Twenty-second hacknight – 22 participants.
No presenter tonight – bonus work time!
Breakout groups:
- Refugees Welcome Toronto – Derakshan
- Toronto budget citizen engagement – Henrik
- Plain language project – Matthew
- Toronto planning data/education app – Gabe
- Open Cabinet – Alex
Planning application scraper group
Gabe, Josh, Leon, Tim, Rollo
We’ve slowly realized that we’ve actually misunderstood the data.
Tim pointed us to a new way of accessing the data, through which we understand that we were really only grabbing properties, not applications.
We spent time wrapping our heads around the different search interfaces, and the real shape of the data.
Next step: Explore the data. Then decide which/how to approach the tasks and ideas below.
Task: copy all of the current column names into Slack, and ask a planner to write short descriptions of each.
Task: Update the parser to save data to two tables: ‘properties’ and ‘propertyinfo’. If data has changed, add a record to ‘propertyinfo’ with a new timestamp.
Task: Talk to Bianca and/or Daniel Fusca about the status of releasing this data as open.
Task: Create a new parser to grab data from property information pages, and save the data to the ‘applications’ table.
Task: figure out how we might find staff reports associated with applications and/or properties.
Idea: Cross-reference with Tarion, MPAC data.
Workgroup: Toronto Budget Project
Participants: Henrik, Stefan, Dan
Discussed software stack (typescript/react), admin (trello board), workplan (prototype home screen – Stefan), paradigm (data card/tile/list/container), abstractions around budget explorer when the time comes (smart budget item object, smart workspace with automated budget item presentation and comparisons), general ui design (material design), workflow (github), local dev environment (vagrant/virtualbox)
Goal is to create prototype home page and lay foundation for organizing dev work into chunks that can be parcelled out more or less independently
Main features on active list: Interactive Budget Roadmap, Interactive Deputation Helper (Henrik will pursue acquisition of requirements for those), and Budget explorer (after the first two are done)