Watercooler - Core Datasets

Place for general discussion.

Hurrah! We have our first new packaged core dataset thanks to sxren CO2 PPM data Ā· Issue #56 Ā· datasets/awesome-data Ā· GitHub

1 Like

US CPI has been a bit neglected and needs a maintainer: US CPI data Ā· Issue #64 Ā· datasets/awesome-data Ā· GitHub

Anyone in or near London? The ODI are having a meetup Open Data London Meet Up Tickets, Thu 12 Feb 2015 at 18:15 | Eventbrite I donā€™t know if I can make it but Iā€™m going to try.

Iā€™ve tentatively signed up. It means an overnight stay in London! If I can make it, Iā€™ll come say hello.

Cheers

Edafe

Hi, I likely canā€™t make the ODIā€™s open data london event but I will be running Open Data Maker London on Thursday 5th February (next Thursday):

http://attending.io/events/open-data-maker-london-feb-2015

This is also probably a better venue for working on the core datasets work as more making than talking oriented (plus Iā€™ve made ā€œcore datasetsā€ a theme).

@ekoner @EvilPhil hope you can make it!

I hope to make it, depending on my workshop timings. It would be great to speak to someone about the process. Itā€™ll help tie everything together so I can get started contributing.

Cheers

Edafe

@ekoner great - the event runs 18:30 to 21:00 and its no problem if you do not turn up right at the start.

@EvilPhil how about you?

I donā€™t know. I will be in London but for training but Iā€™ll see if I can make it. It would be good to meet everybody in person.

A question, if you allow - and i am not even sure this is the right forum.

When I work with datasets I try to note a few things

  • where did I get it (=source, url)
  • when did I get it and give an estimate when I need to refresh
  • note key steps and issues i encounter when cleaning up the data
  • gaps if any (= often)

I have not seen these in the introduction, but my experience would indicate this information as very helpful. What do you think of adding this? ( as comment in the package.json?)

@andreas this is the exactly the right place to be asking. I also note you are also free to start a new ā€œtopicā€ in the forum (just put it in the core datasets category) - which will mean your question will get a dedicated thread.

First, these are great questions and we should adding answers to these to the primary Data Packaging docs e.g. http://data.okfn.org/doc/publish (and subpages) as we go (you can submit improvements to those pages btw!)

Looking for somewhere to make your next contribution? Hereā€™s some places to look:

Hi all, our amazing current managing editor @sxren has less time currently due to other commitments so we are looking for someone to step up and help coordinate activity on the core datasets queue: Issues Ā· datasets/awesome-data Ā· GitHub

Youā€™ll get one-on-one tutoring and support from me and thereā€™s plenty of people helping out :slight_smile:

Perhaps of topic a bit, but as Iā€™ve finally started working on the irish House Prices index Iā€™m wondering if anybody knows where I can get a free or very cheap linux VM in the cloud? Iā€™m hoping to run a monthly cron job and push updates to the price index to github.

@EvilPhil this is really interesting as this is a general need on this project - i wonder if we should start a dedicated thread on this (focused on what we would want in terms of scraping).

Letā€™s see if we can find a cheap VM which we could use for this sort of scraping: obviously thereā€™s stuff like DigitalOcean, Linode, Dreamhost etc - but it would be nice to get something pro-bono maybe.

I should also flag Morph in case it fits your needs already: Morph, a scraper platform for hackers and would be hackers - Open Knowledge Labs

Hello @EvilPhil,

you might be interested in these small cheap hosting :