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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.
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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.
Maxious 20
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Alex Sadleir 22 # General References
Maxious 23
Maxious 24
Maxious 25 ## The basics of being a data scientist
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.
Maxious 29 * Analyse and present results - were they what you expected? Do they help explain to others what you have found out?
30 Can present as a interactive data visualisation or a web/mobile application or just a infographic/motion graphics video that tells a story.
Maxious 31
Alex Sadleir 32 [![](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f-300x199.gif "Data Journalism Diagram")](img/How-to-participate-in-GovHack_html_m6a65720f.gif)</dt>
Maxious 33 Illustration from Data Journalism Handbook, CC BY-SA 3.0</dd>
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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
Maxious 36 [datajournalismhandbook.org](http://datajournalismhandbook.org/)
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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
44 **Statistics**
Alex Sadleir 45
46 A great guide to statistics is
47 [Think Stats](http://greenteapress.com/thinkstats/html/index.html)
Maxious 48
49 **Programming**
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51 Programming is valuable skill for manipulating and displaying data.
Alex Sadleir 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/)
Maxious 53
Alex Sadleir 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)
Maxious 55
56 **Accessibility/User Experience**
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Alex Sadleir 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/)
Maxious 59
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Alex Sadleir 62 # Developer Tools For Your Computer
Alex Sadleir 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
maxious 65 ### Source Control
Alex Sadleir 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!
Maxious 67
Alex Sadleir 68 [![](img/Screenshot-at-2012-04-29-172132-300x235.png "Git Screenshot")](http://progit.org/book/)
Maxious 69
Maxious 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
Alex Sadleir 74 ### Task Tracking
Maxious 75
76 Issue/task trackers allow you to outline the tasks required for your project and assign them to people to do.
77
78 [Trello](https://trello.com/) and [Workflowy](https://workflowy.com/) are free, lightweight project management tools suitable for a rapid project!
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Maxious 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.
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Maxious 84
Alex Sadleir 85 ## Hosted Developer Tools
Maxious 86
Alex Sadleir 87 Can get many tools (source control, issue tracking) combined into one service cloud hosted so there's no setup required.
Maxious 88
Maxious 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.
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97 You can create your own Sourceforge project at [http://sourceforge.net/](http://sourceforge.net/)
98
99 ### Google Code Project Hosting
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101 Git, Mercurial, and Subversion code. Issue tracker, wiki, release file downloads. Unlimited free use for open source projects.
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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/)
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Alex Sadleir 105
Alex Sadleir 106 # Applications of data hacking
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Alex Sadleir 108 ## API Development
Maxious 109
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Alex Sadleir 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
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.
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Maxious 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)
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Maxious 126 HowTo.gov has a bunch of api resources about choosing SOAP vs. REST etc. http://www.howto.gov/mobile/apis-in-government
Alex Sadleir 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)
Alex Sadleir 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
maxious 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/)
Maxious 133
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Alex Sadleir 135 ## Infographics and Data Visualisation
Alex Sadleir 136
137 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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139 Most of the categories to follow have visualisation tools specific to their purpose.
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maxious 141 You can find some data visualisation tools below:
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Maxious