🪷The Pond #4: On the road again

October 15, 2025

Hello my lovely frosches! 🐸

I’m writing this post from Budapest, where the Arena Climate Conference is taking place. The program is packed with great sessions, and some of the links below are from here.

This autumn has been full of travel, inspiration and spreading of my new holographic stickers 🌈

Before Budapest, I caught the very last glimpse of summer in Athens, where I was invited to mentor at this year’s iMED Conference. The highlight for me were the IJ4EU Impact Awards, focusing on collaborative stories from around the world. The three winning projects were remarkably diverse: access to life saving medicine, attacks on journalists in Gaza, and linking EU funds to human rights violations in Africa. You can read more about the winners here.

I also spent some time back home in Bratislava, mentoring the Climate Arena Fellows. These twelve talented journalists are part of a program by Arena that supports cross-border investigative projects. We spent two days diving into the ins and outs of collaborative journalism, but also in long chats, doing yoga and singing karaoke.

What I love about international investigative journalism isn’t just the projects we exchange or the skills we share, but also the fun and long conversations with smart, curious, and open people.

In a time when the world can feel like it’s moving backwards, being part of a community that strives to make it better just feels like a blessing.

Now let’s dive in 👇

New at The Pond

💪 How do I begin working with data? I wrote a very short post on skills and tools to consider when leveling up your data game

🧙🏽‍♂️ There is still space in my upcoming mentorship cohort! Starting next Monday, 20 October. Come learn with me, it will be fun!

🪷 The Pond is on Discord! Want to join the community? Drop me an email at [email protected]

What I am reading

🎨 Designing color palettes for data visualisation - learn about how to use hue, saturation and brightness to make your next story pop

👩‍💻 Hacker news - tech news and more

Databases

⛏️ Global mining dataset - the most comprehensive public compilation of global mining and metals facilities. Check out this DuckDB exploration.

👩🏽‍🌾 European Farm economics data - another EU database I did not know existed. Found reading this Greenpeace report on farm sizes (via Nicoline)

⚡Global Energy Monitor - collection of free datasets on energy, mining, industry, power plants and more (via Sam)

Would you like to feature your work in this newsletter? Drop me an email.

That’s it for now!

With 💚 and 🐸,

Ada