Altair: Altair Hackathon?

[mroswell]

New to Altair, but enthusiastic. I'd like to propose the idea of an Altair Hackathon. I don't know the community well enough to organize it. But I imagine a day or weekend spending a large portion of the time developing more examples, and blog posts, along with the usual code base development and issue queue resolution. The API documentation is very concise, and more examples would help grow the user base.

A Google search for:

how to put on a hackathon

yields some promising guides.

[ellisonbg]

Marjorie, HI! Are you thinking of an in person hackathon? Where are located?

On Wed, Aug 2, 2017 at 8:01 PM, Marjorie Roswell [e-mail]
wrote:

New to Altair, but enthusiastic. Also struggling a bit. I'd like to
propose the idea of an Altair Hackathon. I don't know the community well
enough to organize it. But I imagine a day or weekend spending a large
portion of the time developing more examples, and blog posts, along with
the usual code base development and issue queue resolution. The API
documentation is very concise, and more examples would help grow the user
base.

A Google search for:

how to put on a hackathon

yields some promising guides.

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[mroswell]

Yes, thinking of an in-person hackathon. I'm in Baltimore, but I could hop on a plane... later in the year. I can imagine giving people a chance to work on datasets and visualize them, and then see where people run into trouble, and make a big issue queue just from documenting people's barriers. And where people have success, create a repo of examples. The more examples the better. Maybe making a visual guide to terminology. Lots of possible things to do at an Altair hackathon :)

ADDENDUM (with some new ideas) - We could make some videos including some really geeky ones, like modifying one configuration parameter at a time so the viewer can see what it effects. Maybe an interactive slide deck, too, so that people can easily present Altair at local meetups.

[jheer]

This is a lovely idea, and I have resources to help support it -- including hosting an event at UW in Seattle. Something to revisit once Vega-Lite 2.0 & Altair 2.0 are released!

[ellisonbg]

An Altair/Vega event in Seattle at UW would be wonderful (direct flight
from SLO). I also have money I can contribute to make it happen. Marjorie,
thanks for the idea!

On Fri, Aug 4, 2017 at 10:43 PM, Jeffrey Heer [e-mail]
wrote:

This is a lovely idea, and I have resources to help support it --
including hosting an event at UW in Seattle. Something to revisit once
Vega-Lite 2.0 & Altair 2.0 are released!

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[jakevdp]

Great idea! @craigcitro might also be interested – He's at Google Seattle and has been making use of Altair within their internal stack.

[craigcitro]

I would absolutely be interested -- when are you thinking?

[mroswell]

Will leave that now to the host @ellisonbg to schedule :) (That said, I'm not free the first two weekends in September or the first two weekends in November. I'll come back here and update if nothing has developed before my schedule comes into further focus.)

UPDATE: Also, September 30 is Yom Kippur, so best not to hold it on that date.

[nipunbatra]

A Hackathon is a great idea.

I spent some time (mentioned on another issue) on replicating 50 R plots in Altair and made this repo.

I have also been spending some time on Stack Overflow, suggesting Altair usage where Pandas/MPL/Seaborn examples require a lot of code.

1. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/39702338/2d-scatter-chart-matplotlib/44941171#44941171
2. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/28033046/matplotlib-scatter-color-by-categorical-factors/44940984#44940984
3. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/23085852/scatter-plot-with-hues-in-matplotlib/44940969#44940969
4. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9310987/scatter-plot-with-scalar-data/44940926#44940926
5. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/43728708/python-how-to-create-scatterplots-of-fixed-ranges-across-several-intervals/44940156#44940156
6. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/33150510/how-to-create-groupby-subplots-in-pandas/44940024#44940024
7. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/44595288/matplotlib-adding-legend-based-on-existing-color-series/44939869#44939869
8. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22787209/how-to-have-clusters-of-stacked-bars-with-python-pandas/44939252#44939252
9. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/36630771/group-bar-chart-with-seaborn-matplotlib/44939093#44939093

I learnt a lot through these exercises. It also helped me understand the cases where Altair excels, and cases where we might need to wait till version 2.0.

[jakevdp]

September is out for me, but the rest of the fall is pretty open. Also, the likelihood of me being able to participate on a weekend goes way down: childcare is only available during the week.

[ellisonbg]

I am guessing that the October timeframe would work well. Let's see how the
new releases end up landing and go from there. Cheers, Brian.

On Thu, Aug 10, 2017 at 7:39 AM, Jake Vanderplas [e-mail]
wrote:

September is out for me, but the rest of the fall is pretty open. Also,
the likelihood of me being able to participate on any given weekend goes
way down: childcare is only available during the week.

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[kanitw]

FYI, Vega-Lite team will be out of town Oct 1-6 for VIS conference and will be in Thailand Oct 18 - Nov 6.
So somewhere between Oct 9-17 or after Nov 6 would work better for me.

[craigcitro]

Also adding @doug, in case he's thinking about a trip back stateside. :)

[mroswell]

Given that the hackathon scheduling seems to depend on it: I've been trying to figure out the timeline for the release of Vega-Lite 2.0. Is this "2.0.0 Critical Issues for Release" tag all that stands between a 'beta' and the 2.0 release?
https://github.com/vega/vega-lite/milestone/22
And then how far after that does Altair 2.0 come out?

I guess the bigger question is: How likely are we to actually meet, on say, October 13-14 (I included a Friday in this proposed schedule, to include Jake.) That's 9 weeks away.

[domoritz]

October 13-14 works for me.

[jakevdp]

October 13-14 works for me.

me as well

[ellisonbg]

I have kid commitments Oct 7-14. Any time in Oct after that would work.
Looking at the other schedules posted above, maybe Oct 16/17 would work?

On Sat, Aug 12, 2017 at 12:05 PM, Jake Vanderplas [e-mail]
wrote:

October 13-14 works for me.

me as well

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[mroswell]

I'm thinking one weekend day would get a few more attendees. Maybe October 15/16? (That's a Sunday/Monday pair that doesn't seem to trigger any of the unavailable days mentioned above.) I like the idea of inviting lots of folks to learn how to use Altair--and documenting what their challenges are... and developing training videos in response... as part of the hackathon. My guess is that those unlikely-to-make-core-commit folks would welcome a weekend day. @ellisonbg : Would that work?

[craigcitro]

Oct 5-10 is out for me, but I'm mostly free after that.

I won't be able to make a weekend day at all (all weekend days are kid commitments 😁).

[mroswell]

@ellisonbg it would be good to nail down dates for this. Since you're hosting, it's your call.

UPDATE: Oops, sorry, I reread the thread. @jheer is hosting. @jheer can you nail down the dates on this?

[doug]

Any chance it could be between Oct 1st and Oct 6th? If not would love to
grab dinner one night and chat about altair if people are around.

On Wed, Sep 13, 2017 at 10:09 PM, Marjorie Roswell <[email protected]

wrote:

@ellisonbg https://github.com/ellisonbg it would be good to nail down
dates for this. Since you're hosting, it's your call.

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[domoritz]

That’s during the infovis conference and the Vega-Lite folks will be out of town.

[mroswell]

I'm unable to commit at this point. Not being able to nail down a date is making general life scheduling difficult.

[domoritz]

@jakevdp @ellisonbg @kanitw Should we do October 16/17?

[ellisonbg]

I could make Oct 16/17, if the UW folks are around. Sorry about the
scheduling delays, I was supposed to move into a new house months ago, and
it has gotten pushed back to late Oct, making all travel difficult to
schedule. What other folks could make those days?

On Sun, Sep 17, 2017 at 9:46 PM, Dominik Moritz [e-mail]
wrote:

@jakevdp https://github.com/jakevdp @ellisonbg
https://github.com/ellisonbg @kanitw https://github.com/kanitw Should
we do October 16/17?

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[jakevdp]

Sorry, I've been on parental leave and not really keeping up with things like email and github.

Oct 16-17 should work for me.

[mroswell]

October 16-17 will work for me. (I just want to be sure it's happening before I buy tickets.)

[jakevdp]

Sounds like we have a quorum for Oct 16/17, I'll go ahead and reserve space at the eScience institute.

[mroswell]

Yay!

[ellisonbg]

Sounds great! I will purchase my plane tickets.

On Wed, Sep 27, 2017 at 9:08 AM, Marjorie Roswell [e-mail]
wrote:

Yay!

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[jakevdp]

OK, meeting room at UW eScience is reserved on the 16th/17th. Do you think we should publicize the event, or just do word-of-mouth to folks we think might be interested?

[mroswell]

My sense is that publicizing would be a good idea, even helping as a reminder for the people connected enough by word of mouth. If the result of promotion is that you get some non-advanced coders, you can set people on the tasks of making videos while following documentation, or just testing documentation and noting where there are issues.

Hmm... Is there a way to set up an environment so that people who don't already have docker skills or conda/pandas installation and command line skills can run it? If so, that would help to not waste skilled coders' time in helping others get up to speed (allowing the newbies to get started straightaway making videos, test documentation). Given the weekday schedule, probably not a huge number of folks will attend, but I think it would help to have some sort of web page, and an email (if you have a list)

Can you share the address or the UW eScience room? Parking directions?

[jakevdp]

I'll put together a quick info page on the github pages site. Probably not until tomorrow or Friday

[mroswell]

I found this contact page, including map links:
http://escience.washington.edu/about-us/visit-us/

The address:
3910 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA 98195

The Airport Code:
Seattle/Tacoma International (SEA)

[ghost]

Hi! To confirm, is this open to folks who haven't contributed to Altair or Vega-Lite before? I'm based in Seattle and would like to participate.

[mroswell]

@cmsetzer, I'm not the host, but as the originator of this hackathon idea, yes, by all means! And bring your friends!

@jakevdp, I guess I'm the official nudge :) Can you create the promised web page? Maybe also include a list of ideas for technical and not-too-technical roles. (I posted some ideas early in the thread)

I'm flying in for this... look forward to meeting everyone. I expect to test out documentation, while recording videos. What works, what doesn't work? How does changing various parameters effect a chart.

It might be good to have some sample datasets.

I'm not too familiar with binder that was mentioned on another thread. (I'm guessing it can't be used on a private GitHub repo?) If there are any accounts we should get before coming to the hackathon, might be good to mention that on the page.

So, a summary of suggestions for the web page:

• event name
• date
• time
• place
• transportation guidance (buses? subways? Are they even called subways in Seattle? Are there subways? Seriously, think of out-of-towners with no clue)
• parking
• how to find the room
• is food provided? If not, lunch suggestions
• list of possible tasks, or pointer to such in the issue queue
• sample datasets?
• any accounts we should get in advance such as binder?
• related links
• signup form, maybe including affiliation (optional, for instance, I have none!)?

My goals are to:

• help make altair easier to use (maybe even resolve some of my own questions);
• discover what 2.0 has to offer;
• commune with the awesome altair creators and users!;
• test documentation;
• help make more accessible documentation, including video (I don't have a great video skillset, if someone has suggestions for screencasting tools, let me know; Oh, years ago I taught myself final cut pro, but have forgotten every bit of it, and it would be overkill, anyway)

[ellisonbg]

I have created a wiki page for us to use in organizing the event. Please have a look and help out with content.

https://github.com/altair-viz/altair/wiki/Altair-Hackathon,-October-2017

[jakevdp]

Thanks @ellisonbg!

Sorry for being so slow on this. As of today, I'm no longer caring for a 5-month-old full-time, so I should be more responsive :smile:

[ellisonbg]

I will be around later this afternoon if you want to chat about the 1.2.1
release

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 8:28 AM, Jake Vanderplas [e-mail]
wrote:

Thanks @ellisonbg https://github.com/ellisonbg!

Sorry for being so slow on this. As of today, I'm no longer caring for a
5-month-old full-time, so I should be more responsive 😄

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[mroswell]

@ellisonbg This page: https://github.com/altair-viz/altair/wiki/Altair-Hackathon,-October-2017 looks pretty-well-fleshed out!

Does anyone want to turn that into a non-editable website? Or leave it at that? Anyone have a list to share it with? I'll see you next week (so far, 5 of us). Looking forward.

(And what should we know about the 1.2.1 release?)

[ellisonbg]

For something this small, I don't think it is worth putting up a separate
page. Not opposed if someone wants to though...

Jake and I are working on the 1.2.1 release this week, probably can have it
ready by then.

On Mon, Oct 9, 2017 at 1:54 PM, Marjorie Roswell [e-mail]
wrote:

@ellisonbg https://github.com/ellisonbg This page:
https://github.com/altair-viz/altair/wiki/Altair-Hackathon,-October-2017
looks pretty-well-fleshed out!

Does anyone want to turn that into a non-editable website? Or leave it at
that? Anyone have a list to share it with? I'll see you next week (so far,
5 of us). Looking forward.

(And what should we know about the 1.2.1 release?)

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[mroswell]

I'm not sure why this sentence appeared in the description of this event: "While no particular experience is needed to attend, this event is focused on current and potential developers, rather than users." Honestly, the reason I proposed the hackathon is that I perceived a gap between the power of the software and the usability of the very concise documentation. User participation strengthens development (my view, anyhow). I don't quite have the courage to delete the sentence (and we're less than 24 hours out, so it wouldn't impact much). I just think the event (and the software in general) would be stronger with a little more of a user-centric focus.

Anyhow, excited to meet and work with everyone, and learn more about 2.0. I read and write code, but I think I'll have the most capacity to be useful by trying to help fill that documentation gap (between super-concise API documentation and how to actually apply it).

[mroswell]

I added a page to the wiki:

• https://github.com/altair-viz/altair/wiki/Hackathon-Helper-Links

(I'm on an excruciatingly slow WiFi on a plane, so the page is starting out sparse. Started with some JSON Schema information and a JSON Expression Tester, in case they turn out to be handy.)

[kanitw]

@ellisonbg @jakevdp For lunch, should we plan to all go somewhere together?

[domoritz]

@mroswell Thanks! I added some more links for the new schema and some related projects.

[jakevdp]

the reason I proposed the hackathon is that I perceived a gap between the power of the software and the usability of the very concise documentation

@mroswell: part of the reason for that gap is that a year ago, with Vega-Lite 2.0 imminent (or so I thought) I decided to delay investing in documentation until the Altair 2.0 release. Once Altair 2.0 is released, I do plan to invest a significant amount of time in docs. Unfortunately, it's not quite there yet, so we'll do our best with what we have in the next two days!

[mroswell]

Yay, all! Was a delight to spend time with everyone. Would love to see a wrap-up posted here. I'll start:

• Created Google Group - https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/altair-viz
• Began writing PyCon Altair tutorial proposal
• Identified bug in doc examples that used vega-lite data files; Chris and Jake fixed the CORS error. Yay!
• Hilit the FutureWarning issue, which somebody (Jake? Brian?) fixed
• Installed Sphinx, and got to know it a bit.
• Proposed ReadTheDocs theme for documentation. Identified two bugs. Jake fixed one. I've got a PR for the other. So, docs are now responsive, searchable with a left-hand menu that expands to show section detail. Text is more readable as well.
• Learned which issues I've ID'd in my use of Altair that are on the 'wait-for-version-2' list, and which could be addressed with some more advanced formatting. Finally got my monthly dates on my multi-year data chart, too, with angled labels in the proper location and format. yay! If you angle a label, you may need: labelAlign="right" in the axis.
• Developed idea for a video or even a selectable text video-seeming interactive where one new bit is added to a chart over time, and the results of each addition are displayed. It's more of a longer-term project, I think.... Would love to have a vega-lite-style editor, but for Altair, to facilitate (so that's two ideas, really... the interactive (ideally allowing copy-paste from any timestamp in the chart development; and the idea of a live Altair editor; The latter may be something that could eventually be done in JupyterLab?)
• Enjoyed presentations on Altair, Vega-lite and Voyager
• Enjoyed pupusas, yuca, pastelitos, and ayote at the Pupuseria :)

[craigcitro]

I was already bummed I couldn't make it -- but I also missed out on pupusas?! 😭

🎉 on the 1.2.1 release!

[domoritz]

@craigcitro I'm happy to meet to get pupusas for lunch! When do you want to go?

[jakevdp]

I also am interested in pupusas.

[craigcitro]

Current plan is Nov 6 for pupusas.

[mroswell]

Here's a 22-second hackathon video. Enjoy :)
https://youtu.be/PY1dcJf5I-4

(P.S. Hoping other folks add wrap-up lists, too. I only included stuff I directly worked on in my wrap-up post, and I know lots of things weren't captured by that.)

[domoritz]

I worked on

• Data management in Jupyter Lab for Altair 2
• Helped with the Vega-Lite 2 integration into Jupyer Lab
• Vega-Embed in Typescript
• Gave a talk about Vega-Lite

[jakevdp]

I worked on:

• issue/PR triage & release for v1.2.1
• updating docs and website
• made some progress on wrapping version 2.0
• some refactoring of code generation tools in v1.2.1, which will pave the way for v2.0

[saulshanabrook]

• I met some wonderful people!
• Planed with students at UW on how to work together on Voyager integration in JupyterLab
• took a first stab at refactoring jupyter voyager extension
• discussed possible approaches to handling data in jupyterlab and jupyter notebooks.