Tech Tips for Non Techies

By: Nana Darkoa SekyiamahMay, 2014

Who is This Non – Techie Tech Lover?

• Communications Specialist - African Women’s Development Fund.

• Co-Founder of Award Winning Blog ‘Adventures from the Bedrooms of African Women’.

• Writer – published by The Guardian, Chimurenga, This is Africa, Feminist Africa, Open Democracy etc

What I’ve learnt about tech

Adopt the attitude - Tech is fun!

• Don’t be bamboozled by the ‘experts’. A lot of tech today is user friendly. Experiment with new tech.

• For e.g. many years ago I taught myself how to create newsletters using Constant Contact. Today you can use tools like Mail Chimp for free. What stops you creating your own newsletter?

Have a learning attitude

Pick up tech skills from people, places and spaces.

• Joining Blogging Ghana in 2008 encouraged me to start a personal blog.

• In 2010 David Ajao encouraged me to move to a Word Press blog. That skill helps me manage WP based websites in my job today.

Life Long Learning

• In 2013, Rose Afriyie urged me to start Google hangouts for Adventures, and sent me a ‘How to’ PDF.

• Take advantage of ‘optional tech clinics’ at conferences – In 2014 at the Association of Progressive Communications meeting on ‘Gender, Internet and Sexuality’ I learnt about digital security and open source tools I had no prior knowledge of. Priceless!

Learn from random places

And not so random places…I get great tech tips from:• New Organizing's ‘Tip of The Day’ (H/T

@HakimaAbbas).• Subscribing to Fast Company’s newsletters.• Magazines - some of the best tips I’ve seen

recently have been from ‘womens’ and in flight magazines

Make a note of useful tech tips

I keep a folder on my computer called ‘Good Examples’ where I store useful PDFs, great reports, innovative templates etc.

If you have a smartphone make full use of all that technology. Take pictures of tech tips in magazines, use your memo function and voice recorder to capture notes.

Some of my new fav tech tips

APC Digital Security Tech Tips

• Use an open source browser like Firefox. • Use complex passwords and a tool like

KeePass so you never need to remember another password.

• Change your behaviour. It’s politically important to try out open source tools.

* My key takeaways after participation in the APC ‘Gender, Sexuality and Internet Meeting’, April 2014, Malaysia

Tech tips from Glamour

• Delete applications you don’t use (inc. from Trash). Restart computer.

• Clear browsing history and cookies. Digital security training taught me that this can be specially relevant for activists, and people living in ‘repressive regimes’.

• Check for viruses. Recommended: Avast Free Antivirus

• Test your broadband speed.

* UK edition. June 2014. 'Laptop running S-L-O-W' page 54

Tips from a variety of sources

• Check out www.archiveguide.witness.org for useful tips on documenting.

• Save documents in the Cloud. Try Dropbox and Google Drive for e.g.

• Tag and manage your pictures with Aperture (Mac users)

• Bookmark useful websites• Back up your computer

Staying safe online

• Password protect your computer and phone (use a complex password)

• Do not save usernames and passwords as a default. Use a tool like KeePass instead.

• Do not use the same password across multiple platforms and accounts.

• Spread the knowledge – you’re only as safe as your network in social media spaces.

You can never be too safe

• Do not give out your data unnecessarily. Do you really need to give a 3rd party application access to your Facebook profile and by extension all your contacts?

• Consider whether you really need to have your geo tagging feature activated. A potential pro and a con

Online safety squared

• Do not give people access to your passwords, and when you need to, change passwords afterwards.

• Decide which of your social media accounts are for keeping in touch with ‘real friends’ and which are useful for meeting people outside your network.

Case in point

• I use @nas009 on Twitter in my personal capacity. I tweet what I like and rarely self censure.

• My Facebook used to be strictly for people I considered friends. However, my FB has recently become an extension of work so I’ve created a 2nd account for ‘close friends’.

Learn More About Tech

Useful websites to check out to learn more:

• www.takebackthetech.org• www.securityinabox.org• www.tacticaltech.org• http://www.openspaceworld.org

The Best Way to Contact Me

• Tweet me @nas009 – by far my preferred way for anyone to get in touch with me.

• If 140 characters are not enough then drop me an email me via nana@awdf.org