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Alex Sadleir
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#GovHack Toolkit
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Maxious
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Welcome to the GovHack toolkit. This page provides all the information you need to prepare hackfest entries.
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Alex Sadleir
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These tools can be used to make entries like: mobile apps, web apps, data visualisations/infographics.
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This toolkit is open source, licenced cc-by and improvements are encouraged ...
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Maxious
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# How to register and submit your entry
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Maxious
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## Registering your team
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Alex Sadleir
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Coming Soon: how to use the website "Hacker Space" to register and find teams.
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Maxious
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## Preparing your submission
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Alex Sadleir
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Maxious
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You should record a 3 minute speech and mix images/text to accompany.
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Maxious
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http://www.screenr.com/ and other screencasting tools allow you to demo apps.
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Maxious
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To mix together clips, you can use youtube video editor http://www.youtube.com/editor or local software like http://www.videolan.org/vlmc/ or http://www.lwks.com/
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Maxious
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Maxious
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You also need to submit your "source material". For an application this may be source code, for another work it might be your notes or prototypes.
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Maxious
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The key thing here is that your source material demonstrates to the judges that some of the end result was your own work and that it is possible for another person to replicate that work.
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Maxious
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Maxious
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# General References {#general-data-hacking-and-programming-references}
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Maxious
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## Who can be a hack day participant
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Maxious
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There are many roles you can play; coder, designer UX/graphics.
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Maxious
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## The basics of being a data scientist
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maxious
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* Have a hypothesis - even if you're making a tool/api that helps people with their questions too, remember what the objective of that is.
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* Find the people and tools you need to prove/show/find. This rest of this page will help with the latter.
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* Analyse and present results - were they what you expected? Do they help explain to others what you have found out?
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Maxious
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Can present as a interactive data visualisation or a web/mobile application or just a infographic/motion graphics video that tells a story.
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Alex Sadleir
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Maxious
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[![](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f-300x199.gif "Data Journalism Diagram")](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f.gif)</dt>
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Illustration from Data Journalism Handbook, CC BY-SA 3.0</dd>
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maxious
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Maxious
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The best high level reference is the 'Understanding Data' and 'Delivering Data' chapters of the Data Journalism Handbook which is available online for free at
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[datajournalismhandbook.org](http://datajournalismhandbook.org/)
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You can learn the technical skills from scratch in Visualize This: The FlowingData Guide to Design, Visualization, and Statistics by Nathan Yau or for more advanced
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practical advice check out Data Analysis with Open Source Tools by Philipp K. Janert
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For further reading in this space
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[http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/27/data-and-visualization-blogs-worth-following/](http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/27/data-and-visualization-blogs-worth-following/)
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Alex Sadleir
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**Statistics**
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[http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats/html/index.html](http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats/html/index.html)
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**Programming**
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Programming is valuable skill for manipulating and displaying data.
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Basic tutorials for a variety of languages are available for free online or you can learn
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Alex Sadleir
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Maxious
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interactively with websites like [http://www.codecademy.com/](http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0). for JavaScript or [http://www.learnpython.org/ ](http://www.learnpython.org/)or [http://tryruby.org](http://tryruby.org/)
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Alex Sadleir
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Maxious
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[https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript) - especially for web applications and visualisations, you'll need a basic understanding of JS. Common libraries like prototype or jQuery can help
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**Accessibility/User Experience**
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Maxious
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WCAG guidelines not only make a web app accessible but make it a better experience for all users! Even if not making an app, good to consider these things to do and not do: [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/](http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/)
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# Developer Tools For Your Computer {#developer-tools-for-your-computer}
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Maxious
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No matter what kind of application you have for the data, there are many tools you can use to better collaborate and manage your project.
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maxious
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### Source Control
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Git / Subversion
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[![](img/Screenshot-at-2012-04-29-172132-300x235.png "Git Screenshot")](http://progit.org/book/)
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Maxious
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[http://progit.org/book/](http://progit.org/book/)
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[http://svnbook.red-bean.com/](http://svnbook.red-bean.com/)
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[http://tortoisesvn.net/](http://tortoisesvn.net/)
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[http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/](http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/)
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### Task Tracking -
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Issue/task trackers allow you to outline the tasks required for your project and assign them to people to do.
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Maxious
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[Trello](https://trello.com/) and [Workflowy](https://workflowy.com/) are free, lightweight project management tools suitable for a rapid project!
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Alex Sadleir
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## Hosted Developer Tools {#hosted-developer-tools}
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Maxious
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Can get many tools (source control, issue tracking) combined into one service cloud hosted so no setup required.
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### Github
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Git obviously but svn/hg interfaces are possible. Provide their own GUI for Windows/OSX or use the variety of Git capable tools
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### Sourceforge
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Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, CVS, issue tracker, wiki, release file downloads. Unlimited free use for open source projects.
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You can create your own Sourceforge project at [http://sourceforge.net/](http://sourceforge.net/)
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### Google Code Project Hosting
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Git, Mercurial, and Subversion code. Issue tracker, wiki, release file downloads. Unlimited free use for open source projects.
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You can host your Google Code project and get access to developer tools, APIs and documentation at [http://code.google.com/](http://code.google.com/)
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Alex Sadleir
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# Applications of data hacking
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Maxious
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## API Development {#api-development}
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So an API isn't just an XML file ![;)](http://www.govhack.org/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_wink.gif)
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A good web based data API:
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* Is logically organised
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* Can filter returned data
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* Can return results in different open formats (CSV/JSON etc.)
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* Is efficient and responsive by using caching and databases appropriately
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* Handles errors gracefully
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* Monitors and controls access (to show benefit realised of API and prevent abuse)
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* Provides appropriate documentation with examples
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Some people like sensis [http://](http://developers.sensis.com.au/)[developers.sensis.com.<wbr>au</wbr>](http://developers.sensis.com.au/)[/](http://developers.sensis.com.au/) use a provider like[http://](http://mashery.com/)[mashery.com](http://mashery.com/)[/](http://mashery.com/) or [https](https://apigee.com/)[://](https://apigee.com/)[apigee.com](https://apigee.com/) or [http://](http://apiaxle.com/)[apiaxle.com](http://apiaxle.com/)[/](http://apiaxle.com/) or [http://www.3scale.net/](http://www.3scale.net/) which handles making a good API for them.
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Maxious
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Atlassian have a great page on what makes a good API https://developer.atlassian.com/display/REST/Atlassian+REST+API+Design+Guidelines+version+1)
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Maxious
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Alex Sadleir
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howto.gov api resources about choosing SOAP vs. REST etc. http://www.howto.gov/mobile/apis-in-government
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API documentation is important too.
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- WSDL or http://swagger.wordnik.com/ or https://github.com/mashery/iodocs
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- Many web app frameworks can generate the documentation for you. For example Symfony for PHPhttp://symfony.com/ https://github.com/FriendsOfSymfony/FOSRestBundle http://williamdurand.fr/2012/08/02/rest-apis-with-symfony2-the-right-way/ https://github.com/nelmio/NelmioApiDocBundle better apis https://github.com/liip/LiipHelloBundle
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- or for Rails https://github.com/elc/rapi_doc https://github.com/Pajk/apipie-rails
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http://amberonrails.com/building-stripes-api/
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example WeatherTree weather API
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## Infographics and Data Visualisation {#data-visualisation}
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Infographics try to contextualise charts and graphs to tell a story. Data vis builds on this to find new ways to design insight.
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Most of the categories to follow have visualisation tools specific to their purpose.
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maxious
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You can find some data visualisation tools below:
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[http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2011/07/part-6-the-essential-collection-of-visualisation-resources/](http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2011/07/part-6-the-essential-collection-of-visualisation-resources/)
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Also check out [http://thejit.org](http://thejit.org/) & [http://www.senchalabs.org/<wbr>philogl/</wbr>](http://www.senchalabs.org/philogl/) (contributed by Matt Adcock)
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Have to use visual art concepts, good color schemes http://www.r-bloggers.com/the-paul-tol-21-color-salute/
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- https://graphics.stanford.edu/wikis/cs448b-12-fall/ data viz theory