know much about the event nor the organizers when I signed up, but I was sure I would enjoy it. As an opensource advocate who is also concerned about how our private data can be (and it is) used by companies and governments, I was seduced by the topic and, above all, by their feminist approach as well as their hybrid profile, halfway between activism and academia. These two topics would soon be made evident.

We were first welcomed by a group of very friendly people who handed out an information sheet, introducing themselves and the event, and a participant agreement which we had to return signed if we wanted to take part into the research they are conducting. Because, yes, as they (sorry for not remembering your names, guys) soon explained at the welcome speech, the workshop was also part of an action-research¹ project within the , funded by a research grant from UK Research & Innovation. As they kindly and thoroughly explained, this meant that we could opt to contribute to the research by sharing our opinions and data. I was positively surprised on their feminist approach (as they stated it) in dealing with that, not only they were very transparent, but they also offered options for those willing to take part into the workshop while not taking part into the research, which I believe is a very coherent behaviour due to the topic (after all they would be dealing with private data). Kudos for them!

Soon after the introduction, we participated in an open discussion through a questionnaire we could interact with in real-time through , in which we assessed our demographics (we were around 20 people from all ages -more on gender below), motivations, prior knowledge on the topic and concerns on digital privacy. This last question led to the next phase, in which we divided into smaller groups, where an IT person took note of our interventions and answered the questions that arose, to further discuss our fears and interests. After this first round of discussion, we were introduced to the , a really thorough yet accessible guide written by Noah Kelley from which introduces the foundations of key areas and provides a series of free/libre tools grouped around the following topics: Anonymity, Hacking, Data, Phones, and Social. At a personal level it helped me to understand the insides of tools that I was already using, such a , tools I knew existed, such as , or simply learnt of the existence of new and intersting ones such as .

The last part of the workshop consisted of several focus groups (some of which -for those who agreed to take part in the research- were recorded) in which a researcher introduced several topics (like how do we feel regarding cybersecurity, how should be the best app/service for us? ) which we discussed between us and in turn opened new related topics such as security and gender and age, the role of governments and companies… I really enjoyed this part, as thorough the questions and answers we had profound discussions that I had honestly never thought about before so specifically. From time to time, we made short breaks to share some conclusions with the other groups and what people had written on the screen through the menti app. To make things even better, pizza was served for us all!

So that’s grosso modo, how a group of around 20 people spent 3 hours on a Friday evening talking, learning and sharing on cybersecurity, and data privacy and, most of all, having a great time together. As I said before, I was certain that I would enjoy the workshop, but I have to admit that it was completely different from what I had expected and, as a result, it was much better than I thought. At this point, I would like to thank Reconfigure for the organization of the event and wish them great success with their research. I am willing to know more about it, about them and about their results (and will be also willing to take part in it if there is a chance).

Some random thoughts before finishing:

All the attendees (except me) were females, a demographic which is completely reverse to any other event on technology or cybersecurity that I have previously attended to. While I liked that, I could not help but wonder if the fact that the event was labelled as “feminist” not only encouraged women to come but also discouraged men to do so. If that was true, that’s definitely something we (men) need to address to understand that feminism is not something alien to us but also concerns us all.
The organizers made a great effort on creating a safe-space where nobody could feel threatened or treated with contempt. In that regard, I found their approach on the topic of cybersecurity to be very appropriate given their context, goals and audience: instead of having an expert lecturing us on cybersecurity issues, we had a more peer-to-peer experience in which we all learnt from the others as equals. This is also novel in terms that usually cybersecurity issues are treated as common-sense rules which are anything but common and users are blamed by default for any “wrong” behaviour that can lead to security breaches.
The place (Oxford’s ) provided just the right atmosphere for such an event.
The pizzas were delicious! (probably that contributed to the fact that they were soon devoured).
At a personal level, I also enjoyed the fact that my partner also attended to the workshop (in fact, it was her who told me about the workshop, so thank you for doing so!) and since she was in another group, we kept the conversation even after we left the workshop. This means not only that we both enjoyed it but that Reconfigure made a great job with their workshop, so thanks again for that!

I didn’t know about it when I signed up, and this was a very positive surprise. Since I have had the opportunity to design (and to take part into) an action-research project on urban mobility and disabilities (you can read about it ), I considered very positive to learn from other fellow colleagues who come from a very different context. ↩︎

Collaborative Mapping: Maps for and by citizens

Tue, 08 Oct 2019 08:00:06 +0000

Last October 19th, I was representing , along with 4 other experiences, in the II Jornadas de Cartografías Colaborativas, organized by , where each one of us explained what we do to drive urban transformation processes through collaborative cartographies. In the session I explained what Collaborative Mapping is and what projects we do (with special emphasis on the Accessible Zaragoza project).

From the ’ blog (automated translation):

Next October 19 in the Albareda Cultural Center of Poble Sec, we will organize the II Conference of Collaborative Cartographies. In this second day we want to create a meeting space between different specialists, collectives and neighbors of the city to reflect on collaborative cartographies used in processes of urban transformation. In this case, unlike last year where there were experiences more focused on digital tools, we have invited examples with face-to-face methodologies that try to generate change or in communities.

This year we have invited five experiences:

Col-lectiu Punt 6 is a cooperative specialised in urbanism and architecture from a feminist perspective that uses collaborative mapping as a tool in various processes linked to the transformation of the city from a gender perspective. We have invited them to explain some mapping tools in terms of gender diagnosis.

Teixidora is a participative project to gather knowledge generated in talks and events, share documentation, explore connections, relate debates and activity to each other and map actors (in general in the techno-social field and the themes they intersect), emphasizing ethical and emancipatory perspectives, giving visibility to critical contributions. We have tested various tools and methodologies to document what is done and contextualize it.

Collaborative Mapping is defined as a space for the creation of collaborative maps at the service of citizens and as tools for decision making, sharing experiences and shaping the way in which we observe reality. For example, they have carried out a project to improve accessibility in the city of Zaragoza, combining face-to-face observations with online mapping tools.

Mapa Taula Urbanisme Veïnal de Barcelona. The TUVB will take advantage of this conference to present the online mapping tool for neighbourhood claims, which aims to serve as a platform for compiling all those urban conflicts and claims made in the city of Barcelona related to processes of urban transformation.

Living maps is a network of researchers, community activists, artists based in London that aims to promote the use of collaborative maps as tools for social change, encourage reflection and debate, public participation and creative forms of community action. In particular, they will present the Citizen Atlas of London, in which various collaborative mapping techniques were implemented with the aim of gathering the citizen’s vision to complement the drafting of the London 2050 Plan.

The day will be between 16.30 and 20.30 hours. We appreciate that if you are interested in participating in the day please register through the [following form] ( .

We wait for you!

Using OpenStreetMap with inclusive purposes: Accessible Zaragoza study case

Tue, 25 Jun 2019 08:00:06 +0000

SummerLab is a summer camp, a temporary cooperative meeting around topics related to various fields of technology, digital culture, open design and common learning, which brings together benchmark initiatives in these fields.

In its fourth edition, SummerLab proposes a programme that will tackle thematic meetings on data and citizen science during three moments of the summer with the participation of citizens, curious people, technological activists and people from the field of research. SummerLab is mainly a meeting space and its spirit is to share experiences and knowledge around diverse knowledge communities, which is why its operation as an intensive camp allows participants to cooperate, share and work together around the issues raised by the meeting or others linked to their interests or experiences.

In its first summer meeting SummerLab will work around data, citizen participation, privacy and transparency, analysing some of the perspectives that information and the massive treatment of data acquire in the present and doing so from different perspectives and spheres, such as academic, institutional or public-community. The meeting will combine two dynamics, an informative one that will translate into a public lecture with guests of reference projects in these fields and the other, practical or productive that will aim to produce some results through an intensive production workshop.

In its second meeting, in August, SummerLab will focus on astronomy, hosting the traditional annual meeting of citizen astronomy that will offer a series of workshops and observations of the firmament with the aim of bringing this science closer to citizens.

Finally, in September Summerlab 2019 will conclude with a meeting that will try to be a meeting point for citizen science in a broader sense with experiences that work in fields such as bio-hack labs, the environment, food or bioscience.

Source:

On sidewalks, crossings, kerbs, wheelchairs and cranes. #Zaccesibilidad: mapping for disabled people in Zaragoza

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 14:00:06 +0000

Within the Pint of Science 2019 event in Zaragoza, Miguel Sevilla-Callejo and myself explained what we are doing in Accessible Zaragoza, and action-research project by Universidad San Jorge and Collaborative Mapping, on urban mobility and disabilities.

Past, present and future of 'Zaragoza Accesible' study case

Thu, 13 Jun 2019 14:00:06 +0000

Today, cities face the greatest challenges in history due to their exponential growth, the concentration of more than half of the world’s population or the increase in wealth and social inequality, among other factors. Fortunately, it is becoming increasingly common to design, plan and manage cities taking into account aspects such as urban mobility, pollution reduction, energy efficiency, access to housing and social equality. This social awareness translates into more liveable, more efficient, fairer cities. However, this planning is usually designed on the basis of the anthropometric subject considered “normal”, paying little attention to functional diversity. Even though the number of people with some type of disability is increasing, their needs are often not taken into account, which makes it difficult or impossible for them to live autonomously and develop a full life.

Aware of this exclusion suffered by people with functional diversity, the research group OpenSource Architectures of the Universidad San Jorge organizes the first International Workshop on urban accessibility: “Inclusive Cities for All” that will take place on June 13 at the Colegio Oficial de Arquitectos de Aragón. During that day, representatives of 10 universities from 5 different countries will present their research related to the same topic: the pursue of more inclusive cities that favour the integration of people with functional diversity. Convinced that research must have some return to society if it aims to improve people’s lives, the talks will be open and free for all who want to attend.

Urban Commons and the Production of Alternatives to the Neoliberal City

Mon, 01 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Warning

Due to copyright, it is prohibited to reproduce books’ content. This is just an excerpt of this chapter’s introduction. In order to get the book, please visit .

Introduction

At the end of the first decade of the 21st century, most of the Western world started to suffer from a structural crisis. What seemed to be merely a financial problem soon started to impregnate all facets and actors of a society that heavily relies on consumption and loans to maintain its consumerist thirst. As a result, a context of growing inequalities accentuated by austerity policies – supposedly¹ aimed to mitigate the negative consequences of the crisis – started to shape. Within this scenario, cities have played a key role in favouring so.² First, because current crises are rooted into the processes of accumulation by dispossession (Harvey 2004) resulting from recent urban governance policies more concerned by profit than social issues (Burkhalter and Castells 2009; Harvey 2012; Marcuse 2012; Marcuse et al. 2008; Sevilla-Buitrago 2015; Stiglitz 2011). As a result, cities (and everything that lies within – citizens and buildings included) have turned into trading goods aiming to attract foreign capital like investments or tourism.³ Second, because contemporary cities have slowly and imperceptibly turned to be socio-technological constructs aimed to reproduce a capitalist system that increases inequalities by means of domination and control, as argued by authors like Stavros Stavrides (2015) based on Foucault’s studies on biopolitics and disciplinary control (Foucault 1995; Foucault 2007; Foucault 2010).

If it was ever true, the ideal image of the city as the domestication of a world full of perils that provides shelter and protection with the adequate conditions for human reproduction and development is no longer valid. The following pages are inserted in the epistemological tradition that conceives the city as a synonym of conflict, mostly originated by class struggle (Aibar and Bijker 1997; Brenner, Marcuse, and Mayer 2012; Casellas 2006; Castells 1977; Harvey 1989; Lenin 1999; Sorando Ortín 2014). This conception implies that cities are much more than a sort of ideal scenario where life and class confrontation simply happen. On the contrary: cities are the physical dimension of a society (Castells 1983, 311) in which space is socially produced (Lipietz 1977; Marcuse 2011; Sevilla-Buitrago 2012, 39) in order to satisfy its interests and goals (Castells 1983, 312). Nevertheless, if cities have played such a key role in favouring crisis and inequalities, it can be argued that they can also be key in fighting their negative consequences. In other words: the solution should be found in the same place where the root of the problem lies. For this reason, the selection of cities as a context for studying social transformation is, hence, more than justified. Proof can be found in the notorious concentrations around the world that flourished following Arab Spring example, which shared similar patterns: the congregation of thousands of people around the main squares protesting against their governments and their unfair austerity measures. A notorious example was the Indignados Movement of 2011, a distributed movement that spread across the major cities of Spain⁴ against the political and financial model that originated the crisis, the social inequities, the privatisation of public services like health or education, and the political corruption that derived from it. This in turn sparked a series of debates, assemblies and discussions aimed to propose and demand new fairer alternatives.

15M Demonstration in Puerta del Sol, Madrid (May 15th, 2011). Credits: La información.

Despite the evidence that new city models for a new society are needed if we are to prevent repeating the same mistakes one and again, there is no consensus on how they should be in order to fight the scenario of austerity and economic recession previously described. Urban commons are one of the possible answers and models for producing such positive social transformation. In the following pages, we will develop what urban commons are from a theoretical standpoint.

Activists like Naomi Klein argue that crises have often been used by governments worldwide to justify highly unpopular measures that would have been fiercely opposed in other contexts (Klein 2008). ↩︎
For an interpretation of the imbrications between crises, cities and austerity policies, see Peck (2012) for the American context and Sevilla-Buitrago (2015a) for the European context. ↩︎
Check (González (2007), Griffiths (1998) for an explanation on this procedure, called urban marketing. ↩︎
Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Zaragoza and Sevilla were just a few of the main capitals that held demonstrations on 15 May 2011 and in the following weeks which congregated thousands of people (The Barcelona encampment was the longest, which lasted 45 days in a row). More information about the cities that held 15M demonstrations, as well as their numbers and other references, can be found in the wiki created by the Indignados Movement: . ↩︎

A brief note on maps and feminism

Fri, 08 Mar 2019 00:00:00 +0000

As those who know me well know, : I like to see them, I like to make them and I like to use them to give answers to complex questions. I like the fact that you can create maps about almost anything. But surely, what I like most about them is that they are unique tools to show unnoticed realities that help to understand all types of phenomena. Some common (and, to some extent, hackneyed) examples of such maps are those used to explain the spread of diseases¹, the , social inequality, or . However, we can map any topic we can think of, and there are examples no less well known but important (on the contrary!), such as gender inequality.

That is why today, , I wanted to highlight the excellent work they have done at ², with the project .

Women’s streets is paradigmatic because it makes a novel and necessary reading of an everyday reality for most of us who live in urban environments: the street nomenclator. By identifying the streets of some cities in Spain and Latin America whose names refer to women, and comparing it with the streets whose name refers to a men, they show that there is a great biass in the representation of women in public space. This is by no means trivial: since street names are often a way of celebrating (and recounting) the culture of a place by assigning names to influential and notable people or landmarks that have marked history, such unequal gender representation evidences that the importance of women is systematically silenced, which contributes to building a story in which women have barely had an important role (or worthy of public recognition) in the historical and cultural development of our society, which is clearly incorrect.

Another aspect of the project is to show how many of the women after whom a street is named have an article in the wikipedia (without evaluating its content). This also evidences that there is yet another gender gap which is not just a local matter of a few cities.

On the other hand, I cannot help but pointing out another issue that I love about the project (and for which I congratulate , who has led its development), and it is its open development: since , it is relatively easy to expand the information to other cities in the world, making the project even more useful, if possible.

Other examples of maps that have dealt (although from other approaches) with the gender perspective are the (also made by geochicas), or the maps of feminist entities that exist in some cities or those that are collected in books such as by Joni Seager.

Unequal opportunities. From Myriad Edificions and Seager, J (2003. The Penguin Atlas of Women in the World)

Another similar, yet different, project linked to maps and gender perspective is the initiative promoted by Esther Mingot (a well-known mapper within the community of OSM Spain under the pseudonym of [Lanxana] ( )) to , out of several open datasources from Barcelona City Council and Generalitat de Catalunya. As a result, OSM map will become more inclusive and useful for those collectives.

All those examples outline another important feature about maps: maps can also be social transformation tools! (and I love it!)

It is famous the example of the map that Dr. John Snow made in 1854 to understand the spread of cholera in London. That map allowed to deduce that cholera was infected by polluted water rather than by air, as was thought at that time (For more information on the map, please read [this text by John Mackenzie] ( ) in which he explains how the map works and how to reproduce it with current GIS tools). ↩︎
Geochicas is a group of OpenStreetMap women mappers aimed at closing the gender gap in that community. ↩︎

The commodifications between ICTs and public space

Mon, 03 Dec 2018 14:00:06 +0000

The Spatial Apropriation of the Urban Commons

Thu, 08 Nov 2018 14:00:06 +0000

Commoning the City and the Grassroots

Fri, 22 Jun 2018 12:00:06 +0000

Sobre sillas, sillitas, bordillos y semáforos sonoros. #zaccesibilidad para la mejora de la movilidad de las personas con diversidad funcional

Sun, 20 May 2018 12:12:06 +0000

'Accessible Zaragoza' at Pint of Science 2018

Wed, 16 May 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Let me propose an exercise: close your eyes for a moment and imagine a person devoted to science and research. Almost certainly, you may have visualized a middle-aged man in a white robe and glasses who is doing “things” in a laboratory or in front of a computer, probably to solve a problem related to health, the environment or making a process more efficient. If I have “read your mind” it is not because you are a predictable person, but because that is (with small variations) the most frequent image about scientists. Unfortunately, this view reflects some prejudices (such as gender¹ and thinking that sciences are always applied sciences² and limited to what is usually known as “natural sciences”³) and also evidence that the tasks that a scientific person does are incomprehensible to most people and, therefore, are a complete mystery.

It is precisely to bridge this disconnect between society and science that the initiative was born in 2012. Ever since, it has spread from the United Kingdom to 21 countries on all continents (except ). The idea behind Pint of Science is as simple as it is effective: to convert pubs into meeting points between science and society. To this end, for three days in a row, a festival is organised in several pubs from different cities and countries in which scientists explain their work to the audience for about 15 minutes, followed by a debate watered by the omnipresent beers that populate the majority of pubs worldwide (hence its name). There is also the funny case that some of the people attending the festival are totally unaware of the existence of the festival.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because this year I participated as a speaker in the Zaragoza edition together with my colleague and friend Miguel Sevilla-Callejo to tell about the project of which , , with the talk we titled “About chairs, chairs, kerbs and traffic lights. #zaccessibility for improving the mobility of people with functional diversity” that you can see .

ESTA TARDE 19h en @harlem_zaragoza no te pierdas sesiones sobre #geografía #mapas #accesibilidad #diversidadfuncional. @carlescamara
y @msevilla00 hablarán sobre #zaccesibilidad #Pint18ES #Pint18ZGZ @pintofscienceES cc @ZGZActiva @Geografia_UZ @ArquitecturaUSJ pic.twitter.com/aAV4WG9Rq0
— Mapeado Colaborativo / Geoinquietos Zaragoza (@MapColabora) May 14, 2018

Our talk was one of the three of the session titled “ ” that took place on Monday, May 14 at the and in which also participated , from the Colegio de Geógrafos de Aragón, and , member of Aragonese parliament.

Lujazo de ponentes en el Harlem! #Pint18ES #pint18zgz #ParalaPoSteridad Y mañana más, a partir de las 19.00! pic.twitter.com/0n3Sve6GEo

— Silvi 🤷🤦🏽‍♀️ (@sylviezgz) May 14, 2018

Rafa talked about the work that geographers do and the importance of geography to understand and explain phenomena of all kinds and that have to do with how we perceive and relate to the world and its physical environment, using an endless number of curious maps.

Queréis saber para qué sirve la geografía en nuestro día a día? Pues pasaros por el Harlem, pero daros prisa, que ya ha empezado! #Pint18ES #pint18zgz #ParalaPoSteridad pic.twitter.com/YkdEx0zc8v

— Silvi 🤷🤦🏽‍♀️ (@sylviezgz) May 14, 2018

In his entertaining talk entitled “Nobody’s perfect: I have no arms”, Raúl recounted his personal experience in order to raise awareness of how the daily life of a person with a disability can be but, above all, in order to break taboos about disability. All of that with a great mixture of humour, rawness and tenderness.

En la segunda charla en el Harlem, @viajeroaitaca_ nos ha hablado sobre "discapacidad, quirófanos y demás cosas divertidas" #Pint18ES #pint18zgz #ParalaPoSteridad pic.twitter.com/15cS3OqbKH

— Silvi 🤷🤦🏽‍♀️ (@sylviezgz) May 14, 2018

Finally, Miguel and I explained the need for a map like the one we are developing on urban accessibility and the opportunity to do it collaboratively using not only to denounce, but to co-responsibility of citizenship and contribute to improving the autonomy of people with functional diversity.

Mapeado colaborativo en la sesión de retrones y satélites 🛰 #pint18ZGZ Aúpa con esta gran iniciativa de @MapColabora by @carlescamara @msevilla00 et al. pic.twitter.com/PRkmgosF6x
— Rafa 🌐 (@Galactero) May 14, 2018

Buenas noticias! Todos podemos mapear! Nos lo cuentan @carlescamara y @msevilla00 de @MapColabora en el Harlem #Pint18ES #pint18zgz #ParalaPoSteridad pic.twitter.com/IEgtlYQYcb

— Silvi 🤷🤦🏽‍♀️ (@sylviezgz) May 14, 2018

The experience was unbeatable, both for the interesting and complementary previous talks, and for the organization of the event through the association that organizes Pint of science (thanks in particular to Carlos, Juan and Silvia for their work), but especially for the reception of the public, which lent itself to an interesting debate that lasted until the closing time of the bar.

According to the report “ ” elaborated in 2015 by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, the number of women researchers was quantified, for that year, in 38% of the total number of researchers. That figure shows that women are not an exception in research, although it is true that there is still a lot of room for improvement (especially if we asess the positions that these researchers occupy, but that is out of the scope of this text) and therefore campaigns such as those that are becoming habitual to attract women towards careers of the calls (Science, Technology, Enginery and Mathematics). ↩︎
Applied sciences are those that are oriented to apply scientific knowledge of one or more specialized areas of science to solve practical problems. Given their “applicability,” that is, their ability to solve very specific problems, they tend to be easier to explain and understand and, therefore, tend to receive greater attention from society, as well as more funding. In contrast to this type of science is the basic science, that is to say that scientific research that is carried out to increase knowledge, without having an immediate practical purpose. Since this type of research does not offer immediate (social, economic …) benefits, it is usually considered unnecessary because it is a mere exercise in curiosity. The reality, however, is that the benefits of this type of research are obtained in the longer term, since it is what allows the creation of new knowledge on which applied science can now be based. ↩︎
It is often forgotten that, in addition to natural sciences, there are social sciences, aimed at studying society and human behavior, which include disciplines as varied as sociology, anthropology, political science, geography, history .. and even those related to language such as linguistics (which often do not relate at all to research), amongst others. ↩︎

Urban Commons: Lessons from Barcelona at the beginning of 21st century

Wed, 11 Apr 2018 13:00:00 +0000

Ponencia de introducción al concepto de los comunes urbanos dentro del marco de la jornada de trabajo Stadt-Teilen – Neue öffentliche Räume und nachbarschaftliche Gemeingüter, liderada por la

Zaragoza Accesible: un caso práctico de integración de SIG con fines sociales en el currículo educativo del grado de arquitectura

Sun, 01 Apr 2018 00:00:00 +0000

'Accessible Zaragoza' is now on TV

Wed, 21 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

During the last few years, I have hardly shown any activity on this website. This is because they have coincided with periods of considerable intensity, especially in terms of work. I already wrote about , and today I would like to write about another other one: , the collaborative mapping project of aspects related to urban mobility and disability that I devised in the academic year 2015-16 within a chair at the Universidad San Jorge and in which I have been working as a principal investigator since then.

For some time I have been looking forward to share it here because it is a project in which I am putting a lot of enthusiasm and effort and which, on the other hand, is giving me many joys. One of them was the , but the most recent has been to have participated in the program of scientific dissemination of Aragón TV “ ”, which was broadcasted last Saturday, and in which I had the opportunity to participate and explain what the project¹ consists of.

You can see the (in Spanish, though). Starting at minute 12:55, I explain to the particle physicist Carlos Pobes the particularities of Accessible Zaragoza². Additionally, the program features Javier Monclús, researcher in architecture and urbanism at the University of Zaragoza, who opens the chapter by explaining the role that our cities play in our lives (which introduces our project very well); and Antonio Tausiet, who presents the project , a repository of surprising images of the city, both current and old. The rest of the footage is dedicated in the survey section to some of the myths about menstruation and to the invention of the chair folder.

Some images of the program, whose full content can be seen in

I have to admit that this is the first time I’ve participated in a TV show like this and it was a very enriching experience to record and prepare it. I was pleasantly surprised by the meticulous and respectful work made by , producers of “En ruta con la ciencia “. After the first contact, in which their staff gave me an operational overview of their program, I had a telephone interview that lasted for more than one hour with the documentary filmmaker Isabel (I don’t remember her last name). After having read all the documentation that I had previosuly facilitated to her, she asked me very specific questions and clarified doubts, making obvious that she had already carefully reviewed my matrials). At the same time, this work served to elaborate a script that they handed me in order to guide the interview that Carlos Pobes would make me a few days later. After the interview, part of the staff joined me on my workplace at San Jorge University, where we recorded more shots.

Honestly, I have to admit that I am very happy both with the experience of recording the program as with the final result, and I can do nothing but reiterate what I did on twitter and thank the entire team of [Sintregua] ( ), first, for giving us the opportunity to publicize our project and, second, for making a program so careful and with great respect for our work.

Muchas gracias por dedicarnos unos minutos a explicar el proyecto #zaccesible (https://t.co/ocrkHpUZ81) en un programa tan interesante como cuidado, y además, por hacerlo en gran compañía. cc/ @edmldmv @ArquitecturaUSJ @MapColabora
— Carlos Cámara Menoyo - ccamara@mastodon.social (@carlescamara) February 17, 2018

I would also like to thank all the people and entities that have participated in the project and, last, but not least, I would also like to emphasize that anyone willing to help us will be more than welcome.

Aprovecho también para dar las gracias a todas aquellas personas y entidades que han contribuido y siguen contribuyendo a hacer de #zaccesible una realidad: https://t.co/o7GtR9894W cc @DiscapacitadoSF @MapColabora @Hiri_Lagunkoiak @ganchillosocial #mundocrip ...
— Carlos Cámara Menoyo - ccamara@mastodon.social (@carlescamara) February 17, 2018

Y por supuesto, para recalcar que cualquiera puede formar parte del proyecto! Si quieres saber cómo ayudar en #zaccesible aquí te lo explicamos: https://t.co/aT2ZfJBmoh
— Carlos Cámara Menoyo - ccamara@mastodon.social (@carlescamara) February 17, 2018

Other no less important joys are the that I have had the opportunity to meet and work side by side with great people, such as the members of [Collaborative Mapping] ( ), which I founded almost unintentionally thanks to the then Director of Zaragoza Activa Las Armas José Ramon Insa and Miguel Sevilla-Callejo ([here I talked about it] ( , the people of [Disabled Without Borders Aragon] ( ) and [Mundo Crip] ( ) (I have yet to meet Marta Valencia, of the , who showed his interest in the project but we haven’t been able to match yet), as well as Mikel Gómez and the rest of the ’s staff and a lot of people from [OpenStreetMap] ( ) community. ↩︎
If the explanation of the program falls short you can always see the [specific website of the project] ( ), where you can find more information. ↩︎

IND+I Science award to Metropolitan Innovation Policies

Fri, 09 Feb 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Although it had officially been announced several days ago, the ¹ awards ceremony took place yesterday, where I received the prize of the category “Metropolitan innovation policies” for my .

El guanyador del Premi Polítiques d'innovació metropolitanes és @carlescamara. El proper 8/02 t'explicarà el seu treball de recerca al CERC @diba. Inscripcions a https://t.co/ehFTblO9q4 #FENTLINDI pic.twitter.com/VhQQApZTWf
— IND+I (@INDI_viladecans) February 5, 2018

The rest of the awards were for:

Sustainable Cities Agenda category: awarded ex-aequo to (UB) for his research “The impact of socioeconomic characteristics on CO2 emissions associated with urban mobility: inequality across individuals “ and to (UAB) for his research “Designing a Social Robot for a Children’s Hospital. Caring responsibilities of Technological Design in sustainable cities “
Innovation and Industry category, awarded to (UAB i University of Aveiro) for her research “Universities in Innovation Policy-Design: a review of the participation of external actors in the policy process for the creation of public value “
Green Industry category, awarded to (URV) for her research “Eco-strategies and firm growth in SMEs: EU15 and new EU membres “
Metropolitan innovation policies, awarded to Carlos Cámara Menoyo (UOC) for research “Urban commons: lessons from Barcelona at the beginning of 21st century “²

Aquí tenim els guanyadors de la primera edició del IND+I Science #FENTLINDI pic.twitter.com/iRLjfYnS40
— IND+I (@INDI_viladecans) February 8, 2018

During the perfectly organized event, each of the winners was able to briefly present their research, grouped into two blocks, which gave way to two very interesting debates although, as always happens to me in these cases, I had the feeling that they were too brief.

Carlos Cámara presenta el seu treball sobre comuns urbans aplicats al cas de Barcelona, que li ha valgut el premi IND+I Science sobre polítiques d'innovació metropolitanes #fentlindi pic.twitter.com/Dit0l656Z0
— David Rodríguez (@davidpemb) February 8, 2018

The event served not only to know the other four winners of the other categories and their research (as a tasting) but also to encourage interesting debates and even networking. All very much in line with IND+I’s transfer objectives.

That is why I can only thank the IND+I Science team for several reasons. Firstly, for contributing with prizes and events like this to make science come out of offices and laboratories, reach the general public and, hopefully, can even be applied. Secondly,as Núria Vallès rightly pointed out, because it is a pleasure to see how the work we have been doing for years and which, is very often solitary, raises certain interest for someone. Thirdly, for contributing financially to the promotion of scientific research, which in recent years has suffered significant cuts. Personally, also for giving me the opportunity to make my research known and to meet the other four winners of the other categories and their research. All very much in line with IND+I’s transfer objectives. Last but not least, for the organisation and the care with which we have been treated at all times.

I also take this opportunity to extend my thanks to the members of the PEMB, not only for sponsoring the prize in my category, but also because they were always very interested in my work and its dissemination. I hope to meet you again soon.

El premi IND+I Science “polítiques d'innovació metropolitana” patrocinat pel PEMB ha recaigut en @carlescamara de @UOCuniversitat pel seu treball sobre “comuns urbans” i com incideixen en la ciutat @INDI_viladecans @pacteindustrial per saber-ne més 👇https://t.co/8I7eDgjulQ
— Pla Estratègic Metropolità de Barcelona (PEMB) (@pembarcelona) February 8, 2018

Without further ado, I’ll leave you some tweets that summarize part of the intervention and the debate.

El @carlescamara s'ha centrat en els comuns urbans, els més vinculats a les ciutats, agents clau a les crisis. Entendre que són, problematitzar-los i veure quines potencialitats i limitacions tenen per produir noves ciutats o entorns #FENTLINDI pic.twitter.com/lOxTNYtW3U
— IND+I (@INDI_viladecans) February 8, 2018

"Sense les comunitats i les persones que hi ha al darrere no es podria parlar de comuns urbans.Són les qui decideixen com s'organitzen per gestionar comunitàriament un determinat recurs"explica @carlescamara (@UOCciudad), un dels guardonats amb els Premis IND+I Science #FENTLINDI pic.twitter.com/McInCdxaQC
— Pla Estratègic Metropolità de Barcelona (PEMB) (@pembarcelona) February 8, 2018

is an initiative to promote scientific research and innovation promoted by the the , the , the and the ↩︎
More information on research at . ↩︎

Urban Commons: Lessons from Barcelona at the Beginning of 21st Century. A characterization proposal from the praxis

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 17:13:02 +0100

Full text can be found in the following repositories: , , . An on-line and live version can be found in

PhD Viva: 'Urban Commons: Lessons from Barcelona at the Beginning of 21st Century. A characterization proposal from the praxis'

Tue, 30 Jan 2018 14:00:06 +0000

Accessibility and collaborative information technologies. Cartographies for an inclusive city

Mon, 01 Jan 2018 17:00:00 +0100

El uso de una plataforma cartográfica libre, OpenStreetMap, para el mapeado colaborativo de la ciclabilidad de Zaragoza

Sun, 01 Jan 2017 17:00:00 +0100

Artículo de la comunicación llevada al XIV Congreso Ibérico “La Bicicleta y la Ciudad” celebrado en Zaragoza en abril de 2017 (La Ciudad de las Bicis: , cuya presentación final puede verse en el siguiente enlace: y aceptado para ser incluido en el libro que se va a editar con las aportaciones más interesantes del congreso.

Resumen

El desarrollo tecnológico y la proliferación de iniciativas colaborativas en Internet ha propiciado la aparición de OpenStreetMap, un proyecto de cartografía temática libre orientado a distribuir datos geográficos de forma abierta. Frente a otros servicios de cartografía en línea, OpenStreetMap se ha convertido en la plataforma de mapas usada en numerosas webs, se está empleando en áreas de asistencia humanitaria, ayuda al desarrollo, en la creación de cartografía alternativa - e. g. para personas con algún tipo de discapacidad - y en ella se está volcando información territorial procedente de servicios locales, regionales o europeos.

Las nuevas tecnologías también se han trasladado a los desplazamientos en bici, haciéndose imprescindible una información geográfica de calidad relativa a este medio de transporte. Cada vez son más habituales las aplicaciones móviles para calcular rutas o realizar el seguimiento de la actividad física. En este sentido es importante el origen, la fiabilidad y actualidad de la información que se maneja.

Esta comunicación pone de relieve el valor de OpenStreetMap como herramienta para la divulgación y difusión de vías ciclables e infraestructuras afines al desplazamiento en bicicleta tomando como ejemplo la ciudad de Zaragoza.

Metodológicamente se procedió en tres fases:

Durante la primera fase se recopiló información relevante para los ciclistas como el trazado de vías aptas para ir en bicicleta, los aparcabicis, las fuentes o las estaciones del servicio municipal de alquiler de bicicletas.

Para la segunda fase se contó con un sencillo editor implementado dentro de la propia web de OpenStreetMap y en ella se procedió; primero, a incluir y/o contrastar la información de ediciones anteriores y, después, a asignar etiquetas informativas: tipo de elemento, características, superficie, etc.

La última fase se realiza con la ayuda del la herramienta Umap que permite la creación de mapas personalizados realzando los elementos que se deseen desde OpenStreetMap y que permite visualizar el resultado del trabajo de la comunidad.

En Zaragoza no existe una plataforma de cartografía colaborativa y digital de la ciclabilidad abierta para todo el mundo y la edición en OSM representa una solución adecuada para este fin.

MRSZ 2018: Mapa de Riesgo Social de Zaragoza. De técnica de gestión de poblaciones a praxis de consolidación de los comunes

Fri, 04 Nov 2016 22:08:41 +0100

Aula Abierta: Aprender a construir su futuro

Thu, 14 Jul 2016 15:44:27 +0000

Presentación realizada junto a Fco. Javier Álvarez en el marco de las “ ” organizadas por la Universidad San Jorge sobre nuestro trabajo realizado en la asignatura de 5º curso “Aula Abierta” y los aspectos innovadores de la misma, que pasan por incorporar el mundo laboral en el currículo educativo desde el principio de la asignatura, la enseñanza por proyectos y centrada en el alumno, la incorporación de juegos como recurso educativo para formentar la creatividad, la síntesis y la reflexión o mecanismos de auto-evaluación que hemos llamado “Business Angels”.

La arquitectura de la Seducción: Un análisis de las arquitecturas digitales en la sociedad de consumo

Wed, 09 Sep 2015 15:53:19 +0000

Urbanismo y participación ciudadana: una introducción al derecho a la ciudad

Fri, 04 Sep 2015 22:38:53 +0000

Hacking Urban Space: Intervenciones y posibilidades paradigmáticas de reapropiación del espacio urbano: Catálogo de buenas prácticas

Wed, 27 May 2015 22:21:49 +0000

Apuntes sobre ciudades postburbuja: los comunes urbanos en barcelona

Fri, 17 Apr 2015 22:26:18 +0000

Producción colaborativa entre iguales y ciudad. Una aproximación

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 22:33:00 +0000

Scrum: una retrospectiva

Tue, 20 May 2014 23:39:05 +0000

Mapas y drupal, o cómo no perderse en el intento

Sun, 27 Oct 2013 00:17:26 +0000

“Pensamiento global, actuación local”: Una forma de afrontar los retos de futuro en la educación universitaria de la arquitectura: el caso de Herramientas Digitales

Wed, 11 Sep 2013 08:09:27 +0000

Sesión "Pensamiento global, actuación local, una forma de afrontar los retos de futuro en la enseñanza universitaria de arquitectura: el caso de Herramientas Digitales" en las Jornadas Científicas Internacionales COAC 2012 sobre arquitectura, educación y sociedad organizado conjuntamente por el el Colegio de Arquitectos de Cataluña y la Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona.

La ponencia se enmarca en el bloque relacionado con la enseñanza universitaria de arquitectura, y reivindica el poder que tenemos los profesores de incidir de forma humilde pero efectiva en tratar de dar respuesta a algunos de los problemas de los que adolece la educación universitaria en general y de la arquitectura en particular mediante pequeños ajustes en nuestras respectivas asignaturas, siguiendo la máxima de pensar globalmente y actuar localmente. Y para demostrarlo muestra la experiencia personal en la confección del plan de estudios de la asignatura que imparto en la ETSA de la Universidad San Jorge, Herramientas Digitales, que si bien dista mucho de ser perfecta y tiene, por supuesto, algunos aspectos mejorables, ofrece una visión de la arquitectura actualizada y acorde con el contexto presente.

About Simplicity, Complexity and Deficiencies

Tue, 23 Apr 2013 00:00:00 +0000

There are two ways of constructing a software design: one way is to make it so simple that there are obviously no deficiencies; the other is to make it so complicated that there are no obvious deficiencies. – C. A. R. Hoare

When reading by Swaroop C H, I found this quote being funny, well constructed and true. The funniest thing in my opinion is that it can also be applied to many other areas apart from computer science, being politics one of the most evident.

¿De qué hablamos cuando hablamos de urbanismo participativo? Un análisis de distintas formas de entender la participación ciudadana entorno al urbanismo

Sat, 30 Jun 2012 17:13:02 +0100

Debate: Arquitectos para la participación ciudadana

Mon, 25 Jun 2012 22:10:52 +0000

Citizen Participative Initiatives Within Urbanism. Participative Urbanism, A New Way Of Understanding City And Citizenship In The Configuration Of Public Spaces.

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 15:32:19 +0000

Transparency project: The observer, observed... or the gestation of the documentation, dissemination and transparency programme

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 00:00:00 +0000

The following text is an excerpt from the material we produced for the book accompanying the —a collaborative effort by Ethel Baraona, Pablo García Bachiller, and myself as members of the documentation, dissemination, and web transparency team. The aim of these texts was to explain our work while offering a different, more intimate perspective on another viewpoint: the one presented by the BEAU through its selection of projects.

Since its inception, BEAU has been a snapshot of Spanish architecture and urbanism generated in the course of the previous two years, viewed through the lens of an independent jury with alternating members who bring with them their particular vision of the moment. What is perhaps not so obvious is that it is also a reflection of its own time. The observer is also the observed object.

In recent years we have seen how the Internet and ICT has entered the day to day existence of most people in developed countries. Even websites that have been part of our daily lives for a relatively long time have had to evolve to survive: it is no longer enough to have something to say; is not enough to be a mere shop window. There is such an excess of information on the Internet that we have to provide something more if we do not want thecdocumentary noise to drown out our message. No wonder, then, that Web 2.0, a web that allows user participation, has evolved, giving rise to many social networks (so fashionable lately), blogs, etc., and a change in the way we communicate with our friends, acquaintances and professional contacts. New interaction channels like Twitter have changed not only where we tell something but also what, how and when we tell it. Recent social events in the world have shown that although this is just the beginning, social networking can and will continue to play an exponentially significant role in many fields that they were not even designed for, proving their astonishing capability for adaptation and evolution.

Some say that the current crisis is a crisis of values, more than an economic crisis. We have lost faith in banks, businesses … which is why we are beginning to call them to account. It is increasingly common for us to ask where a product comes from, by whom and how it was manufactured, what is done with its waste, before we decide to buy… and we want to know who is funded by our money when we open a bank account or buy certain products or services. No wonder, then, that the companies which inform us about this information in a clear, transparent way are beginning to stand out from those that do not, and are starting to be more successful.

All of this may have helped to promote current concepts like coworking, crowdfunding, crowdthinking, citizen participation … i.e., different models of participation and collaboration based on perfectly familiar concepts like teamwork, knowledge society and collective intelligence to achieve optimal results that overcome individual limitations.

In this context, it is not surprising that this year’s BEAU has drawn on all these parameters and conditions. Actually, it could not have been otherwise. The documentation, dissemination and transparency team, formed by Ethel Baraona, Pablo García Bachiller and myself, has collated some of these parameters and included them in this Biennial, establishing for the purpose common goals and a teamwork and consensus-based methodology that gives us a degree of freedom of movement while at the same time allowing each of us to develop themes which, due to affinity or knowledge, we can best handle to achieve the best possible results. All of this is part of an integrated, unitary project focused on defining the known ingredients in a new, unitary and coherent way, and generating an optimal response to the Directors’ commission. At the end of the day, that is essentially our job as architects. The following pages explain the three major pillars of the project. To make it easier to understand our work, each text focuses on a specific issue and is signed by the person who was responsible for its development, although the real process was slightly different, as these three types of action never remain in their pure state and are continuously intermingled, along with the work done by each one of us.

Carlos Cámara Menoyo Documentation, dissemination and transparency team coordinator

+arquitectura en el foro Arquia/Proxima

Tue, 30 Sep 2008 10:38:50 +0000

El foro arquia/Próxima es un programa de la Fundación Caja de Arquitectos que tiene como objetivo documentar y mostrar lo que hacen los jóvenes arquitectos españoles. De entre todos los participantes se seleccionaron 128 realizaciones para formar parte de la publicación, 28 de las cuales tenían, además, la oportunidad de presentarlas en el auditorio de la ETSA de Valencia. Cada uno de los seleccionados teníamos exactamente 7 minutos para contar las claves necesarias para entender nuestra realización.

Exhibition: 44 Young International Architects

Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Curator, along with Félix Arranz, of the exhibition held at the during the “Arquiset ‘07 week” which brings together the work of the first works built by 44 European, American and Iberian studios. In addition, the exhibition is located and complemented in Barcelona with a private exhibition, which includes debates and original material from the seven professional studios resident in Catalonia: , , , , , , Re- Arquitectos, which are included in the selection.

Also included in the exhibition is the projection of audiovisual material managed by AJAC, Agrupació de Joves Arquitectes de Catalunya.

The opening ceremony included an open debate in which Ferran Barenblit (director of CASM), Antonio Ortega (Coordinator of CASM activities), the seven studios resident in Catalonia and the artists sponsored by studios such as Rubén Martínez (YPSITE.net), Martí Anson, Octavi Comerón, among other artists listed in the Arxiu_Dossiers of the Centre d’Art SantaMòniCA.

Two central questions were addressed in the debate: The first question is “symptoms of the new versus the young: to what extent do you project -young architects- in an unlearned, unprejudiced way?” and the second explores “media strategies, social strategies, etc… legend and reality of the media success of architecture, in Barcelona, with respect to other manifestations and arts”. The debate will be moderated by Ferran Barenblit, director of CASM, Antonio Ortega, coordinator of CASM activities together with Félix Arranz and Carlos Cámara, from SCALAE ed. and the group of young architects and artists from Barcelona is invited to participate.

The selection of the 44 works and teams of young architects was proposed and resolved by a council made up of the curators of the event together with the architects: Victoria Acebo, Angel Alonso, Ada Yvars, Cristina Chu, Daniel Silberfaden, Edgar González, Patricia Muñiz, Luciano G. Alfaya, Susana Aparicio, José Juan Barba, Jorge G. de la Cámara, Josep Cargol, Juan Pablo Quintero, Michal Sulo, Esther Rovira, Alejandro Henriquez, Nicolás Valenzuela. Technical Secretariat: Laura Acosta (scalae ed.)