Hi friends, For TL;DR : Reply if you want a quick technical solution for a task of yours.
Over the past few years interacting with various folks through datameet and other networks, I've kept coming across common needs for small, not big, programming solutions to help NGOs, researchers, journalists, planners etc in their work. I myself use many such tools regularly and have several bookmarked as my go-to whenever I need something specific done fast. Some examples: Venny <http://bioinfogp.cnb.csic.es/tools/venny/>, count duplicates <http://www.somacon.com/p568.php>, remove duplicates <http://textmechanic.com/text-tools/basic-text-tools/remove-duplicate-lines/> . When I couldn't find something already made, I dabbled in making some of these myself and have a small list of them here: http://answerquest.github.io One example : To retrieve some basic metadata of multiple youtube video links that I wanted to share in my blog articles, I made : youtube video info extractor <https://answerquest.github.io/youtube-info-extractor.html>. These needs are not big or glitzy enough to qualify as full-fledged projects. But just because they're small, doesn't mean they're not necessary or impactful. *Au contraire,* there's probably more people around the world using tools like Venny <http://bioinfogp.cnb.csic.es/tools/venny/> than there are using R or Python to achieve the same simple goal of figuring out what's common and not between three or four lists of data. Its initiator made it to help with some work in biology. Well, it's been used in way more fields than biology by now and it's by far the fastest and simplest way to get one specific job done. It may not change the world but it's cured a lot of headaches. I got together with PythonPune <https://meetup.com/PythonPune/> group and organised a *small hackathon event* <https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vRler7N3-FNNJXznMPmwsM7V6uUTESTIDi65TUY96NT8xCSjGmETJcXnC90SwGNfo-V3HUlwG7VGCjy/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=3000&slide=id.p> on this theme a few months ago. Great turnout, great experience, lots of potential. On interacting with students who were interested in and wanted to take up tasks like these, one major show-stopper that emerged was : their project guides do not deem such things "major" enough to qualify as a project. Profs typically prioritise something that could lead to them publishing an academic paper (another example of how the academia's obsession with paper publishing prevents real-world problem-solving! ). I can understand now why so many of these amazing solutions get made only in somebody's free time and don't benefit the creator much. *I want to assemble a collection of such requirements*, that we can club together as a consolidated project that qualifies for serious commitment. Output: A slew of small to medium tech solutions that can be of use to people working in the open data world, all nicely featured on a one-stop website like the municipal shapefiles site <https://github.com/datameet/Municipal_Spatial_Data> DMers have made. And the output could also just be a recipe of the quickest way to get a particular job done using available tools, but it will help to put minds together and hammer the best path out. And, of course, localized to your context. *So, reaching out to know YOUR requirement.* Have you ever faced a tough or repetitive task at work for which you wished there would be a simple technical solution? Have you thought "If only I could just ______________" ? Please share about it. Accompanying details, sample data will be helpful. And if you're interested in being one of the coders that creates these solutions and scores a live proof-of-work on your CV, let me know. Disclaimer : Expect solutions slowly working out over time, not miracles. -- Cheers, Nikhil VJ +91-966-583-1250 Pune, India Website <http://nikhilvj.co.in> DataMeet Pune chapter <https://datameet-pune.github.io/> Self-designed learner at Swaraj University <http://www.swarajuniversity.org> Payment / Contribute <https://nikhilvj.benow.in/pay> -- Datameet is a community of Data Science enthusiasts in India. Know more about us by visiting http://datameet.org --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "datameet" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to datameet+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
