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Donovan Keith edited this page Jul 13, 2016 · 19 revisions

Getting Started

  1. Read this document.
  2. Read some posts on the LA Homeless Data Blog to get a sense of the project and what we're doing.
  3. Join the HackForLA Slack Channel
  1. Join our sub-channel #homeless-data-policy to stay up-to-date.
  2. Add yourself to our gallery of attendees / group members.
  3. Go to our Issues Page and see if there are any issues you feel comfortable tackling.
  4. Read How to Contribute, start working, and submit your results!
  5. Any questions? Check in with the on-site group leader (probably named Donovan)

If you want to contribute, you will need to have a Github account and to join. Our GitHub Repo contains the ongoing project information:

What is the group?

This is the Homelessness Data Analysis & Policy project at Hack for LA. We will gather information about the issues contributing to homelessness and resource providers to direct referrers and volunteers to service providers in order to help the homeless population. This will be a website in Blog format addressing the major questions people have about homelessness through articles based on data analysis with reproducible results. The information will be open source will all data available for further analysis and allow for additional commentary.

Information about the group and group meeting notes are on Google Docs. We normally meet as part of the Hack for LA civic hack nights.

What are we hoping to accomplish?

Our goal is to address the homelessness problem in Los Angeles by educating the public about homelessness providing text articles, data visualization & infographics. We hope to eventually affect change and influence government policy to help the homeless population and address the underlying causes.

What does that look like?

Well, it's early days yet. But in general, we're hoping to create a series of blog posts talking about homeless in LA through the lens of data analysis. In an ideal work session, that looks like:

  1. Pick a data set on LA's homeless
  2. Analyze that data using the tools of your choice.
  3. Put together a visualization or analysis
  4. Post that analysis in the form of a new post.

For the technical bits, read How To Contribute.

Meeting Format

For now, we meet Tuesday Nights 6pm - 9pm at L.A. Kretz Innovation Center.

  • 6:00pm: Arrive
    • Review minutes from last meeting.
  • 6:30pm: LA Civic Hack Night Orientation
    • Introductions
    • Project Pitches
  • 7:00pm: Project Breakout Time
    • Direct first-timers to Getting Started Guide
    • Pick an open issue for the day
  • 7:05pm: Project Work Time
  • 8:45pm: Record Next Steps
  • 8:50pm: Reconvene Larger Group
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