Hangout TWO - Summary

Our recent Hangout took place on 30 April. Five members participated: Irina Radchenko, Jakes Rawlinson, Randah Taher, Ketty Adoch and Anna Sakoyan. Digital divide, although still tangible in terms of microphone connection failures, didn’t prevent us from spending almost the whole Hangout together – with the exception of Randah who unfortunately had to leave the meet-up a bit earlier than the rest, because her battery got low.
 
Current situation
We started by describing our current state of progress. I said that I’ve just started dealing with data cleaning and faced quite a number of problems on the way, which I described in a greater detail on our shared Google Doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1dydcLb2Y6EUG62efzCQllpO1LEzRIdV-q1UcK6mdRf4/edit).
Jakes said he was searching for more context of the situation with CO2 emissions and he actually found a lot of very interesting and helpful resources, including a profound research of greenhouse gas inventory in South Africa (http://rava.qsens.net/themes/theme_emissions/government-publications/SA%20GHG%202000.pdf). He also said he got in touch with OKNF-South Africa and got some details from them as to where to look for information. He especially recommended using United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) (http://unfccc.int/2860.php). These links as well as those he shared previously via the list are all to be put into our shared Resource Google Doc (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1wEX_v4ZgTkU7rOLpnmnn3fbpzkDO6SdYOjDYDq1ravU/edit).
Randah who had some microphone troubles and therefore mostly communicated via chat said that she had troubles cleaning data, which is very similar to my case, so I hope we can be helpful to each other in sharing our experience and solutions. She also described this feeling as ‘dataphobia’, which is, I think, common to at least some of us and this is what we are trying to overcome by means of learning the technology.
Ketty, on the other hand, shared a wonderful link to her cleaned, or polished, as she put it, dataset and it looked truly awesome and inspiring. It would be great if she shared some tips on the procedure. Randah and I are looking forward to it. I wonder if I have to share the link to that dataset here, because I think Ketty has shared it already via the list. Another Ketty's message was that she had trouble looking for deforestation data. Jakes here pointed out that  negative finding is also sort of a result, which should not be silenced.
Ketty also hopes for some peer review of her work.
Now, Irina shared some very helpful links. This one regarding CO2 emissions (http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/EN.ATM.CO2E.PC/countries/ZA-ZF-XT?display=graph) for instance. She also mentioned that she needs to learn more about sorting and filtering data.
 
By the way, I made a terrible mistake when signing out the Hangout: I hit the ‘receiver’ sign, which made the whole tab shut, so I couldn’t get back to the chat for references. Nevertheless, here are two more links regarding the data on South Africa that were shared during the Hangout, but I’m not sure about who exactly shared them. So:
this one: http://www.indexmundi.com/facts/south-africa/co2-emissions
and this one: http://opendataforafrica.org/data#menu=topic
 
Defining Strategy
Right before the Hangout started, we all received Mission 3 message, which suggested the following steps that should be taken. The problem is that most of the team are considerably far behind this landmark. So we actually decided that under the current circumstances we’d rather disregard the new instructions (rebel, as Randah put it) in order to properly master and digest the previous material. But in order to keep the process going, we also decided to set certain targets to reach before our next Hangout. 
 
Agenda
So, my ambition is to at last learn how to clean datasets. Randah and Irina’s resolution is similar, so we are hopefully going to cooperate. By the way, Irina also suggested that we may want to find a broader range of tools for cleaning, which certainly do not concise to spreadsheets and Google Refine. She also resolved to find out about the technical aspects of data verification and comparison, as well as sorting and cleaning. And Randah is also going to contribute to the Google Docs.
Jakes, on the other hand, is going to move a bit further, that is to play with Ketty’s cleaned dataset and try to draw some conclusions basing on the data.
Ketty’s ambition is twofold: first, she is going to find some data regarding deforestation; second, she’s going to try and visualise the data – namely, to create a map, which is really cool, because in this way she is going to be the only person to represent the Team’s participation in Mission 3.
 
Next Hangout
We have already chosen the facilitator for the next Hangout and this time it is Irina.
As to the timing, we are going to meet next time by the end of this week, but we’ll discuss it more precisely via the list.
 
In the meanwhile
We decided that everyone is going to work on their tasks as they were formulated during the Hangout. And we also agreed on the idea that members should interact a bit more actively via the tools provided (like the mailing list, the two Google Docs, and probably the Etherpad), so that separate members of the team don’t get frustrated by the general silence. Which means getting in touch not only when we have something helpful to contribute, but also to share problems, consult and simply to let others know we're in.
During this Hangout we also found out that in spite of that notorious silence, people were working and getting results, which is wonderful.
 
Now that’s it. If you find I’ve missed something important, then please add it to this summary.
Thanks everybody for participation and good luck with your further progress.
 
Anna