With the Bird Site implementing New Features*, it's time for another #ConnectionList #Introduction #FollowFriday #JoinMastodon #TwitterMigration post, where I use my large follower count to more richly connect the #Fediverse :fediverse:

@sarahmei is Head of #Engineering at #BackerKit 👋

@vukosi is Chair of #DataScience at the University of #Pretoria, and works with Deep Learning #Indaba and #Masakhane #NLP to aid African language technologies 👋

@TomHoneyman leads work at #ARDC - the Australian Research Data Commons - to increase the recognition of #ResearchSoftware as a #research output 👋

@trao is Tanushree and she is doing a #PhD at #Stockholm #University where she works on #aid, #migration, #inequality and #institutions. She's into #rstats and #dataviz 👋

@KohaILS is the account for the #OpenSource integrated #Library system developed in #Aotearoa, and used around the world #GLAM 👋

@verena_distler is a #PostDoc at #UniBw ain #Munich who works on #HCI in #Security and #Privacy #UsableSecurity 👋

@wikidata is the #Mastodon account for the #Wikidata project, which aims to create #ontologies of #OpenData that can be re-used openly across the world 👋 ⌨️

Don't forget to post your own #ConnectionList so we can more richly connect the #Fediverse ❤️

"#Masakhane is a grassroots organisation whose mission is to strengthen and spur #NLP [natural language processing] research in African languages, for Africans, by Africans. Despite the fact that 2000 of the world’s languages are African, African languages are barely represented in technology. The tragic past of colonialism has been devastating for African languages in terms of their support, preservation and integration. This has resulted in technological space that does not understand our names, our cultures, our places, our history.

Masakhane roughly translates to “We build together” in isiZulu. Our goal is for Africans to shape and own these technological advances towards human dignity, well-being and equity, through inclusive community building, open participatory research and multidisciplinarity."

https://www.masakhane.io/ #linguistics #language