GitHub Training - Inside Energy Retreat, 2015

Table of Contents

• to-do-before-retreat: Directions on how to set up GitHub account and Mac application for reporters before retreat training session.
• your-first-commit: Step-by-step walkthrough of process of committing new data to our main data repository. In this training, you'll practice with my training repo.
• checklist-for-data-stories: Most important instructions going forward - these are the steps you'll take every time you make a graph or use data in a substantial way in a story.
• template-README: A template you can use to make a README each time you add a new folder of data to our main repo.
• get-the-data-widget-code: Code for Wordpress to use when adding the "Get the data" widget to your graphs.
• markdown-cheatsheet-online.pdf: Quick list of styling commands for Markdown, the language in which you'll write your READMEs.
• troubleshooting: Any time anyone has a question, after I get you the answer, I'll post both the question and the answer here so that others can see, in case they have the same question.

What's going on here, exactly?

In this training, we'll get you familiar with the basics of using GitHub.

Um. Why?

GitHub is where we are hosting our central data hub, for all the stories we've done since IE began. For most stories, you'll be working in this repository, though larger projects will have their own repos. For now, though, I'll just be teaching you how to contribute to the repo for our standard data stories.

The point of all of this is to have a stardardized way for anyone to see, get and analyze for themselves the data we use in stories. You may have noticed this little doo-dad popping up on some of our graphics:

Github allows us to provide direct downloads of CSV and Excel files, as well as an explanation of the analysis behind every dataset we use. Hooray for transparency!

Okay, so...

So, until now, I've been going back into our archives and doing this process for old stories and datasets. Now, it's your turn. After this training, and with guidance from Jordan and I, you'll soon be able to do this process yourselves, for every future story you do that uses data.

It might be confusing at first.

It's okay if you feel like this sometimes...

Hang in there!

We'll all get there in the end.

Much like my cat, Edgar.

Questions?

These training materials were compiled during the summer of 2015 by Catherine Roberts, Inside Energy's Google Journalism Fellow. For help with any of the training materials in this repo, or quesions about any of the tutorials, please contact Catherine, at catharob@gmail.com.