Aaron Williams is the data visualization editor for the San Francisco Chronicle. He was previously a news applications developer for the Center for Investigative Reporting and a web producer for the Los Angeles Times.
work
weblog
Why develop in the newsroom
The Knight-Mozilla Fellowship is an excellent opportunity for developers, hackers and data-minded journalists to grow their skills in some excellent newsrooms around the world. Fellow data nerds (and friends) like Tasneem Raja, Ben Welsh and Chris Keller wrote about why they code in the newsroom last year. For the next crop of fellows, I give you my take (But apply first. Applications close August 16).
Accessible Data Visualization with Flexbox
In 2008, digital designer Wilson Miner wrote an article for A List Apart called Accessbile Data Visualization with Web Standards where he discussed how to to create simple, accessible data visualizations using HTML/CSS and not Flash. I found his approach powerful and simple as it leveraged tools many developers already know and doesn't introduce another tool, e.g. d3.js or Raphael.js, into what could be an already complicated application.
Code
cirlabs / django-project-template
Django Project Template is a collection of development tasks and optimizations aimed at anyone doing news application development on tight deadlines in Django.
cirlabs / generator-newsapp
Scaffold news applications like a boss. generator-newsapp is a Yeoman generator for news application development.
cirlabs / vm
A data journalism virtual machine image for VirtualBox. Built with Xubuntu Linux.
california-civic-data-coalition / django-calaccess-campaign-browser
A Django app to refine, review and republish campaign finance data drawn from the California Secretary of State’s CAL-ACCESS database
california-civic-data-coalition / django-calaccess-raw-data
A Django app to download, extract and load campaign finance and lobbying activity data from the California Secretary of State's CAL-ACCESS database