DC Action Work Night!

Our longtime partners at DC Action for Children are organizing a series of data sprints to finalize more than a year's worth of work on their Data Tools 2.0 interactive map. Our goal is to move this project, which makes an assortment of important data related to DC children and youth easy for local advocates to access and use, to a point where DC Action itself can continue to maintain, update, and grow the tool over time.

The focus of the first data sprint, on Wednesday, August 5, is to fill in gaps, improve, and complete work on the data processing scripts that provide the web tool with data. We'll be working with the census API and data from a variety of local sources. We'll be adding to, refactoring, and building DC Action's capacity for using the data processing scripts.

Come if you can help with (or want to learn more about):

• Reading data from the census API
• Reading, transforming, and writing JSON and CSV files
• Organizing code into discrete components, and separating out configuration
• The current scripts are written in Ruby, but Python or Perl familiarity is also valued
• Documentation, training, and explaining technical topics to a wider audience

Join us Wednesday, August 5 at DC Action's offices, and bring a laptop. Dinner will be provided starting at 5:30, with work beginning in earnest around 6:00.