Introduce yourself!

[rofreg]

Hi there! If you'd like to get involved with this project, please comment below and tell us a bit about yourself. As we get started, hopefully this will help us to self-organize, and help us better understand what kind of team we're working with 🙂

Who are you?
I'm Ryan/@rofreg! I helped create Splitwise, and I build a lot of web-based side projects in my spare time. I'm a full-stack developer and designer, and most of my projects are built with Ruby on Rails + MySQL + Heroku.

How can you help?
I'm our team leader! At the start, I think I can be helpful for pretty much anything (user research, UI/UX design, front-or-back-end development, project management, etc), so I'd love to help wherever is most needed. As time goes on, I hope to see other people step up and claim responsibility for some of these areas, too.

I'm James, and I don't build many web-based side projects (or at least not in public), which is part of why I'm here! I am likewise a full-stack developer and designer, but most of my projects are in Angular + PHP + nearly every database known to man. I am also fairly experienced in Node.js, and I'm currently learning Python, though I'm honestly happy enough working in any given language.

I'm similarly flexible in the work I'm able to perform. I'm particularly interested in user experience, but I can do anything from system administration to development to design, and I'm willing to take on a more organizational role as well.

[rwstone]

I'm Rebecca. I've been doing websites for non-profits/small businesses in a low-key, freelance-y way. WordPress, Django, Jekyll, custom, whatever.

I'm most interested in organizing information effectively (a subset of UX, I guess?), but I'm willing to pitch in as needed. I don't think you want me doing obscure server configurations, but, other than that, I can usually get things working. It may take me a bit to get up to speed and learn conventions, so be gentle.

[paulopperman]

I'm Paul. I'm interested in open data, government transparency, and data-driven decision making in government (and elsewhere). I started and help run the Newport Data Project to build up the civic tech scene on the other side of the bridges. I tinker around in python mostly - pandas and scipy for data and modeling, Django and Flask for web.

I'm able to help out with programming gruntwork, data analysis, and high level architecture design - I'm not an expert in software engineering, but I'm pretty good at using stackoverflow, and I have a lot of experience designing non-software systems. I hope to learn a few (or many!) things from the rest of the team!

[amygriffis]

I'm Amy. I design and build web apps at Scampersand. I have a Linux, Python/Django and Javascript background, but I do more design and project management these days.

I can help out with user research, UX/UI design and coordinating project work. I really enjoy working with others and I'm looking forward to collaborating with this team!

[ashtrull]

Hi! I'm Ash. I am a full stack web developer just entering the field. I have a background in community organizing and social entrepreneurship work so I'm looking to use my tech skills to increase civic engagement and social change! I am trained in HTML, CSS and Javascript with a bit of experience with React.js and am in the process of teaching myself Python. I have a bit of back-end experience setting up APIs, working with PostgreSQL, Ruby on Rails, Node.js and Express.js. I also have a background in project management and love facilitating collaboration between people!

Let me know how I can be helpful!

[dj0nes]

Hi gang, I'm Dillon. I'm a full-stack software engineer with a background in frontend dev and Node, currently learning python and deep learning on Coursera. I can probably help wherever needed (EXCEPT design, you don't want me picking colors :)

I am also happy to help mentor those starting out with programming.

It's exciting to see so many people with various backgrounds and skills ready to collaborate on this project! Also, thank you @rofreg for volunteering to lead!

[agriffis]

I'm Aron. I work with @amygriffis at Scampersand where I lead the tech side of things. I usually work in Python and Clojure, but I'm comfortable in Ruby and JavaScript, too. I come from a kernel/virt/distro background, so I tend to ruminate on stuff like dev/prod parity and 12-factor apps.

At the outset, I could lend a hand with dev environment, CI and deployment. As things get rolling, I'll look for gaps and jump in where I can help.

[pfjel7]

I'm a rhetorician and teacher by profession. I've joined this group because I want to learn about computational methods for interpreting data sets, potentially for discovery, deliberation, and action. I am most comfortable in Python and R. For this project, I have been thinking some about how we might categorize or map the interests and that lobbyists reveal and/or the arguments they use in their public appearances and statements. Per Fjelstad