Advertise on podcast: The IDEMS Podcast

Michele and David explore how comparing IDEMS with Palantir can help explain IDEMS' technological vision. They discuss how both organisations seek to solve complex problems of data interoperability, but with fundamentally different approaches to ownership and control. They also reflect on how recent advances in AI are making IDEMS' vision of connected technologies with distributed ownership increasingly achievable, opening up new possibilities for technology that serves communities rather than concentrating power.

Santiago and David discuss why IDEMS was established as a Community Interest Company (CIC), rather than a charity or a conventional for-profit business. They explain how the combination of being a CIC, limited by guarantee and not-for-profit allows IDEMS to pursue commercial opportunities while protecting its social mission. They also explore the wider potential of this legal structure for social enterprises, and why greater recognition and support could help organisations pursue ambitious innovation without compromising their purpose.

Santiago and David discuss the Early Family Math app, a collaboration with Chris Wright that aims to help parents and caregivers introduce mathematical thinking into everyday interactions with young children. They reflect on the development of the app and explore its potential to support not only early mathematics learning, but also positive parent-child interactions through shared activities and play. They also discuss opportunities for future research to evaluate the app's potential impact and explore how the approach could be developed further.

Continuing their reflections on 20 years of research methods support, Lily and David explore the challenges of measuring profitability in smallholder farming. Through an example from agricultural research in West Africa, they discuss how conventional economic measures can overlook the value of community activities, why the way labour is valued matters, and how misleading profitability calculations can influence research and funding decisions.

George and David reflect on the journey behind IDEMS’ first patent, from recognising the potential of their ideas to navigating the challenges of turning them into a patent application. They discuss how the process helped them identify and refine what was genuinely innovative, the value of working with patent attorneys, and what they learned about the differences between academic research and protecting an invention.

Continuing their reflections on 20 years of research methods support, Lily and David explore the value of observational studies in understanding complex systems. Through examples from agricultural research in West Africa, they discuss how looking beyond experiments and surveys can reveal the hows and whys behind people’s choices, generating insights and research questions that might otherwise be missed.

For the 300th episode of the IDEMS Podcast, David and Kate discuss IDEMS’ first patent and the ideas behind it. They explore how rethinking some of the foundations of how technology is built could make it easier to reuse and adapt across different contexts, and how AI is creating new possibilities for technology that can respond to the needs and decisions of the people using it.

David and Kate make the case for funding IDEMS as it takes its technology and innovation to the next stage. They explain why building a different digital future requires alternatives to conventional models of technology and investment, and invite people to help fund an approach that puts social impact, distributed ownership and long-term mission at its heart.

Michele and David explore two different approaches to building AI systems: tools that enable experts to work faster and more effectively, and tools designed to help more people develop and apply expertise. Drawing on Michele’s work building multi-agent systems for STACK, they discuss how AI can remove technical barriers while keeping human knowledge, judgement and meaningful contribution at the centre.

Lily and David reflect on a new world map that reveals just how much larger Africa is than conventional maps make it appear. They explore why familiar maps distort the size of countries and continents, the mathematics behind different map projections, and why representing Africa at its true scale matters for how we see and understand the continent.

Prompted by the recent potential AI-generated proof related to the Navier–Stokes problem, George and David reflect on what this could mean for mathematics and mathematicians. They explore the role of proof in advancing mathematical knowledge, what might change if AI becomes increasingly capable of producing proofs, and why mathematics has always been about more than solving problems alone.

Following their reflections on climate data rescue, James and David explore how the challenges of making rescued data genuinely usable are playing out in Zambia and Zimbabwe. Through their experiences working with meteorological services in both countries, they discuss the work needed to improve data quality, bring valuable historical records back into use, and build sustainable processes for keeping them usable over time.

James and David reflect on their experiences supporting climate data rescue across several countries. They discuss why preserving historical climate records is increasingly important for understanding a changing climate, and why rescuing data is only truly valuable when it can be put to use, exploring what it takes to bridge the gap between data rescue and real-world applications.

Continuing their reflections on 20 years of research methods support, Lily and Roger explore the often-overlooked problem of zeros in real data. Through examples from agricultural research, they discuss why understanding what zeros represent can change how data is summarised and reveal important patterns that might otherwise be missed.

Santiago and David discuss recent progress towards integrating STACK assessment into IDEMS’ open statistics textbooks. They explore how AI is helping match existing questions to textbook content, the work involved in adapting and improving those questions, and how richer forms of assessment can help students develop a deeper understanding of statistical concepts.