Hack-a-thon1 Political Memory 2.0

The hack-a-thon is now over, but development on Political Memory 2.0 is still underway.
A report of the hack-a-thon by one of the main developers is available, as well as an article (in French) about the hack-a-thon at Owni.

PoliticalMemory 2.0 - Hackathon #1 - Feb. 24th (6PM) to Feb. 26th - IRL & IRC

English   Français

You can participate to the entire event via IRC on channel #lqdn-memopol on irc.freenode.net (or via our web interface: http://lqdn.fr/chat)

RADIO

We have a live Web-Radio stream running during the whole event , just check http://pyaler.org:8000/lqdnlive with your favorite music player (not anymore)

INTRO

Political Memory, (aka "MemoPol") is a project created by La Quadrature du Net to achieve the following goals:

• Provide a framework for political activists in order to optimize, promote and keep track of their actions (initially defending free speech and other fundamental freedoms online).
• Provide citizens an accurate view of their political representatives' (PRs) actions in parliaments and assemblies.
• Raise the political cost of taking bad decisions for representatives by attributing good and bad points.

In a nutshell: We collect official data about political representatives. Public votes and decisions are used to compute a score, and this score allows us to do a a lot of interesting things:

• Rank PRs according to your political goals and issues,
• Point out discrepancies between who talks the talk, and who actually walks the walk ,
• See trends among groups of PRs and individual members of parliament,

WHAT, WHO?

Political Memory 2.0 is a complete rewrite of the previous Political Memory tool (originally based on perl scripts outputing mediawiki pages). It is now composed of: Django, CouchDB, Various set of scripts (in bash, python, perl), HTML, CSS and JS for the frontend

We are looking for smart cool people skilled in those fields!

• A starter kit to help you get started on the project can be found here: https://quadpad.lqdn.fr/memopol2-start

• You can find more information about Memopol 1's at the following wiki page: Political Memory Software

• And you can read more about the Memopol 2 project on the project's page on our Redmine task tracker.

HACK-A-THON?

We are organizing a two-day IRL and on-line gathering to achieve the following goals:

• Present the exisiting project to new potential contributers.
• Decide on the roadmap and task lists.
• Settle on best practices and developments guidelines
• Push the ongoing developments as far as we can.
• Design interface and other aspects.
• Drink beer together (or remotely)

WHEN? WHERE?

From Thursday 24th of February 6PM (Paris time) to Saturday 26th of February, until energy lasts. We'll provide internet connectivity (bring your laptop!) and follow the event on IRC.

So far, the detailed program is the following:

• Thursday 24th, 6PM - ... / Octopuce (29, rue Merlin, 75011 Paris) / *core-contributers gathering* (limited space, *send an email before coming* contact @ laquadrature.net; come if you know the project already and intend to commit) : decisions on key design issues and roadmap

• Friday 25th, 10:00AM - Saturday 26th / Le Loop (very cool Hacker Space on the 4th floor of squatted building 40 rue René Boulanger (M° République) 75010 Paris / Continuous hacking: programming, webdesign, testing and moar!

• Friday 25th, 6:30PM - 8:00PM / Le Loop 40 rue René Boulanger, 4th floor / Short introduction to Political Memory for new contributers + use cases from an activist perspective (@jerezim from @laquadrature) + discussion with initiators and core-contributers

You can participate to the whole event via IRC on channel #lqdn-travail on irc.freenode.net (or via our web interface: http://lqdn.fr/chat)

In case of you need anything, you can reach Mat on +33 6 634 634 91 or write to contact@laquadrature.net

FAQ

Shall I bring beer?

No, we will provide beer, wine, croissants and coffee \o/

What shall I bring?

A laptop if you have one (spares will probably be available), and anything you need to feel comfortable (blanket, club mate, trip glasses, etc. ;)

I know so little, how can I be sure my contribution will be helpful?

Any help from motivated people can be helpful! Just come over! In doubt, you can talk to us over IRC before doing so, we'll convince you! ;)

I would love to come in order to usefully contribute, but I cannot afford the travel. Ain't life a bitch?

Yes it is indeed, and then you die. But we may help by refunding your travel expenses! Just contact us

I have other questions about Political Memory 2.0 or the organizing of the event?

You can ask them on our IRC channel: #lqdn-memopol (or #lqdn-travail, in French) on irc.freenode.net (or http://lqdn.fr/chat) or on our mailing-list: https://laquadrature.net/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/mempol2 or by writing to contact@laquadrature.net