Week 1: March 18 – March 25, 2016
I started my journey today from Newark, NJ this week & landed in Berlin on Friday. The plane ride here was great since I got the chance to sleep on the flight (thus avoiding terrible jet-lag)! I also got upgraded, which was nice! I cried in the security line in Newark, which definitely wasn’t my best moments. This week, I can definitely say I’ve had *all* the feelings (good & bad).
But before I talk about my first week, I wanted to think a little bit about my fellowship and the reason why I’m here in Berlin. Now that I’ve had a week to reflect on my rollercoaster thoughts, I thought I would share my experiences here on this blog. I’m planning on blogging weekly (maybe, even twice in a week).
To say I’m excited to be a part of this amazing fellowship for 10 months would be an understatement. I’m excited about the new experiences I will have, new things that I will learn, and new friends that I will make. But I’m also nervous for the unknown and spending my next 10 months in a place that is completely brand new to me. For background, this isn’t the first place I’ve lived abroad, but it is the first place that I really don’t know many people or speak the language. In case you wondered.. I grew up in New Jersey, went to school in Ohio, spent summers interning in Atlanta & D.C. and living in Mexico & Vietnam. Then, I headed to work in Ohio and then D.C..
Now, I’m in Berlin for the next 10 months (thanks to Knight + Mozilla + OpenNews). Btw, if you haven’t already, you should read up on the other fellows, who are super talented and fantastic people. I’ll be spending my days working with the smart folks at Correct!v, where I’ll be wrangling data and working on investigations. During these next 10 months, I will also be traveling to conferences, hackathons and meetups around the world to learn more about the intersection of data journalism + code and teach others what I know (R, FOI, data journalism). And, I will also have the chance to work on some personal projects of my own.
I’ll use this blog as a place to write about my cultural experiences, newsroom learnings, travels, personal projects and generally things I’m thinking about. If you have thoughts on things that you’d like to know about Berlin, my work, or just want me to explain more of something I’ve written, please don’t hesitate to reach out!
This week, I thought a lot about what I want to learn and experience in the next 10 months (thanks to @livlab for this inspiring blog post)! I’ve used her questions as a reference point as to what I want to learn and get out of these next few months. For now, this is what I have in mind, but I suspect these will change in the next few weeks!
Q1: What are my main objectives in the fellowship or a certain project?
- learn more about how investigations in a German newsroom work & how FOI works here and throughout Europe
- learn more about what I really want to focus on (for ex: is there a specific beat that I never thought about but am really interested in)
- get better at documenting and open-sourcing projects
- learn more advanced Pandas and instead of relying on a tool that I already know, try something new so I can expand my skills
- share more of my knowledge and learn from others (via Twitter, blogs, meetups, talks)
- be able to hold at least a five-minute conversation by the end of my time here in German!
Q2: What/how am I contributing to my newsroom/team?
- help reporters in the newsroom understand data analysis or R
- work on an investigation
- contribute to stories
- write a blog for Correct!v
- help think through newsroom processes
Q3: What/how have I engaged with my peeps across the community?
- go to more meetups and learn from the data community in Berlin and Germany
- teach others in workshops and at conferences
- blog about my experiences
For now, I’m going to mull over these questions and my initial thoughts and perhaps I’ll have some new ideas that come to me in the next few weeks once I chat with the folks at Correct!v. I start my fellowship officially in the newsroom on March 29th! More to come in the next post about my first week, but I thought I’d leave you with this beautiful picture of my new street here in Berlin.
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