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Alex Sadleir 1 #GovHack Toolkit
Maxious 2 Welcome to the GovHack toolkit. This page provides all the information you need to prepare hackfest entries.
Alex Sadleir 3 These tools can be used to make entries like mobile apps, web apps and data visualisations/infographics.
4
5 The text of this toolkit is open for reuse under a Creative Commons Attribution licence and improvements are encouraged via Git http://github.com/maxious/govhack-tools or via email patches to govhack@lambdacomplex.org
Maxious 6
Maxious 7 # How to register and submit your entry
Alex Sadleir 8 ## Registering your team
9 Coming Soon: how to use the website "Hacker Space" to register and find teams.
Maxious 10
Alex Sadleir 11 ## Preparing your submission
Maxious 12
Maxious 13 You should record a 3 minute speech and mix images/text to accompany.
Maxious 14 [Screenr] (http://www.screenr.com/) , [ActivePresenter Free Edition](http://atomisystems.com/activepresenter/free-edition/) and other screencasting tools allow you to demo apps.
Maxious 15 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/
Maxious 16 You can use graphics for example [storyboards with these free icons](http://dribbble.com/shots/1083617-430-FREE-storyboard-illustrations)
Maxious 17
Maxious 18 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.
Maxious 19 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.
20
21
Maxious 22 # General References
Maxious 23
Maxious 24
25 ## The basics of being a data scientist
maxious 26
Maxious 27 * 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.
Maxious 28 * Find the people and tools you need to prove/show/find. This rest of this page will help with the latter.
29 * Analyse and present results - were they what you expected? Do they help explain to others what you have found out?
Maxious 30 Can present as a interactive data visualisation or a web/mobile application or just a infographic/motion graphics video that tells a story.
Alex Sadleir 31
Maxious 32 [![](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f-300x199.gif "Data Journalism Diagram")](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f.gif)</dt>
33 Illustration from Data Journalism Handbook, CC BY-SA 3.0</dd>
maxious 34
Maxious 35 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
36 [datajournalismhandbook.org](http://datajournalismhandbook.org/)
37
38 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
39 practical advice check out Data Analysis with Open Source Tools by Philipp K. Janert
40 For further reading in this space
41 [http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/27/data-and-visualization-blogs-worth-following/](http://flowingdata.com/2012/04/27/data-and-visualization-blogs-worth-following/)
42
43
Alex Sadleir 44 **Statistics**
45
46 A great guide to statistics is
Maxious 47 [Think Stats](http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats/html/index.html)
48
49 **Programming**
50
Alex Sadleir 51 Programming is valuable skill for manipulating and displaying data.
Maxious 52 Basic tutorials for a variety of languages are available for free online or you can learn interactively with websites like [Codecademy for JavaScript](http://www.codecademy.com/#!/exercises/0), [Learn Python](http://www.learnpython.org/) or [Try Ruby](http://tryruby.org/)
Alex Sadleir 53
Maxious 54 For web applications and visualisations, you'll need a basic understanding of JavaScript in order to configure pre made libraries like jQuery. A good source for Javascript information is the [Mozilla Development Network Javascript Page](https://developer.mozilla.org/en/JavaScript)
55
56 **Accessibility/User Experience**
Alex Sadleir 57
Maxious 58 Following accessibility guidelines not only make a application 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 when designing for humans: [http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/](http://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG/)
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60
Alex Sadleir 61
62 # Developer Tools For Your Computer
Maxious 63 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.
maxious 64
Alex Sadleir 65 ### Source Control
Maxious 66 Using a version control system like Git or Subversion allows you to keep many different versions of what you have been working on so you can collaborate with others or simply back up your files so you don't lose them!
Alex Sadleir 67
Maxious 68 [![](img/Screenshot-at-2012-04-29-172132-300x235.png "Git Screenshot")](http://progit.org/book/)
Maxious 69
70 There are [tutorials on git](http://progit.org/book/) and GUIs to help you like [TortoiseGit for Windows](http://code.google.com/p/tortoisegit/) and [Atlassian SourceTree for Windows and OSX](http://sourcetreeapp.com/) (or if you prefer the console [tig](http://blogs.atlassian.com/2013/05/git-tig/))
Maxious 71 There is also a [manual for Subversion](http://svnbook.red-bean.com/) and a [similar GUI for Subversion](http://tortoisesvn.net/)
Maxious 72
73
Maxious 74 ### Task Tracking
75
Alex Sadleir 76 Issue/task trackers allow you to outline the tasks required for your project and assign them to people to do.
Maxious 77
78 [Trello](https://trello.com/) and [Workflowy](https://workflowy.com/) are free, lightweight project management tools suitable for a rapid project!
79
80 ## Virtual Servers
81 Many free services to try out virtual/cloud servers before scaling up: https://www.chunkhost.com/ or heroku or https://www.appfog.com/pricing/
Maxious 82 If your wifi starts to get congested, you can use [mosh](http://mosh.mit.edu/) to improve the performance of SSH under reduced network performance.
83
Alex Sadleir 84
Maxious 85 ## Hosted Developer Tools
86
Alex Sadleir 87 Can get many tools (source control, issue tracking) combined into one service cloud hosted so there's no setup required.
88
89 ### Github / BitBucket
90 Github provides Git but [Subversion (svn)](https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support) and [Mercurial (hg)](http://hg-git.github.io/) interfaces are also available. Github provide their own GUI for Windows/OSX or you can use a variety of Git capable tools https://github.com/
91 Similarly Atlassian provide BitBucket accessible via Git and Mercurial (hg) https://bitbucket.org/
92
93 ### Sourceforge
94
95 Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Bazaar, CVS, issue tracker, wiki, release file downloads. Unlimited free use for open source projects.
96
97 You can create your own Sourceforge project at [http://sourceforge.net/](http://sourceforge.net/)
98
99 ### Google Code Project Hosting
100
101 Git, Mercurial, and Subversion code. Issue tracker, wiki, release file downloads. Unlimited free use for open source projects.
Alex Sadleir 102
103 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/)
104
Maxious 105
106 # Applications of data hacking
maxious 107
108 ## API Development
109
110
111 So an API isn't just an XML file!
112 A good web based data API:
113
114 * Is logically organised
115 * Can filter returned data
116 * Can return results in different open formats (CSV/JSON etc.)
117 * Is efficient and responsive by using caching and databases appropriately
118 * Handles errors gracefully
119 * Monitors and controls access (to show benefit realised of API and prevent abuse)
120 * Provides appropriate documentation with examples
Maxious 121
122 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.
Maxious 123
Alex Sadleir 124 Atlassian have a great page on what makes a good API https://developer.atlassian.com/display/REST/Atlassian+REST+API+Design+Guidelines+version+1)
Maxious 125
126 HowTo.gov has a bunch of api resources about choosing SOAP vs. REST etc. http://www.howto.gov/mobile/apis-in-government
maxious 127
Maxious 128 API documentation is important too! Traditionally for SOAP APIs, you use WSDL but for REST try [Swagger](http://swagger.wordnik.com/) or [iodocs](https://github.com/mashery/iodocs)
129 Many web app frameworks can generate the documentation for you. For example Symfony for PHP http://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 https://github.com/liip/LiipHelloBundle
Alex Sadleir 130 Or for Ruby on Rails there is is https://github.com/elc/rapi_doc https://github.com/Pajk/apipie-rails
Maxious 131
Alex Sadleir 132 For example [Stripe's API](http://amberonrails.com/building-stripes-api/) or previous GovHack entrant [WeatheredOak](http://www.govhack.org/2012/06/02/weatheredoak/)
Alex Sadleir 133
Maxious 134
135 ## Infographics and Data Visualisation
Alex Sadleir 136
Alex Sadleir 137 Infographics try to contextualise charts and graphs to tell a story. Data vis builds on this to find new ways to design insight.
138
139 Most of the categories to follow have visualisation tools specific to their purpose.
140
141 You can find some data visualisation tools below:
maxious 142
143 [Essential Colletion](http://www.visualisingdata.com/index.php/2011/07/part-6-the-essential-collection-of-visualisation-resources/)
Maxious 144 [Drawing By Numbers Tools and Resources](http://drawingbynumbers.org/toolsandresources)
145 - http://selection.datavisualization.ch/ data viz tools catalog
146 Also check out [http://thejit.org](http://thejit.org/) &amp; [http://www.senchalabs.org/<wbr>philogl/</wbr>](http://www.senchalabs.org/philogl/) (contributed by Matt Adcock)
147