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Welcome to Kawan—our vibrant community of data heads and storytellers. We’re all about improving data literacy and sharing nuanced stories about Asia. Come hang!
AI and our need for reassurance— issue #77
AI chatbots are seemingly ready to reassure and support us unconditionally. Not surprising then that they are winning hearts worldwide. Some even prefer AI chatbots over human companions. But when we lose all friction from a relationship, what else is lost.
The Story Behind The Story of Names
The team behind our latest story on Asia's naming conventions dives into how they got inspired to produce the story, researching qualitative data, creating a speculative name explorer, and crafting relatable humorous grievances for this story.
Inktober Journal
As Inktober 2019 draws to a close, our resident animator Griselda walks us through her #Inktober illustrations and the quirky stories that…
A day in the life of a programmer at a startup
Hi, I’m Dylan, the lead developer at Kontinentalist. So as a developer, people often think that my work entails sitting in front of my computer all day, with 1s and 0s filling my screen. They are wrong. I have three screens! 😉 Today, I’ll walk you through a typical
What does partnership work entail?
When I first sat down with Bella, our Medium editor, to talk about what sort of articles I could contribute, Bella suggested something…
Where got ghost in Singapore?— issue #5
Trick or treat! It's Halloween season! The ghouls and pumpkins fill store aisles across Singapore. But Southeast Asia has about as many ghouls as we have tropical fruits and types of spices. We're diverse like that. So step away from the usual stories and explore our
Humans of Kontinentalist: Rayson
A few weeks ago we caught up with Rayson, our summer intern. Rayson is a third-year university student studying for a Bachelor in…
A quick guide to ArcGIS — how do we begin?
What is GIS?
Humans of Kontinentalist: Dewi
Today we caught up with Dewi, our business development manager, and recently, writer! Her first story on Batik was released last week.
Did a four-eyed historian invent the Mandarin script? — issue #4
Hello，你好，வணக்கம் Singapore has always favoured linguistic pragmatism, where we learn a language for its utility. Increasingly, that language is Mandarin. People often tell me, "You should let your child take Mandarin as a second language. It's better for her." No offence is intended
Rayson’s Journey to the Maps: Interning at Kontinentalist
Rayson, who wrote this well-received story on rising sea levels, shares his intern experience at Kontinentalist.
Reduce API loading time: Never forget to Cache!
Kontinentalist serves quite numbers of traffic everyday, and thus user experience is really important for us. One of the UX factors apart… How did Kontinentalist reduce API loading time by using Cache
How to tell data-driven stories
We conducted a workshop for our writers recently, and below are some of the highlights.
Visualising a team bonding retreat
Inspired by the Dear Data project where two designers sent each other visualisations describing their week, our team decided to try…