irc log #poplus 2014-02-05

gistfile1.txt

21:58 [Users #poplus]
21:58 [ chris ] [ ETBlue] [ Jen    ] [ matthew] [ tkirby ] 
21:58 [ clkao ] [ hakim ] [ Lee1092] [ myf    ] [ yhsiang] 
21:58 [ dave_w] [ ipa   ] [ mark   ] [ poga   ] 
21:58 -!- Irssi: #poplus: Total of 14 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 14 normal]
21:58 < clkao> wow quite a crowd here!
21:58 < Jen> For those that have just joined, Clkao shared this earlier: http://g0v.asia/tw
21:59  * hakim reads
22:00 -!- falvarez [~falvarez@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:00 < Jen> So from mySociety we have Hakim, who you know already :), matthew who's been working on SayIt a lot, mark, who's working on Pombola (our parliamentary monitoring platform), Chris, who's working on popit, myf who does comms for mySoc and dave_w who works with the international team on a lot of different things
22:01 < myf> hello :)
22:01 < tkirby> hi guys
22:01 < clkao> howdy
22:02 < hakim> golly.  you published a dictionary
22:02 < yhsiang> hi~
22:02 < clkao> so here we have tkirby, ETBlue, ipa, Lee1092, poga, tkirby, yhsiang.  everyone kind of does a bit of everything in various projects, even the non-tech people are now opening PR on github ;)
22:03 < Jen> so I thought this would be a good place to talk about what you're working on, and also talk a bit about the components we're working on and poplus
22:03 < clkao> falvarez is from .ch i think, we spoke a bit last week
22:03 < falvarez> .cl =)
22:03 < clkao> right sorry ;)
22:03 < Jen> yeah :) Felipe is from Ciudadano inteligente
22:03 < falvarez> no worries
22:03 < falvarez> yeah
22:04 < falvarez> we had a little chat just getting to know people from all over the world
22:05 < clkao> so I myself works mostly with the taiwanese congress related projects, as well as the general infrastructure for the community
22:05 -!- pedro [~pedro@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:05 < clkao> some of the more eye-catching ones is proposed amendment diff view: http://ly.g0v.tw/bills/1150L15359
22:06 < clkao> as well as congress cinema (interactive live feed where you can throw things at politians), and video archive view (with waveform) http://ly.g0v.tw/sittings/08-04-YS-09/video
22:07 < dave_w> clkao I find it interesting already that your https://www.moedict.tw/ has a twitter feed on the left, what's your reasoning behind that?
22:07 < clkao> and since we do have the full text of the transcription (with about 2-week delay), hopefully this gets to be integrated with sayit
22:07 < Jen> wow this looks amazing, the bills stuff sounds a little like what Marcel from FCI is building at the moment
22:08 < clkao> dave_w: i think that's for wide screen only.  i guess someone offered to pay to put ads there, and @audreyt thought it'd be nice to just put the moedict feed as the ad so people won't ask again ;)
22:08 < clkao> ipa was suggesting naming the bill stuff CompareIt ;)
22:08 < hakim> the bill diffing stuff is really cute.  would be lovely to see that kind of thing interspersed into hansard discussions
22:09 < dave_w> clkao: thanks, that's neat
22:09 < clkao> so, the logical next step for the bill view is: compare multiple bills with different proposed amendments. a bill drafting ui for citizen to collaboratively draft and revise, etc.
22:10 -!- jgarrido [~jgarrido@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:10 < clkao> it's said that the some MP offices are now using the bill view tool, because it's much nicer than tabular word files
22:10 < hakim> nice!
22:10 -!- Steiny [uid4657@ealing.irccloud.com] has joined #poplus
22:11 < Jen> that's great news :)
22:11 < clkao> (please feel free to ask about other projects mentioned in the article)
22:11 < hakim> how does that compare with http://poplus.org/posts/billit/ ?
22:11 < clkao> iirc billit is just bill storage?
22:11 < hakim> ok, so for single bill document, as opposed to diffing / collaboration ?
22:12 < Jen> Pedro: BillIt is showing changes and amendments to bills right?
22:12 < clkao> afaict, perhaps falvarez knows more
22:12 -!- maugsburger [~maugsburg@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:12 < falvarez> I'm going to kick this over to maugsburger
22:13 < pedro> nowadays it dosn't, because in chile the amendment came as a new document
22:13 < Jen> ah maugsburger is the one developing BillIt
22:13 [Users #poplus]
22:13 [ chris ] [ falvarez] [ jgarrido] [ maugsburger] [ Steiny ] 
22:13 [ clkao ] [ hakim   ] [ Lee1092 ] [ myf        ] [ tkirby ] 
22:13 [ dave_w] [ ipa     ] [ mark    ] [ pedro      ] [ yhsiang] 
22:13 [ ETBlue] [ Jen     ] [ matthew ] [ poga       ] 
22:13 -!- Irssi: #poplus: Total of 19 nicks [0 ops, 0 halfops, 0 voices, 19 normal]
22:13 < pedro> you can think of it as an annex
22:13 -!- matthew changed the topic of #poplus to: Links of interest: http://g0v.asia/tw | proposed amendment diff view: http://ly.g0v.tw/bills/1150L15359 | video archive view http://ly.g0v.tw/sittings/08-04-YS-09/video
22:14 < clkao> matthew++
22:15 < clkao> so i was looking at the uk parliament document, IIRC amendment text seems to be written in a semantical way, like "add this paragraph to the end of section X paragraph Y"
22:15 < yhsiang> congress cinema is http://ivod.ly.g0v.tw 
22:15 < clkao> is that right? or is it the UK bill document doing that way
22:16 < hakim> oh, I do like http://g0v.asia/tw/#Q2.3 -- that looks rather like a general component candidate to me
22:17 < matthew> clkao: it is written in a legal way, which is quite structured, but can vary quite a bit too.
22:17 < clkao> fact.g0v.tw - i asked jimmyhuang about processing en pages on wikipedia. he said the date format are more chaotic so it's not handling them very well
22:18 < clkao> matthew: ok, in tw we are already have a side-by-side view from the word doc file, so it's rather straightforward to extract the "before and after" to put into diff view
22:18 < hakim> yhsiang: oh!  I like the red curtains, little disturbed by the gun-sight mouse icon though ;-)
22:19 < matthew> clkao: yeah, Parliament do "changes made by the public bill committee" PDF e.g. http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-public-bill-office/2013-14/compared-bills/Anti-social-Behaviour-Crime-bill-130717.pdf - but everything else is as amendments, lots of examples for that bill at http://services.parliament.uk/bills/2013-14/antisocialbehaviourcrimeandpolicingbill/documents.html
22:19 < hakim> ahahaha, just fruit, phew
22:19 < clkao> hakim: probably a better way is to process via wikidata, since they will have structural "event" field.
22:19 < hakim> clkao: yeah indeed.  And of course you could genericise the backend to allow general timelines from different sources
22:19 < yhsiang> hakim: yes just like watching a movie 
22:20 < hakim> yhsiang: hehe
22:21 < mark> clkao: a few years ago we tried to campaign to change the ways that bills were published, but it didn't produce the results we hoped for: http://www.theyworkforyou.com/freeourbills/
22:21 < yhsiang> but jimmyhuang's origin idea is from a public source so we dont handle a backend service
22:22 < clkao> mark: but were there some progresses?  as the parliaments themselves are having hackathons, are they acknowledging this?
22:23 -!- hakim [~hakim@cpc27-live19-2-0-cust827.17-2.cable.virginm.net] has joined #poplus
22:23 < mark> clkao: parliament has been steadily getting better at publishing online, yeah - e.g. they now have an API for information about MPs, Lords and so on
22:25 -!- genghis [~john@176.61.96.112] has joined #poplus
22:25 < mark> but your diff view was exactly the kind of thing we were wanting to be able to do :)
22:25 -!- rezzo [~rezzo@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:25 < clkao> I gave a talk to the congress IT department a few weeks ago.  I can see that the IT department are very sensible.  However it takes time for other parts of the congress to buy in, that information/data flow are the core of their business, not just by-product that gets published
22:27 < clkao> mark: so we should standardize on a structure for representing diff ;)
22:28 < hakim> http://g0v.asia/tw/#Q4.2 on Media Relations is fascinating!  Obviously that's not an issue for mySoc/CI in the same way (though my local grassroots coworking space has that kind of issue)
22:32  * clkao . o O (moedict ui for welsh and gaelic dictionaries)
22:34 < Jen> so have you had a look at the documentation for getting the transcripts into SayIt? And do you think it's something that could be integrated into the site?
22:37 < clkao> Just briefly.  I think it's definitely possible.  we have a prototype for congress interpellation sessions: http://twlyreader-prototype.herokuapp.com/reader.html?json_url=/json/3149_interp.json#p0-3
22:38 -!- maugsburger [~maugsburg@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:42 < falvarez> hey clkao would you mind telling us a little more how you get organized?
22:42 < falvarez> since you are more a community than a organization?
22:44 -!- hcchien [~hcchien@li414-130.members.linode.com] has joined #poplus
22:45 < clkao> that's right.  the basic idea is like running an open source community. but instead of scoped for a specific project and for developers, we try to scope "government from 0" as the project, and reach people unfamiliar with the open source model
22:45 < ipa> we have hackathons bimonthly, and other mini hackathons in between.
22:45 < falvarez> cool!
22:46 < falvarez> do you include just Taiwan or more countries?
22:46 < clkao> mainly in taiwan right now.  we do have countributors from US and europe
22:47 < Jen> do you run them in person or is it via the internet with outside contributors?
22:47 < clkao> Jen: you mean hackathons?  in person, but some people do participate remotely
22:47 < clkao> ~100 people for the bimonthly hackathons
22:48 < tkirby> check the flickr collection for the hackathon record: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tkirby/sets/72157632153043236/
22:48 < yhsiang> clkao: one idea we haven't implement that people collaborate to record subtitle on ivod.ly , and then we can get earlier transcript from congress
22:48 < clkao> i'd say 40% developer, 30% design/art, and 30% activists?
22:49 < Jen> that's really amazing, how do you let people know about the hackathons?
22:49 < clkao> if we can use sayit as a storage backend with api, we can have wiki-styled transcription
22:49 < clkao> Jen: we have quite a large open source community here in Taiwan (3 major annual conferences, largest one is 1800 ppl last yr)
22:49 < yhsiang> ok maybe also deal with fact.g0v ?
22:50 < clkao> so it's not very hard to get the message out ;)
22:51 < clkao> tickets (though free) are usualy gone within 2 days after registration opens
22:51 < Jen> ah awesome, we haven't interacted too much with groups in SE Asia yet :( but it's great to hear about the community
22:52 < hakim> clkao: that's a really healthy mix of members!  I remember you'd mentioned it before, but I'd forgotten details
22:52 < Jen> woah, ha that's great. :)
22:52 < clkao> i will be giving a talk at fossasia end of this month in cambodia. they seem to have quite a community there too
22:53 < clkao> so hopefully more common tools shared between similar movements in different countries
22:53 < Jen> \o/
22:53 < clkao> the korean open congress folks are quite amazing too : pokr.kr, have you been in touch?
22:54 < Jen> oh we haven't! do you have a specific contact?
22:54 < clkao> @echojuliett on twitter
22:55 < clkao> i think they are adopting popoplo as well
22:55 < Jen> cool :) so they might know James too :)
22:56 < clkao> hakim: speaking of which, is popit supporting popoplo now ?
22:56 -!- pedro [~pedro@pc-103-113-101-190.cm.vtr.net] has joined #poplus
22:56 < hakim> clkao: yes, it uses popolo format data
22:57 < hakim> chris can give you latest on popit
22:58 < chris> yea, records get validated against the relevant popolo schema before they go into the database
22:58 < chris> but the actual structure of the data in popit is relatively free-form
22:58 < yhsiang> i am interesting in mapit XD
22:58 < clkao> i noticed mysoc projects are mostly using vagrant (so are we), but for components like sayit/popit, docker seems super for containerize such components
23:00 < Jen> Funnily Pedro and I had a chat about docker just now with a group from iceland
23:00 < clkao> so if poplus components have a common way for packaging docker container, it should be a lot easier to integrate into other systems
23:00 < Jen> they said a similar thing
23:00 < clkao> jinx ;)
23:00 < hakim> is docker entirely stable now?
23:01 < clkao> ethercalc is using it in production IIRC
23:01 < hakim> I couldn't get it to work when I tried to install in a vagrant box a couple of months ago.  I'm sure that's mostly be being dumb, of course
23:02 < dave_w> yhsiang: mapit is nicely mature and lots of ways it's helpful — e.g. FixMyStreet uses it to determine which councils/bodies are responsible for the problem the citizen is reporting the moment they click on the map and we have a lat-long — what use do you think you might have for it?
23:03 < matthew> i look forward to investigating docker more, but I do think it's currently definitely towards the new-fangled end of the spectrum :)
23:05 < dave_w> Jen: looking at the flickr the secret to the Taiwanese hackathons is *cakes*! they give out cakes!
23:05 < hakim> I guess the question is whether we're doing anything that makes it hard for *someone else* to package poplus components with docker?
23:05 < Jen> dave_w: noted for future events
23:05 < clkao> dave_w++ # well noted
23:05 < yhsiang> dave_w: ya, thank u, our twgeojson project is a little silimar and we used it to build rainfall statistics graph and air pollution graph
23:06 < yhsiang> http://g0v.github.io/twgeojson/air.html # air pollution in tw
23:06 < hakim> yhsiang: oh nice.  are you using something like the Air Quality Egg ?
23:06 < clkao> Taiwanese open source conferences are notorious about the food served.  ;)
23:07 < clkao> hakim: oh that's cute.  but no this is just from the official EPA data
23:07 < clkao> (which actually has json api endpoint from gov.tw, shocking!)
23:07 < hakim> ah, gotcha
23:08 < clkao> though it doesn't do CORS so we have it through datapipes.okfnlabs.org
23:08 < yhsiang> i think we can build mapit.tw XD
23:09 < clkao> one of the issues with the mapping data is keeping historical admin borders
23:09 < dave_w> yhsiang so mapit is good for knowing what areas (which can be nested, which is very handy) a point lies within; so handy for breaking down any data into areas e.g. for reports or feeds, as well as the interactive example of FixMyStreet clicks
23:09 < dave_w> clkao mapit has the concept of generation, yes
23:09 < clkao> which affects how constituencies borders, if you are to look for historical election data
23:10 < clkao> oh great!  i love it when people have solve the hard problems
23:10 < clkao> *solved
23:10 < hakim> oh, your hackathon photos are great by the way.  It's hard to take compelling photos of lots of people talking in a room :-)
23:10 < clkao> looks like yhsiang is going to take care of it ;)
23:10 < clkao> hakim: tkirby++ for that
23:11 < clkao> hakim: amazingly he usually has somehting coded to present at the end of the hackathon, whilist taking amazing photos
23:11 < dave_w> yhsiang: I am sure you've found this already, but in case it helps http://code.mapit.mysociety.org :-)
23:12 < hakim> tkirby++ indeed
23:12 < tkirby> thanks :)
23:12 < yhsiang> i will and ronnywang can do it too!
23:12 < yhsiang> dave_w: it's helpful, thank u
23:13 < clkao> Jen: so tell us more about poplus!  it's a brand and federation for international collaboration?  what are the plans?
23:14 < Jen> Poplus is a network
23:14 < Jen> the idea behind the network is that it offers tools to help make the creating of sites like parliamentary monitoring sites super easy
23:16 < Jen> or any other civic engagement site really! and the ideal is that it has a community of users, creators and collaborators who make tools for civic engagement, the "components", which can either be used stand alone or linked together
23:17 < Jen> The idea came about because Tom and Felipe H realised that though a parliamentary monitoring site may differ loads from country to country, the basic things that site will want are usually fairly similar
23:18 < Jen> for example; a database of MPs or a record of hansard or administrative boundary data
23:19 < clkao> so Pombola is tasting menu and poplus components are ala carte ;)
23:19 < Jen> haha sort of yes :)
23:19 < Jen> poplus.org is where the current and in development components are from FCI and mySociety
23:20 < Jen> but since we launched SayIt we've been focusing a little more on getting people to join the google group and start interacting with the development of the components (so we can makesure it suits peoples needs) and make suggestions, reuse the tools or offer up things they have done for reuse through the network
23:21 < Jen> https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/poplus is the group
23:22 < clkao> hakim: on the list is Tony Bowden the Tony we know?
23:23 < hakim> clkao: yes indeed!  of Class::DBI and various fame
23:23 < hakim> clkao: and did I see that you or audrey had worked with him (or after him) at socialtext or similar?
23:23 < clkao> I see where all the perl people are now hiding
23:24 < yhsiang> Class::DBI !!
23:24 < Jen> And though in the short term there's going to be a little bit of a wait and it's going to be a little more expensive than creating a site from scratch, in the end the cost should diminish as the components are more mature and more things work with them :)
23:24 < clkao> after him i believe.  we both still consult for socialtext
23:24 < hakim> ah, I didn't really know it was still going
23:34 < clkao> I think most of us definitely share the same vision and value with poplus
23:35 < clkao> and can probably submit components as poplus projects where suitable for wider audience and community.  everything we do is open source as well. ;)
23:35 < clkao> does it need to be called .*It? ;)
23:36 < dave_w> let's see who's brave enough to be the first to break the pattern :-)
23:37 < yhsiang> LinkIt ?
23:37 < clkao> well yourproriority from .is doesn't match the pattern :)
23:40 < hakim> one problem with .*It is that other people seem to like it too, so there's some clashing
23:40 < hakim> e.g. there's another BillIt, and didn't we have to get special permission to use one of the names?
23:41 < Jen> Actually there's something else call mapit I believe
23:42 < hakim> maybe that was it
23:43 < Jen> but yeah it would be amazing if you guys wanted to contribute and use components :)
23:43 < clkao> so should we keep this channel as international hub for cvic engagement hacking?
23:44 < clkao> we do find an active irc channel invaluable for keeping the community vibrant, and we tried very hard to trick non-tech people to stick to irc too ;)
23:45 < Jen> sure I think we're going to be sticking the link up on the poplus site soon :) one thing we know is that we need components to be easy to reinstall for others
23:45 < clkao> now freenode/#g0v.tw there are constantly ~180 lurkers
23:45 < Jen> \o/
23:46 < Jen> I'll have to talk to the mySoc leaders to check this is definitely going to be on our servers and not somewhere else
23:47 < clkao> yes.  i will try to ♞ someone to play with sayit and perhaps try to put it in docker
23:47 < Jen> awesome :)
23:47 < clkao> freenode#poplus should do too ;)
23:47 < hakim> I've had one "oh, private irc channel? :-("  comment from someone recently
23:47 < clkao> as most developers are on freenode already
23:47 < hakim> yeah
23:48 < hakim> and many irc clients will come with connection details for it, etc.
23:49 < clkao> we use kiwi-irc and scrollback.io to engage non-tech people to irc
23:49 < clkao> just a page embed: hack.g0v.tw/irc
23:49 < Jen> mkay I will send a message round mySociety and get a consensus :)
23:51 < clkao> cool!
23:52 < clkao> Jen: anything else before we wrap up?
23:53 < Jen> not particularly, we're still working out what the specs for a component should be but please do dip in to the mailing list and give your opinions on things!
23:54 < clkao> sure thing!
23:54 < Jen> thanks so much! 
23:54 < clkao> should we also post the log to the thread on the list about this chat?
23:57 < Jen> sure thing!
23:57 < Jen> it's a public channel :)
23:57 < clkao> Jen++ for hosting
00:00 < hakim> clkao: good to chat to you and g0v.tw peeps!