Delta Analytics 2017 Program Retrospective

Jonathan Wang
deltanalytics
Published in
7 min readJul 16, 2017

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We had an incredible 2017 Fellowship program! Our 2017 cohort of 27 data scientists, software engineers, and data analysts have delivered incredible impact to our 7 nonprofit grant recipients. 2017 also saw our mission evolve and grow; we launched Delta teaching fellowships, an educational program to make machine learning more accessible by building local technical capacity around the world. As part of this initiative, we launched our pilot course in Nairobi, Kenya and will be releasing all the content for free online in the coming months.

As our fellowship draws to a close, this post serves as a reflection on what our teams have accomplished this year, our upcoming events, and what we hope to accomplish over the next year. If you are interested in getting involved, you can find more by attending our 2017 Data for Good Community Celebration event where we will be showcasing our projects.

Get Involved

Recruitment for data experts and non-profits are in full swing for our 2018 cohort, so before we dive into our accomplishments and our plans for the next year, if our mission of data for social good resonates with you, consider getting involved!

Whether as a nonprofit looking to amp up their data work next year or a fellow seeking to contribute data expertise, consider learning more below about our opportunities for 2018:

For Data Professionals:

For Non-Profits:

For everyone:

  • Join us at our 2017 Data for Good Community Celebration on July 22nd, 2017! — We will be hosting lightning talks and an open poster board session to highlight our work. Appetizers, drinks, and the space have been generously provided by USF Data Institute. Please register here as space is limited. Although donations are welcome, this event is hosted free of charge, and we look forward to meeting you.

Please contact us as inquiry@deltanalytics.org or through this contact form if you have any questions! If you are interested in keeping up to date with our work, like our page on Facebook and subscribe to our email newsletter.

2017 Data Fellowship

In 2017, our program expanded as we welcomed 27 Fellows on 7 projects. Our Fellows work on their projects alongside their full time commitments as professionals and students.

This year’s Fellowship program brought together data professionals and graduate students who work full-time across a variety of companies and schools, including Google, Stitch Fix, Netflix, Uber, Lockheed Martin, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Genentech. This brings our community to over 90 data experts and 29 projects completed to date.

Introducing the 2017 Fellowship Cohort!

Since January 2017, our Fellows have been hard at work to develop data based insights and tools for our 7 non-profit clients. With over 3,500 hours of pro bono data work donated over the past six months to our nonprofit clients, our fellows’ efforts have paid off: our fellows have created dashboards, visualizations, and applications that are providing insight and helping our clients expand their impact.

Delta’s 2017 Service Grantees

This year’s clients work across a variety of causes and required expertise on a wide range of technical needs. Delta’s teams tackled problems in partnership with environmental organizations ranging from applying deep learning modeling techniques to detect and stop illegal rainforest logging with Rainforest Connection, to building spatial representations and insights around endangered plant species within Botanic Garden Conservation International’s member conservatories.

Leveraging the cloud and deep learning models to detect illegal logging with Rainforest Connection
Building webapps to map the world’s endangered and threatened plant species with BGCI.

We also engaged BUILD and City Year which work with at risk youth in education to quantify and measure the impact that they are having on the educational outcomes of students who engage in their programs.

This year also marked our first project in the legal services space. Our Social Justice Collaborative team worked to develop a sustainable pricing model to scale SJC’s discounted legal services to immigrant communities in need.

Rounding out our 2017 cohort of projects are Samasource and TechnoServe where our teams streamlined their current data processes and developed tools for easier access to analytics on how programs are performing.

Dashboarding Technoserve’s impact across business sectors.

Introducing Our Delta Teaching Fellows Program

This year also marked the inception of our new teaching fellowship program, which aims to build technical capacity all over the world and increase access to data education. In 2017, a team of Delta teaching fellows partnered with Moringa Schools in Nairobi, Kenya to work with students from across Africa excited about using data to help their communities. We taught our class in person, held office hours for the community, and visited organizations that are using data to have a social impact.

Our goal was to introduce anybody (including those without an extensive math, statistics, or coding background) to machine learning. We used local Kenyan data from microfinance organization Kiva, and placed an equal emphasis on foundational machine learning concepts and coding deployment of algorithms.

Events & Partnerships

One area of improvement that we sought to accomplish during this year was to better engage the data for good and social sector communities to communicate and inform our work. As part of these efforts we’ve had the pleasure of expanding our partnerships and the privilege of presenting at and hosting events.

Below is a summary of some events with Delta representation, and a list of upcoming events where we will be participating — drop by and say hi!

Past Events

  • Open Data Science Conference West 2016 — Nov 4th, 2016 — Our Eneza Education team presented on “Accelerating Mobile Learning in Kenya” [Youtube]
  • Northwestern Global Engagement Summit 2017April 12–14, 2017 — Delta hosted a workshop on “Storytelling with Data” for student activists from around the world and participated as mentors on the student’s projects.
Jonathan + Sara at Northwestern
  • USF Data Institute Lightning TalksMay 5th, 2017 — Our Rainforest Connection team presented on “Stopping Illegal Deforestation Using Deep Learning” to students in USF’s data science masters students.
Sara presenting our Rainforest Connection work at USF Data Institute
  • ML Conf Seattle 2017 — May 19th, 2017 — Our Rainforest Connection team presented on “Stopping Illegal Deforestation Using Deep Learning” [Slides]
Sean + Sara at ML Conf Seattle

Upcoming Events

  • 2017 Data for Good Community Celebration — July 22nd, 2017 — Our first ever open to the public event is being co-hosted with USF Data Institute. Join us at USF’s Howard St. campus in partnership with for an afternoon of lightning talks and a poster board session to highlight Delta’s work over the past 6 months! Appetizers, drinks, and the space have been generously provided by USF Data Institute. Register here.
  • MERL Tech DC — September 7–8, 2017 — We will be sharing the stage with Kate Diaz (Director of Impact @ Technoserve) and participating in a clinic on how non-profits can most effectively work with data analytics and data science professionals.
  • Data Institute SF Conference — October 15–17, 2017 — Sara Hooker, our Executive Director, will be presenting on deep learning work that we have completed with Rainforest Connection.

Partnerships

  • BreatherBreather provides on demand space rentals across 10 cities. They have generously provided us with the space needed to run our 2017 program as home to our monthly hackathons. Thank you, Breather!
  • USF Data Institute — We are excited to be partnering with USF in support of our Fellowship program. They are providing us access to their network of data professionals and resources and Delta will be providing project and mentorship opportunities to their masters students in our 2018 Fellowship program.

Looking Forward

Delta Analytics was founded in January 2014 with the goal of tapping into the enthusiasm of data professionals for volunteering their expertise to help close the skill gap within non-profits. Since then, we have expanded our efforts into building local skill capacity through our Teaching Fellows program and have ironed out many of the challenges in building a network of volunteer data experts. As of July 2017, we have completed two Fellowship cycles which have engaged over 50 professionals on 12 projects.

The past three years have armed us with the perspective that there is a massive need in the social sector for the expertise that data professionals can provide. This, combined with the growing interests that professionals have in giving back to their communities in more meaningful ways, has fueled our mission as an organization at Delta to fulfill both of these needs: providing pro bono data services for non-profits and increasing access to data education in places that need it most.

Our agenda for 2018 will be to contribute in even more meaningful ways to our Service Grant clients, expand our Machine Learning for Good program to reach more students, and to craft better experiences for the Fellows who pass through our programs.

If you are a data professional or non-profit in need of data services, we would love to hear from you. Please drop us a line using our contact form or in the comments!

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Policy Research Scientist @Uber, Executive Director @Deltanalytics