[OpenSpending] Community update

Anders Pedersen anders.pedersen at okfn.org
Wed Jul 31 12:16:59 UTC 2013 

Hi all,

It has been a few busy weeks around OpenSpending. With the community update
you get to know what is going on and learn about upcoming activities!

Full post here and below:
http://blog.openspending.org/2013/07/31/community-update-data-wrangling-list-and-moving-day-for-the-progress-page/

Introducing Datatoload: a place to list datasets that you would like to add
to OpenSpending

Two months back we launched progress.openspending.org in order to make it
easy to show and tell what datasets you are working on. Since the launch we
however noticed that progress.openspending.org seems to be ill suited for
actually tracking and collaborating on the uploading process, as the site
does not offer a place to discuss the data but only list it. We therefore
recently created the repo
Datatoload<https://github.com/openspending/datatoload> on
the OpenSpending Github site, which will replace
progress.openspending.orggoing forward.

With Datatoload you can now not only list your dataset, but also *ask a
questions* to to other users and discuss how to work with your
dataset<https://github.com/openspending/datatoload/issues/4#issuecomment-21298852>.
You can learn more about the easy steps for getting to use Datatoload in
this guide*.*

*Please note:* For you to use Github to track datasets going into
OpenSpending does not mean that you will need any programming skills!
Welcome to new community members!

Are you sensing that the OpenSpending community is growing? Well, you are
right! This week we have had a look at how you are using the site, and got
quite thrilled from what we saw.

   - The last month: 79 public datasets were added by 78 users
   - The last three months: 115 datasets were added by 138 users
   - This is compared to 171 users throughout all of 2012.

The City Spending Party was certainly a big part of this as we went from 91
mapped city budgets in early July to 135 cities
today<http://apps.openspending.org/maps/>.
We are eager to take on the community growth and ask you to get in touch if
you can help assist on blog editing, data wrangling or code review via info
[at] openspending [dot] org.
New on the blog

   - The bankruptcy of Detroit through the lens of open data: Marc Joffe
   from Public Sector Credit Solutions wrote this excellent piece on
the fragile
   finances of Chicago and
Detroit<http://blog.openspending.org/2013/07/29/predicting-city-bankruptcies-with-open-data-the-case-of-detroit/>
   .
   - How to visualise local budgets? Niels Erik Kaaber Rasmussen wrote
   about how he visualised Danish municipal
finances<http://blog.openspending.org/2013/07/11/opening-up-municipal-spending-data/>
using
   bubble charts.
   - Getting stuck cleaning spending data? Tony Hirst from School of Data
   wrote an excellent guide for cleaning spending data with Open
Refine<http://schoolofdata.org/2013/07/26/using-openrefine-to-clean-multiple-documents-in-the-same-way/>
   - Hiroichi Kawashima gave an exciting update from
Japan<http://blog.openspending.org/2013/07/10/where-does-my-money-go-activities-have-become-infectious-in-japan/>
and
   the many deployments of Where Does My Money Go? satellite sites there.
   - The community members who took part in the City Spending Party
   provided stellar updates for our blog post touring city spending parties
   around the world<http://blog.openspending.org/2013/07/26/city-spending-party-around-the-world/>
   .

Are you doing work on spending data or did you just complete a budget
visualisation that you would like to share? Write a guest post for the
OpenSpending blog by getting in touch at info [at] openspending [dot] org
Sign up for a volunteer task in our brand new community Trello board

OpenSpending is first and foremost a community project, and we are thrilled
about the growing engagement. We however need your assistance to move
forward on the many new tasks for making OpenSpending a good place to come
for beginners as well as budget nerds. We have created this public Trello
board <https://trello.com/b/nLZBzdRS/activities>, which will help us manage
our many task as community from *translations* to *guest blog posting* that
are ahead of us.

If you have not used Trello before, fear not, but simply read this
ticket<https://trello.com/c/xeGcPRCv/1-read-this-first-to-get-started>,
which explains how you can get started contributing to the various tasks at
OpenSpending, small or big, while using Trello.
A Datawrangling mailing list

Last week we welcomed our Data Wranglers for a first introductory call and
our announcement of the Data Wrangling team is right around the corner. A
key task for the Data Wrangling Team will be to help community members to
clean, load and visualize data with OpenSpending. We would therefore like
to offer a place where community members can ask all these questions about
how to scrape, clean and load spending data. For this reason we have
created the Data Wrangling mailing
list<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/os-datawrangling>,
where you can join such a conversation and get tips and tricks for working
on budget and spending data from community members including our fantastic
the Data Wrangling team.

You can join the list right
here<http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/os-datawrangling>
!
Events and hangouts

We have got an Introduction to OpenSpending, a Community Hangout and the
fantastic OKCon <http://okcon.org/> coming up, so mark your calendar!
Introduction to OpenSpending Tuesday 6 August

Are you looking to get started using OpenSpending: either to add your first
dataset or create a visualisation? We will be running an online training on
6 August, at 16:30 CET / 15:30 BST / 10:30 EDT* – your time
zone<http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=OpenSpending+introduction&iso=20130806T1030&p1=263&ah=1>
 *via Google Hangout

Sign up for the introduction to OpenSpending in the Google form below:
Next community Hangout on Wednesday 7 August

>From August we will reintroduce the bi-weekly meeting schedule, and scale
back from the weekly calls we ran while preparing for the spending party.
This means that we will host Community Hangouts every two weeks dedicated
to both community updates and a data clinic, where you can get help with
the dataset that you are working on.

We will organise our next Community Hangout on 7 August, at 19:00 CET /
18:00 BST / 13:00 EDT – your time
zone<http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?msg=OpenSpending+Community+Hangout&iso=20130807T13&p1=263&ah=1>
via
Google Hangout

Sign up in the form below:
OKCon in Geneva 16-18 September

OKCon will feature several budget and spending related sessions on topics
such as on open finances and spending standards. Have a look at the
entire schedule
and featured speakers <http://okcon.org/schedule/> and get your ticket. We
would be thrilled to see you there!

Best,
Anders

-- 
*

Anders Pedersen

Community Coordinator  |  skype: anpehej  |  @anpe <https://twitter.com/>

The Open Knowledge Foundation <http://okfn.org/>

Empowering through Open Knowledge

http://okfn.org/  |  @okfn <http://twitter.com/OKFN>  |  OKF on
Facebook<https://www.facebook.com/OKFNetwork> |
Blog <http://blog.okfn.org/>  |  Newsletter<http://okfn.org/about/newsletter>

*

OpenSpending | http://openspending.org |
@openspending<http://twitter.com/openspending>

School of Data | http://schoolofdata.org |
@schoolofdata<http://twitter.com/schoolofdata>


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