We are back with some news about our amazing fellows from all over the world. One of our ways to keep in touch is having weekly written stand-ups in chat. We ask our fellows 3 questions plus a bonus:

1. What you have done
2. What you are doing
3. Any lessons/obstacles
4. Bonus music tracks.

##A busy month full of data trainings

• In Philippines, Happy and Sam ran a Data Skills Training for the Civil Service Commission. They really enjoyed working with government employees who were so switched on. Keep an eye on this space for a follow up blog.

• In Nigeria, our Olu just rounded up the #OpenDataParty in Abuja, Nigeria November 28 and 29 where they had 116 registered participants coming from the six region of the country to teach, and learn about how to use data for advocacy (NGOs) and storytelling (journalists); For those of you who can’t wait for the blog post, here are some pictures: Looking for pictures from this event.

• In Peru, our fellow Antonio and Juan Manuel, master of all School of Data things in Latin America, hosted Meetup with HacksHackers about private data and open data. Antonio is also working on a visualisation of climate emergencies in Peru over tge last 10 years.

• In South Africa, Hannah is working on mapping the Cape Town budget for a beneficiary NGO, Ndifuna Ukwazi. For this she is experimenting with Carto DB, using a lot of their customisation functionalities.

• In Romania, Codrina worked on and listed an application for the OGP Romanian awards – Political Colours of Romania, and preparing an open geodata workshop in this project.

• In India, Nisha just finished a beginners workshop on data journalism and an open streets map mapping party with Mapbox. She is working on an online data journalism module and preparing a data expedition in Hyderabad with Milena.

• In Tanzania, our Joachim lead a Open Refine deep dive last week with President’s office , Public Service Management and is now organizing another Open Refine and QGIS deep dive session for next week with an educational agency in Dar es Salaam.

• In Macedonia, Dona and Milena organised a 2-day training in Macedonia covering basic data concepts, data analysis with spreadsheets and data visualisation. Here are some photos:

• In Hungary, Rita is in full preparation for next week’s two spreadsheet workshops for CSOs. This is the second series of spreadsheets training. Last time, the biggest challenge was assessing people’s skills to be able to tailor the training to their knowledge. This time, to be more accurate, the team has decided to require a few exercises to be completed, not just a self assessment survey.

• In Indonesia, Yuandra talked about the usage of data at an event in Bandung and helped PWYP Indonesia create their first infographic. He is currently preparing for skill sharing session this November and for a survey trip with PWYP to kalimantan.

##Some lessons learnt

• Never rely on internet at events! If possible bring a separate internet source to workshops like a internet dongle or a BRCK
• When organizing events be patients , especially when dealing with public servants!
• It’s never an easy task to find good datasets for trainings. We try to always use data that is relevant for our participants, that can get them to ask some interesting questions and is of course appropriate for the training.
• It’s also quite hard to assess the skills of your participants before the training. Over-rating their skills might get you disappointed or at least you’ll have to cut and do a lot of adjustment to your training.

##Bonus music from around the world

• From the Philippines
• About the fellowship coming to an end in a month (sad face)
•  Some creole music from Peru
•  Some strength to keep going