Experiences from my first three months at Janaagraha

I cant believe, its been three months already! Initially the idea was to write one blog post per week. But then the work did not allow me :) Now that its been three months and the projects that I am working on have stabilized to great extent, I have time to write. Here is the first installment. Better late than never or like our Rajani sir says "late but latest".

Information about two of big projects which I am involved are *technically* out in the public. You already know something about them from the newspapers. Let me give you little more. I guess it will be of interest to developers than casual readers.

iJanaagraha
IJanaagraha, ij in short is a hybrid of social network, information and tools portal focusing on citizen, Govt and citizenship. As of now we have a simple version running on the domain. But we have been working on the reloaded version for about four months now. I am playing multiple roles in this project (like in any startup) and trying to give as much as possible. I am very exited with the functionalities we are trying to build into it. I feel its very unique kind of site. Even though we don't have exact dates for the launch. I am expecting it to be online by middle of this year. It will have OpenSocial developer platform for application development. I am hoping it will be heaven for developers who want to build city based apps. Wait for more announcements on official blog. We have very fun loving and dedicated team as of now and we are still expanding. Let me know if you are interested in full time job/volunteering.
Image credit: bangalore mirror

WISA (aka backbone behind TOIs BangalorePatrol)
There is no way you could miss this if you read TOI-Bangalore. It was on the front page on Apr 7.
WISA - Ward Infrastructure & Services Assessment is an objective way of grading our wards. We are collecting lot of data offline in an objective way. The data goes through various sanity tests and then it gets to go online. Public will be able to see aggregated results. I am trying to get some kind of data out for developers to experiment. Its still very early to give details. I will update you as and when I have something interesting. The WISA project measures a set of urban indicators divided into 7 main categories viz.
1. Mobility
2. Water
3. Electricity
4. Public Health
5. Public Safety
6. Public Amenities
7. Environment & Ecology
For each of this there are lot of indicators (data points) which are collected. Its data analysts heaven. We are working on lot of infographics and in general playing with data. Again dates are not sure but expect in a month or two or three :) so have patience.

Other than these, I write these small apps when I get time. I must say I never realized how three months passed. Part of the credit also goes to the friends I have made here and the rest goes to my traveling from ecity to city :)

One liner: Journey has been great until now.