Possible group project - Githubissues

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Possible group project #97

Closed mbonsma closed 7 years ago

mbonsma commented 8 years ago

It would be cool to have a project we could work on as a group on a semi-ongoing basis. We could build new tools or analysis around open datasets, for example. This was suggested by Birgit Fleischmann.

Benefits:

Meaningful and interesting examples for coworking sessions and code-alongs
Project development skills - participants can point to contributions on their resumes
Practicing open science
Fun!

Possible datasets:

Open data from the City of Toronto - building shapes across Toronto? Bicycle counts?
Anything from namaria - an open data repository with stuff from all over Canada and the US. Toronto red light cameras? Environment Canada climate data?

Suggest your own ideas or thoughts in the comments!

linamnt commented 8 years ago

I think this is definitely a good idea for pretty much all those reasons you listed :)

I was thinking the other day about how it'd be cool if there were an app that would tell you where the nearby bike posts/rings are when you search up a location. May not be so useful because it's not that hard to look around on your way to your destination and look for a place to put your bike but it could become a way for people to indicate regions they would like more posts (e.g. if they exist but are always full, none in a region that needs it etc.) since Toronto takes suggestions and if it's backed up with real data, they might be more inclined to agree. Namara.io has a dataset though incomplete. could be a starting point.

The only app that I found is this but not available in Toronto, let me know if there is one that I haven't found.

Anyway, could be a fun project? or not! just an idea!

QuLogic commented 8 years ago

Toronto has that open dataset, but for some reason, it's not visible on their Open Data map.

mbonsma commented 8 years ago

@linamnt that's a great idea! And the fact that it already exists but not for Toronto means that there could be demand for it.

lwjohnst86 commented 8 years ago

I also like this idea. Would be nice to see group collaboration in 'real-time' :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye: Tho, what you are suggesting @linamnt seems more likely a python or some other project than R... I'm not aware of apps that use R, haha. Could be wrong tho.

linamnt commented 8 years ago

It's all kind of a nebulous idea in my mind at this point, but I think there is certainly room for R users (and people of all sorts of programming languages!) to contribute. Especially since it doesn't really have to be a phone app so much as something easily accessible and interactive that would work with the coordinates and render them on a map (and hopefully with some swanky features). For example, I don't really know the extent of what Shiny can do, but I think it could be implemented in that as well.

mbonsma commented 8 years ago

Or we could have TWO projects on the go, one for the Python enthusiasts, one for the R enthusiasts.

Also, there's a group in the UK holding some R hackathons using some cool wildlife data. I asked them to let us know the details, because they're opening it up for remote participants. I'll update when I hear from them!

dcwalk commented 8 years ago

Just a thought -- if you are interested in an open data project the civictech.ca group might be good to connect with. They meet every Tuesday! They have a few projects starting up that are on github: CivicTechTO

mbonsma commented 8 years ago

Another thing Birgit sent me: http://wiki.opendataday.org/Main_Page, a Toronto event will be hosted by Civic Tech TO!