Synne Olsen
StaffOpen Innovation Facilitator
Bio
I am first and foremost a curious creature whose most frequent question is “why not”. The intersections (and opportunities) of humans, nature & technology are what get me up in the morning - and what best summarises my knowledge, skills & experiences.
From transforming parking lots to green areas in Oslo, I moved to Japan to report on the energy situation after the triple disaster in 2011. Academically, I am trained in Human Geography (MSc in Environment, Society and Development), and specialised in the creative and disruptive ideas pulsating out of digital entrepreneurs in Viet Nam. This pathway brought me to Southeast Asia and Plan International, where I supported digital innovation projects in the Philippines and Indonesia. Feeling clueless about machine learning and AI, but passionate about languages, I went on to get hands-on experience in Natural Language Processing (NLP).
With this melting pot of experiences and perspectives, I aspire to ignite and transform the bold ideas and efforts of humanitarian hacktivists who believe deeply in finding new solutions to long-standing problems.
Do you have a bold idea relevant to our work that you never found the right forum to share in? Then I want to talk to you.
Posts
hot_tech_talk | Takeaways from our open AI challenge
Over the past few years, HOT has taken a leadership role in experimenting with, and facilitating for, the application of open-source and fair artificial intelligence in mapping. What is the status? Well, let me tell you: we are only a few months away now from launching our open AI-mapping service - fAIr. As we speak, around 50 AI engineers from the Omdena community are crunching code with us to narrow down which of the models will give the most optimal AI-assisted mapping for our communities.
