About me

Affiliation: Self-taught programmer. Graduated as architecture major from Cal Poly SLO. Took a couple of community college classes & a lot of Meetup/workshop/hackahon.

Location: San Francisco, CA, USA

Github: amychan331

Twitter: craftplustech

Project description & Summary

Building on the existing community metrics system at http://publiclab.org/stats, improve the current interface and performance, which has gotten messy from the various features added in over the years.

Problem

As platform that focus on democratizing science, Public Lab deals with a lot of data and statistics. This project help make those information more accessible by adding and improving data visualization features to organize, filter, and categorize them.

Timeline/milestones

12/4/2018 - Familiarize myself with the codebase, particularly those related to the issue of "Back-end sub-projects to collect this data". Discuss with mentor about project requirements and expectations, so planning stage tasks including mockup and plans for controller implementation can be done. Start working on how to provide downloadable JSON and/or CSV data from various stats pages.

12/11/2018 - Provide new statistics on the # of questions answered versus questions asked

12/18/2018 - Creating weekly caching of data to address the performance issues. Create interface of the caching so people know when reports were generated.

12/25/2018 - Consolidation of existing "range pages" with the main stats page

01/01/2019 - Create display for tags most used in a given period default display of contributors "for all time" on the stats page

01/08/2019 - Review codes done so far for any problem and clean up.

01/15/2019 - Discuss with mentor about project requirements and expectations for new stats page section, "Statistics per tag", so planning stage tasks including mockup and plans for controller implementation can be done. Starts new section and displays stats as above task indicated, but on a per-tag basis, via standard model functions with unit tests

01/22/2019 - For "Statistics per tag", create display of a list of subscribers for each tag and a closer mirroring between stats pages and tag pages

01/29/2019 - Review "Statistics per tag" for any problem and clean up

02/05/2019 - Discuss with mentor about project requirements and expectations for stats menu project. For stats menu, create small "bar graph" icons around site which lead to appropriate pages in the stats system and ensure that there is ability to click bar graphs to open that actual collection of items in a view

02/12/2019 - For stats menu, create a date range selector for stats ranges

02/19/2019 - Review stats menu for any problem and clean up

02/26/2019 - Last week clean up and bug fix. Consider if there are time to work on stretch goal.

Needs

Mentors to review my pull request. I would probably need sample data since the project is about expanding the community stats systems.

First-time contribution

My first-time contribution is to debug and improve the code behind the preview features of editors. Currently, it is awaiting for review at: https://github.com/publiclab/plots2/pull/3720

Experience

I started learning to program because I was creating an online design portfolio and wanted to do more than what the WordPress blog provided. As a very hands-on person, I started learning basic HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP. Later on, I learn about the free community college classes on programming, so I started taking them at night while working in a print shop during the day. I got to further improve my existing skills and also got interested in Python. Eventually, I got an internship with Stanford University as web development intern for managing their Drupal site.

In my spare time, I started helping out with Sponsorlane, a platform that help nonprofit connect with sponsors. It uses Keystone.js, a Node-based CMS I never worked with before. In that framework, I help migrate the admin dashboard with a stats front page to a more responsive Bootstrap-based theme. I worked a lot with JavaScript and data visualization tools like Chart.js and D3. Though the repo is private, I can provide images if requested.

Earlier this year, I also got to work with Astrokit, a Django-based open-source webtool project sponsored by NASA to help amateur astronomer. Though I have never worked with Django and the project only have 2 months left, I took the project on. One of my favorite experience was when I was building a library to convert data into either CSV or ALCDEF file format so users can download them. My work can be found here: https://github.com/typpo/astrokit/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=is%3Apr+author%3Aamychan331+

I am still new to Ruby on Rails, but as a self-taught programmer, I excel in learning language on the job, and I have a good foundation in JavaScript and working with existing architecture.

Teamwork

I like to participate in tech events like workshops and hackathons, where I am often in teams of 2-5.

I am also a volunteer for Techtonica, a non-profit that provides technology training and job placement for Bay Area women with low income. In there, I help write curriculum in their open-source repos with other fellow volunteers during their hack nights. My work can be found here: https://github.com/Techtonica/curriculum/pulls?utf8=%E2%9C%93&q=+is%3Apr+author%3Aamychan331+

Passion

I am definitely interested in both open science and environmental justice. Copy from what I had previously stated in my Github introduction, I had immigrated from Hong Kong when I was young. Having lived in 2 metropolitan and coming from a low-income family, I have always been interested in the environment - both in term of natural and artificial materials - and their combined affect on local, vulnerable communities. As a result, even in high school, I took architecture classes and AP Environmental Science. From there on, I studied architecture in college, interned in a community design firm, and then became a LEED Green Associate right after I graduate.

Audience

People who are interested in improve the environment in their community no matter what their financial or education background may be. One of the many reason I am interested in this project is because creating better visual interactions with stats and data makes science more accessible to community that have less access to education.