[python-uk] ANNOUNCEMENT: Python West Midlands Evidence for Development Hackday, 26th May

[Sarah Mount]

Calling all FOSS contributors! This hackday is a little different.
Python West Midlands is hosting a hackday to kick off a new open
source project for a very interesting little charity called Evidence
for Development(EfD). EfD wants to help people make better decisions
about aid projects – at local and national level – by putting real
data about the real situation in the hands of the people making the
decisions.

If you want to know if your aid programme is making a difference to
the right people then you need to model the economy of your target
village or district, before and after. Makes sense; simple science
right? Problem is you can' afford a bunch of western econometricians
crawling all over the place (cost too much, takes too long) and anyway
their cash-based economic models don't work that well in a place where
cash is only a small part of the economy (grow your own; harvest wild
food; get paid in kind or cash or both for day labour; trade crops,
labour or other goods; etc, etc). So EfD developed simple economic
models that work in this environment, that can be learned and applied
by locally trained people and that, are built to run on laptops. No
reliance on big foundations' data centres.

Last year EfD, in partnership with Chancellor College of the
University of Malawi and The University of  Wolverhampton developed a
Python/MySQL app to model local economies that is already in use in
several countries in Southern Africa.

This year the challenge is bigger – to build software that can model
national and international economies. The model exists and works (it
has a great track record of predicting famine effects from annual
summary surveys of rural economies). But the only current
implementations are proprietary, ill-supported and not extensible.
Smells like open source spirit.

So for this hackday we're going to have with us the two developers who
led the IHM development last year (from Chancellor College in Zomba,
Malawi) and the developers of the modeling methodologies from EfD
(from Barnes and Surrey – exotic eh?). We'll have a pretty complete
MySQL database schema to work on and we hope to finish the day with a
simple demo scenario that downloads reference data about a
geographical area (a livelihood zone) produces a spreadsheet template
to capture information about that livelihood zone (what they grow
there, what they eat, how they make a living) runs some local
completeness reports and uploads the captured data for merging (with
other livelihood zone surveys) to allow analysis of a national survey.

*** Date ***

10:30 onwards, 26th May. Please sign up here for a (free) ticket:
http://efdhacks.bitbucket.org/

*** Location ***

Thyme Software
Innovation Centre
Coventry University Technology Park
Puma Way
Coventry
CV1 2TT

Map: http://g.co/maps/4mj43

Please sign up here for a (free) ticket: http://efdhacks.bitbucket.org/

-- 
Sarah Mount, Senior Lecturer, University of Wolverhampton
website:  http://www.snim2.org/
twitter: @snim2
___
python-uk mailing list
python-uk@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk

Re: [python-uk] ANNOUNCEMENT: Python West Midlands Evidence for Development Hackday, 26th May

[Sarah Mount]

Hi guys, just to remind you, only a few days left until PyWM on
Saturday. Please do register if you're coming, so John can keep an eye
on the numbers for lunch and so on.

All the best,

Sarah

On Fri, May 11, 2012 at 1:32 AM, Sarah Mount  wrote:
> Calling all FOSS contributors! This hackday is a little different.
> Python West Midlands is hosting a hackday to kick off a new open
> source project for a very interesting little charity called Evidence
> for Development(EfD). EfD wants to help people make better decisions
> about aid projects – at local and national level – by putting real
> data about the real situation in the hands of the people making the
> decisions.
>
> If you want to know if your aid programme is making a difference to
> the right people then you need to model the economy of your target
> village or district, before and after. Makes sense; simple science
> right? Problem is you can' afford a bunch of western econometricians
> crawling all over the place (cost too much, takes too long) and anyway
> their cash-based economic models don't work that well in a place where
> cash is only a small part of the economy (grow your own; harvest wild
> food; get paid in kind or cash or both for day labour; trade crops,
> labour or other goods; etc, etc). So EfD developed simple economic
> models that work in this environment, that can be learned and applied
> by locally trained people and that, are built to run on laptops. No
> reliance on big foundations' data centres.
>
> Last year EfD, in partnership with Chancellor College of the
> University of Malawi and The University of  Wolverhampton developed a
> Python/MySQL app to model local economies that is already in use in
> several countries in Southern Africa.
>
> This year the challenge is bigger – to build software that can model
> national and international economies. The model exists and works (it
> has a great track record of predicting famine effects from annual
> summary surveys of rural economies). But the only current
> implementations are proprietary, ill-supported and not extensible.
> Smells like open source spirit.
>
> So for this hackday we're going to have with us the two developers who
> led the IHM development last year (from Chancellor College in Zomba,
> Malawi) and the developers of the modeling methodologies from EfD
> (from Barnes and Surrey – exotic eh?). We'll have a pretty complete
> MySQL database schema to work on and we hope to finish the day with a
> simple demo scenario that downloads reference data about a
> geographical area (a livelihood zone) produces a spreadsheet template
> to capture information about that livelihood zone (what they grow
> there, what they eat, how they make a living) runs some local
> completeness reports and uploads the captured data for merging (with
> other livelihood zone surveys) to allow analysis of a national survey.
>
> *** Date ***
>
> 10:30 onwards, 26th May. Please sign up here for a (free) ticket:
> http://efdhacks.bitbucket.org/
>
> *** Location ***
>
> Thyme Software
> Innovation Centre
> Coventry University Technology Park
> Puma Way
> Coventry
> CV1 2TT
>
> Map: http://g.co/maps/4mj43
>
> Please sign up here for a (free) ticket: http://efdhacks.bitbucket.org/
>
> --
> Sarah Mount, Senior Lecturer, University of Wolverhampton
> website:  http://www.snim2.org/
> twitter: @snim2



-- 
Sarah Mount, Senior Lecturer, University of Wolverhampton
website:  http://www.snim2.org/
twitter: @snim2
___
python-uk mailing list
python-uk@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk

Re: [python-uk] LIVE Python Developer Vacancies

[Sarah Mount]

On Nov 30, 2012 10:33 AM, "Matt Hamilton"  wrote:
>
>
> On 30 Nov 2012, at 09:32, Adam Elliott wrote:
>
> > Hi all,
> >
> > I have various LIVE Python Developer vacancies!
>
> Good move. I've found dead Python developers to be a bit useless.
>

They aren't dead, they are just stunned. Developers stun easily.

Sarah
___
python-uk mailing list
python-uk@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk

Re: [python-uk] Share a hotel room for PyCon UK?

[Sarah Mount]

Hi Daniel, this is great! Can you also put something on the accommodation
page on the wiki where we are trying to keep track of offers? There have
already been some announcements on Twitter  ... Good luck with your search!

Sarah
On 31 Aug 2013 01:24, "Daniele Procida"  wrote:

> Since a hotel room for two people seems to priced the same as a oom for
> one, I'd like to try to reduce the cost of accommodation by finding someone
> to share with, so if you already have a room with twin beds and would like
> to find a roommate, please let me know.
>
> Me: . I'm
> doing a tutorial at the conference, and will be staying Thursday, Friday,
> Saturday and Sunday nights.
>
> I am a non-smoker and try not to make too much of a nuisance of myself.
>
> Daniele
>
> ___
> python-uk mailing list
> python-uk@python.org
> http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk
>
___
python-uk mailing list
python-uk@python.org
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-uk