[wdmmg-dev] WDMMG Uganda on guardian.co.uk

Tue Sep 6 20:03:14 UTC 2011

This looks great. Does the data change as you click through the
visualisation? I had an idea of doing something like sticking an
OpenSpending extract on the same page as the visualisation – like on
data.gov.uk/openspending (although I’ve noticed that’s stopped working – 404
error on all files on demos.openspending.org) – and just calling it each
time you click on something else?

*Changing the years*: I don’t really know my way around Raphael, but could
it not work by

·         Call the new data

·         Do something like Raphael.path().animate() – passing the data
values through?

*Currency conversion*: Agree that it would be better to put this in the data
set. I think it’s just a question of

·         Change the column that OS uses as the `amount` in the mapping,
from  `amount` to `amount_dollars`

·         Change the `currency` column (or constant in the mapping?) from
‘UGX’ to ‘USD’

I’m not sure what OS is using now for mapping (I think it’s not Google Docs
anymore?) but let me know if there’s anything I should do.

Then it’d be great to import it as a second dataset, alongside the UGX
dataset, so that we can see both.

*So I think we’re down to*:

·         Switch between the years (preferably smooth, otherwise reloading
the visualisation on the same page)

·         Put the data on the same page

·         Import the data into OpenSpending with USD amounts as an
additional dataset

When do you think this could be done by?

Thanks again for all your work on this. Will be great to get it polished off
and out the door!

Mark

*From:* martin at kulella.com [mailto:martin at kulella.com] *On Behalf Of *Martin
Keegan
*Sent:* 05 September 2011 15:12
*To:* Mark Brough
*Cc:* rufus.pollock at okfn.org; Gregor Aisch; wdmmg-dev at lists.okfn.org;
info at openspending.org
*Subject:* Re: WDMMG Uganda on guardian.co.uk

On Fri, Aug 26, 2011 at 4:19 PM, Mark Brough <
mark.brough at publishwhatyoufund.org> wrote:

Hi Martin, Gregor and Rufus,

I’ve been in touch with someone at the Guardian about
Uganda<http://www.publishwhatyoufund.org/testarea/uganda.htm>– they
love it and they are very keen to show it on
guardian.co.uk. *We are considering launching it at the end of September /
start of October.*

To do this, the biggest thing we would need is to be able to *switch between
the years properly* – rather than the dodgy way I made it work at the
moment! It would be nice if the bubbles would resize when the year changed –
rather than just reloading the page – but if that doesn’t work then just
reloading the page would be fine as well.

They are happy to show just the visualisation itself, but I think it would
be nice to at least be able to link to the data on OpenSpending. I think in
order to do this *we would need to have the visualisation on the same page
as the data* otherwise it wouldn’t make much sense.

Hello Mark,

I've investigated getting the visualisations on the same page as the data:
see the preliminary results here:
http://notebook.okfn.org/2011/09/05/week-past/ (it needs quite a bit of web
design love, but we are close to having bubbletrees available immediately on
dataset load).

Unless I misunderstand how the current BubbleTree code works, getting a
smooth transition to compare different years may be a bit tricky, and thus
we'd need a solution like your current one until that can be fixed. It's
complicated, because there's not necessarily a bijection between budgetary
items in different years.

As to currency conversion, my preference would be for it to be in the
dataset rather than the code, to make calculations more easily repeatable by
third parties.

Sorry to take so long to get back to you on this! We'd really like to work
with you and the Guardian on getting these datasets and visualisations
better known and understood.

Mk
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.okfn.org/pipermail/openspending-dev/attachments/20110906/cd24c3c8/attachment.html>