[openspending-dev] Openspending - one year later Was: Working with OpenSpending platform from my perspective

[Peio Popov]

Dear Friedrich,
You all have done great with the UI and the automation of the modeling,
loading and other common tasks and I have to use it for a while to become
pretentious again.

One small detail, that I notice, is that in Bulgarian the currency sign is
behind the number - it should be 100 лв. and not лв.100. Another thing is
that 502 error I am getting when trying to manage the dataset, but it is
something temporary I guess. So far - nothing that stops me for using it or
makes it somehow not pleasurable.

On a related note - Rufus mentioned you were getting into linked data. What
I would like to go next is a simple project to link the data from the daily
spending with the data for the minister/official responsible for it and
quantify his importance in such manner. Something like who spends our money
or who is responsible for the largest spending in the country and give a
idea about the monetary power of the person. Do you have any spending
ontologies and/or ideas for such projects?

Peio

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 12:05 AM, Friedrich Lindenberg <
friedrich.lindenberg at okfn.org> wrote:

> Hey Peio,
>
> thanks for the nice message, it's great to hear this! Thank you for
> the kind words. Please keep us in check, too: what is missing? How do
> we go from here to make OpenSpending into a really cool tool for
> people who want to monitor budgets? What do you need in Bulgaria
> specifically?
>
> Cheers,
>
>  - Friedrich
>
> On Mon, Jul 9, 2012 at 10:39 PM, Peio Popov <peio at peio.org> wrote:
> > Dear OpenSpending developers,
> >
> > It has been almost a full year, since I last played with OpenSpending.
> The
> > email quoted bellow is the summary of my struggle with the 0.10 version
> back
> > then, when it took me something like a couple of days to create a model,
> > load some data and make some treemaps of it. It was a long effort
> involving
> > manual creation of json models, ssh-ing to the actual server to work with
> > the constantly changing (and yet to be documented) loading scripts and
> > spending lots of time chasing pudo, nick and Martin on irc with support
> and
> > administrative questions.
> >
> > Few minutes ago I loaded a dataset and created a the same type of
> > visualization in less than 10 minutes just with my mouse!
> >
> > I am completely amazed by the progress of the project! In the last year
> > OpenSpending has changed completely and become mature and user friendly
> > platform. From my user perspective, with no underlying idea of the code
> > bellow, I can appreciate the difference and the great job that you've
> done.
> > You are amazing, thank you!
> >
> > Please, keep up the great work!
> > Peio
> >
> >
> > ---------- Forwarded message ----------
> > From: Peio Popov <peio at peio.org>
> > Date: Thu, Aug 4, 2011 at 4:03 PM
> > Subject: Working with OpenSpending platform from my perspective
> > To: wdmmg-discuss at lists.okfn.org
> >
> >
> > Dear list,
> > In order to help data cartographer's education and make the
> > introduction to Openspending platform easier, I would like to describe
> > my experience with it.
> >
> >  First - to introduce myself. My name is Peio Popov, I am from
> > Bulgaria and usually act as a legal adviser for IT companies. I
> > consider myself a person with a good IT background and general
> > understanding of computers.  I've worked for IBM, biggest mobile
> > operator in Bulgaria, payment system operator, mobile payments
> > provider and certification authority. The payment and PKI related
> > companies were start-ups so I did way more than legal stuff, including
> > acting as PM, business developer and PKI services manager. Since 2003
> > I work on Linux whenever possible and can solve my coding problems in
> > bash, php, perl and python.
> >
> > This background did not help a lot and I had hard time understanding
> > and using the platform. Here were the main hurdles:
> >
> > 1. Denormalized data. I spend more than an hour looking for a way to
> > describe the nested levels in the raw data. I've always been told that
> > I should normalize my data and if Rufus was not there to explain, I
> > could never figured it out myself. It just seemed wrong to waste space
> > like that. So please mention it when you speak about csv - it is not
> > just a format to contain, but also a way to describe data.
> >
> > 2. JSON. I did not feel very comfortable with it and it was good that
> > I could use the model from the Israeli budget as a template. Looking
> > at the model and then at the result helped me understand it better
> > than the description in the wiki. It would be very helpful to have a
> > JSON template with the main sections and an example of a typical
> > record in it. I might propose one if you like the idea. Also any
> > recommendation for an editor and syntax checker/highlighter is
> > welcome.
> >
> > 3. Decentralized info. Initially I was a bit confused between the OKFN
> > sites. I wanted to achieve something like WDMMG, but I was told I need
> > to look into Openspending, starting from CKAN. In the meantime I
> > wandered to sites like Open Data Commons and Open Government data and
> > OKFN site. I believe I found the wiki with google and there was the
> > loading diagram. So please, link more to it - it is very helpful.
> >
> > 4. Loading data. I used the irc based loading protocol and it worked
> > good, but can be made better. The data wranglers should be able to
> > help share this responsibility, because it is not always possible to
> > interrupt your work to answer a question from a confused newbie.
> > Thanks to borior and pudo's irc support I was able to not only load
> > the data but also understand some of the platform concepts. I hope to
> > contribute back and make their time with me well spend.
> >
> > 5. Bubbles. As childish as it may sound I wanted the bubbles
> > visualization from the very start. It was only because of pudo's hints
> > and links that I could find the examples and the documentation. More
> > links, more docs more functioning examples would be great. If I can do
> > more visualizations, it would be even better.
> >
> > 6. People. At this point the usage of the platform is very dependant
> > on human interaction. I would have been lost if I had to rely on the
> > published info to use it. Using irc  support has obvious downsides,
> > but it allowed me to somehow get more into the idea and should thank
> > borior and pudo for it.
> >
> > 7. The result. As I've told you and wished on irc, this time i would
> > not ask another stupid question, but will present the result - a
> > visualisation of the Bulgarian budget spendings:
> > http://peio.org/bgbudget/bubbles/bgbudget.html I hope to present it to
> > some politicians in order to get promises for more data and perhaps
> > even get the promises fulfilled.
> >
> > Peio Popov
> >
> >
> > _______________________________________________
> > openspending-dev mailing list
> > openspending-dev at lists.okfn.org
> > http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/openspending-dev
> >
>
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