We will be leading a two hour introduction to TileMill, our open source map design studio, here in Kabul on Monday, specifically looking at how NGOs can tell better stories with their data by visualizing it on beautiful, fast maps. The training will take place at Internews’ office near Shahr-e-Naw Ansari Square from 1:30–3:30 pm, and is open to local civil society organizations and international NGOs. It will have a two part focus on:

1. An introduction to using TileMill to make custom maps and how and overall how to better communicate about your operations with online maps.

2. How to share maps with other NGOs to magnify the impact of your work and create open data efficiencies.

In addition to giving an overview of TileMill and discussing the strategy behind using maps, we will design several maps with folks at the training to give everyone a feel for how powerful the software is. The hands on portion will include a step by step walk of how to turn a spreadsheet of project data into an interactive project map for the web that will be really fast, even in Afghanistan. Bring your laptop — we will have a MapBox Appliance set up with TileMill running to let folks quickly start playing with TileMill.

Once we make our project maps, we will show how to combine these maps with other existing maps to demonstrate the efficiencies of sharing data. We will share some new maps made with Internews and some maps from our work last year around the elections with National Democratic Institute.

A bigger open data vision

This training is part of a larger effort to improve development efforts in Afghanistan by opening up data. We have partnered with Internews on an Open Data Initiative in Afghanistan to help build capacity and leverage open source tools to enable local civil society groups to analyze, map, and share data.

We are currently building a pilot application to enable media advocates to analyze data on violence against journalists (more on this next week), and we’ll work with civil society organizations to promote the benefits of sharing data and hear their requirements throughout the rest of the year.

Email me ([email protected]) for directions to the office.