The ShowMeBox is a proposal for a computer with a purpose in connection with DebConf 2016 in Capetown.
Idea
The idea with the ShowMeBox project is to make it possible for us to have a competition like the following in the months up to DebConf 2016:
Challenge to high school students! Get a ShowMeBox and use the included open source data analysis software to make a visualization that shows an interesting aspect of some publicly available data in your region.
The competition is imagined to have the following issues:
There will be one or more prizes, with the main one being travel and participation in DebConf to present the results.
For Capetown the competition is based on the local open data initiative; other regions may have similar projects.
- The competition otherwise mimics a similar competition held in New York city schools (bug Kris for information).
Technical Specification
ShowMeBox has these technical characteristics:
- Debian server system setup.
Internet connectivity through multiple wireless interfaces (wifi and 3/4G).
- LAN connectivity through local wireless and wired network.
- Web server.
- Web application for data analysis (such as Beaker described below).
- Possible to operate with portable power (battery).
Links
http://beakernotebook.com - the Beaker notebook tool, open source but not yet packaged for Debian; here is a Presentation on Beaker.
https://jupyter.org/ - Jupyter is another open source notebook tool.
Ben Wellington's TEDx talk - interesting talk on what can be done with data analysis, using New York as an example and his work on I Quant NY blog.