Reaching out - Django in the Social Sciences
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Lucie Daeye
@patjouk
slides - https://speakerdeck.com/patjouk/reaching-out-django-in-social-sciences
self taught djangonista, and run django girls workshop
3rd year of PhD

- Naive expectations - data management
- expected to find

  - transform info collected into useful and organised data
  - centralise data - easy access
  - write and cut transcripts, label

- nice surprise

  - auto import
  - ...

asked supervisor how to manage data

- "use spreadsheets"
- wondered if she was used to paper in folders in drawer
- asked fellow PhD - also used files in folders

expensive street survey

- 800 surveys to digitise
- €4000 of €30000 budget - lots of detail, restaurant addresses ...

There must be another way!

First steps - django admin

- list of restaurants, details of each restaurant
- needed to add maps, just points on map
- attended Django Girls
- KRLocalization
- developed software in airport
- so now have map with pins, and table with details below
- click on restaurant in map - see details in sidebar, along with photo
- empowering tool! - one day workshop, 10 hours coding, voila!

Why does it matter

- social scientists can really benefit from programming, but it's hard for us to learn
- if you don't do STEM then no one even offers the help

What can you do

- support Django Girls - many attendees at workshop were academics in social sciences and humanities
- initiatives at unis or community centres
- teaching material/tutorial - don't assumer learner is from STEM
- Hello Web App by Tracy Osborn - very good - https://hellowebapp.com/
- crawler and scripting can really help do the work
- carry on being a friendly and helpful community

Questions

- what are the libraries that help social sciences (like NumPy in science)
- none now - managing interviews
- non-mathematical starter projects?  hello web app, and making a meta-tutorial