I have deployed an instance of open source software—the Platform for Experimental, Collaborative Ethnography—to draw research interlocutors into collaborative effort to understand and build decolonized qualitative data infrastructures. The digital platform is called “Research Data Share” (RDS). I conceptualized the development of the RDS qualitative data archive under three distinct rationales. First, I saw it as an elicitation device and grounds for collaborative discussion and engagement, imagining that the deliberations about the archive that I would have with those in the field would be a basis for my learning. Second, it was an attempt to produce something of value to informants and respond to the ethical questions that I started my project with. At the very least, I could give a transcript and/or audio recording from the research encounter back to my interlocutor. Third, I anticipated that key questions would emerge through my own process of building and studying that would be valuable. By intentionally forming an ethnographic data platform to both study and use myself, I reconfigured my relationship with the topic as well as my relationship with interlocutors.
