Category Archives: Bangalore

Bangalore, GeoBLR

GeoBLR – PIN Code Extravaganza!

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Last week at GeoBLR we discussed the issues around PIN codes. The most  important questions were around the processes the postal system and also what are the issues around the availability of reliable spatial data.

Couple of weeks back, Nisha and I started putting together several questions that we would like to get insights on. We used that as the starting point for the discussions. The meat of the problem really is that nobody knows what the processes are and how to get that information.

Prior to GeoBLR, we met some people who are interested in the same issue and clarified a lot of things – for instance, we are now sure that some times a single post office can deal with more than one PIN code.

To get a sense how people felt about the PIN codes issues, we asked around. Some people don’t bother to use PIN codes for any substantial service other than sending post cards.  As long as we are not able to tie PIN codes to geographic locations reliably, it’s not so useful.  Everybody agrees that it has immense potential just because it’s the only part of the address that everybody gets right (most of the time).

We also started to brainstorm how to come up with a plan so that a group like ours along with several other partners could work together to attempt to crowdsource the issue. Read more about the plan and next steps here!

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Bangalore, DataMeet-Up

Screening: The Internet’s Own Boy – Aaron Swartz Documentary and discussions

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All of us on DataMeet group are aware of Aaron Swartz. So I thought it would be a great idea to watch it together and share ideas. Hence we are screening the movie coming thursday. Please make it if possible. RSVP on the meetup page. If you can’t make it. The movie is on archive.org for everyone to download and watch. You can also visit the movie project page for more details.

http://www.meetup.com/DataMeet/events/201596972/

Bangalore

Bangalore DataMeet Up: July 31st

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On Thursday we had a DataMeet up! We would like to thank the Ashoka India offices in Bangalore for  hosting us and providing chai and snacks!

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You can see the notes on the DataMeet HackPad and Thej’s presentation here.  The topic was getting data from large scale telephone data collection methods.  Thej shared his experience using these techniques on a political campaign and at NextDrop.

It was a really great meeting and we had an interesting conversation on what tools to use to for what, what was effective and also methodology strategies.

Looking at telephone related data collection some of the interesting findings regarding the response rates to different outreach techniques.

Response rates from out reach techniques:
Responses to SMS – 6 to 8%
Responses to missed call – 12%
Responses to IVR – 20 to 25%
Some big questions regarding telephonic data collection. Are people comfortable giving out their numbers? Seems they are as long as you represent yourself in a straightforward manner and convey that people will get information from doing this.
What are the ethical ways to get contact information and demographic information? There are many ways to get this information but it might be worth doing your own baseline, data collection first to build trust and get cleaner data.
There are more great insights in the notes and the presentation feel free to look them over and ask questions in the comments.
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Bangalore, DataMeet-Up

DataMeetUp – Bangalore – July/2014

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Its been quite sometime that we had a physical meetup in Bangalore. We are planning to host one this month end, i.e on Thursday, July 31, from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM. Like all our previous monthly meetups, we have a rough plan

Main Talk: Large Scale Telephonic Polls for Real Time Data Collection
Thejesh GN will share his experiences about conducting large scale telephonic polls for real time data collections.
This could be employed for
– Exit poll conducting
– Real time sentiment gathering during the events like Budget
He will share his experiences, learnings and tips.

Group updates – DataMeet group updates and discussions related to future plans.

If you like to show your data project or talk about it. Let us know we will add it to the schedule.

Please do RSVP on our Meetup group. It helps us in planning the event.

http://www.meetup.com/DataMeet/events/195229042/

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Bangalore, OpenDataCamp

Photo Gallery Open Data Camp 2013 – Day 1

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Pictures from Day 1 of OpenDataCamp 2013. There are about 400 of them taken by Meera Sankar. I have purposely not filtered any pictures. Its the complete set. You can use them as you like as long as the usage follows Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. Please credit Meera Sankar.
Continue reading Photo Gallery Open Data Camp 2013 – Day 1 →

Bangalore, Events

Data Science meets Data Technology

Data Science meets Data Technology
The Big Picture
August 18th, 2012
10:00 AM – 12:30 PM
Conference Room 2
NIAS, Bangalore

While data is increasingly important in academia as well as in industry, the two worlds do not intersect each other all that often. DSDT is a monthly forum for sharing ideas about data across disciplines and industries. Each DSDT meeting will consist of two talks on a common theme, pairing a data scientist with a data technologist along with time for discussion. From the second session onward, we will have a tutorial and hacking session after the talks where we will learn how to work on understanding and analysing data sets relevant to that meeting’s theme. The schedule for the first meeting on the 18th at NIAS is given below.

10:00 AM – 10:30 AM: Tea
10:30 AM – 11:00 AM: Analysis: The Big Picture. Rajesh Kasturirangan, NIAS.
11:00 AM – 11:15 AM: Discussion of talk 1.
11:15 AM – 11:45 AM: Data and Visualization: The Big Picture. S. Anand, Gramener.
11:45 AM – Noon. Discussion of talk 2.
Noon – 12:30 PM: General Discussion.
For more information, visit http://analysis.knofu.org/
Bangalore, DataMeet-Up

PIN code mapping

Where: Skype ID: datameet

Agenda:

Summary:

  • We’ll go for bulk geo-coding as opposed to crowd-sourcing
  • We’ll bulk source addresses. Please add any other sources you can think of
  • The Postal College’s list of post offices
  • Branch lists from banks such as SBI, or organisations like BSNL
  • Telephone directories
  • We’ll run them through Yahoo’s Placefinder, which is liberal in API limits and in licensing
  • We’ll create Voronoi treemaps out of those (ideally as OpenStreetMap XML files)

Linked mentioned during the meet:

Bangalore, DataMeet-Up

Text & Geo processing

Where: Skype ID: datameet

Agenda:

  • Introductions [everyone, 10 seconds each]
  • Discussion on the most interesting visualisation you’ve seen recently
  • Discussion on any sources of data you’ve come across
  •  Recording of the talk is available

Linked mentioned during the meet:

Quote of the call: “this call started with no agenda, but ended with quite hands full. happy. nothing more to add” — Balaganesh