Projects

Rustbind

I’ve mentioned in other posts that I’ve been learning the Rust programming language, with the explicit intention of implementing some R functionality in Rust for performance gains. I discuss this rationale in more detail in THIS blog post. In that post, I discuss the rustbind project, where I explore strategies for calling Rust code in an R package. The goal of that project is to provide a straightforward set of patterns that I (and other developers) can leverage for integrating Rust into future R projects.

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KeepCount

KeepCount was the result of a side project that ended up being used as a work project whose lessons-learned got applied to another side project. Relatively short, strange, trip. The real beginning was my desire to pick up Django, a Python web framework that I would strongly recommend, as a new skill. In doing so, I wanted a project setup that I could easily test, replicate, and deploy into a production environment at need.

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Introduction to SQLite

Presented May 31st, 2019 @ Memphis NonProfit Data Professionals Meetup The git repository for this talk can be found HERE. The presentation can be viewed HERE. Resources cited in this talk include: SQLCourse: An interactive online training course for SQL, includes good background information about SQL in general. SQLite.org: Website for the SQLite project, houses downloads, documentation, and just about anything else you’d need regarding SQLite. sqlitetutorial.net: A collection of SQLite tutorials.

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Web Scraping in R, Python, and WebScraper.io

Presented February 28th, 2019 @ Memphis NonProfit Data Professionals Meetup The git repository for this talk can be found HERE. The presentation can be viewed HERE. Resources cited in this talk include: rvest GitHub Page: GitHub page for the rvest R package for web scraping DataCamp Tutorial: A pretty good tutorial from DataCamp on web scraping with R Analytics Vidhya Tutorial: Another pretty good tutorial from DataCamp on web scraping with R BeautifulSoup Documentation: Official documentation for the BeautifulSoup Python library for web scraping Towards Data Science Tutorial: A pretty good tutorial from Towards Data Science on web scraping with Python Traversy Media Tutorial (YouTube): A video tutorial, for those who learn better by watching that reading Webscraper.

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CWI Conference Presentation

Culture change is difficult; this is especially true when the change is being driven by technology and techniques that are not well understood or clearly communicated. In addition to the normal sources of resistance seen in any organizational change effort, data advocates are faced with fear of transparency, lack of organizational trust, and delayed payoff of data collection. This presentation will highlight the common signs and causes of resistance to adopting a data-driven approach to casework in a social service organization.

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MemTech Presentation: Introduction to R

On 09/04/2018, I gave a presentation to a gathering of non-profit and foundation IT and data professionals in Memphis. The git repository for this talk can be found HERE. The presentation can be viewed HERE. Resources cited in this talk include: Tidy Data: A paper by Hadley Wickham providing practical advice on formatting data for programmatic workflows. Data Camp: A really useful site for interactive R training. R for Data Science: An online book by Garrett Grolemund and Hadley Wickham that introduces the basics of data science using R.

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Report Development – Olivia Y STRO Reporting

During 2017, the state of Mississippi entered a period governed by a court order known as the Stipulated Third Remedial Order, or STRO, pursuant to the ongoing Olivia Y lawsuit. This order included language compelling the state of Mississippi to establish baselines, in partnership with an independent consulting agency, with regards to caseworker contacts with foster children, maltreatment in care occurrence, permanency outcomes for foster children, and statistics related to adoption of foster children.

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Focus on Data – MDCPS Actionable Reporting System

Repository In the spring of 2017, I prepared a demonstration of an interactive reporting system built on the R/Shiny platform for providing up-to-date and actionable information to MDCPS Social Work Supervisors and Social Workers. The system was built on a philosophy that effective management by data is predicated on providing the right information to the right people in as readily accessible format as possible. For a direct supervisor, this meant providing information about the individual performance of each supervised social worker, highlighting areas needing improvement before a policy requirement had failed to be met.

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SAMHSA Project LIFT Alum

Project LIFT (Leadership Initiatives for Tomorrow) is a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) initiative that enhances the leadership and technical competencies of emerging behavioral health leaders. The Project also includes a health information technology (HIT) component that facilitates the exchange of electronic health records (EHRs) for individuals with behavioral health conditions, while providing options to safeguard the confidentiality of their sensitive health data. These initiatives are designed to prepare the emerging workforce to be health reform ready and culturally competent to serve vulnerable populations and communities.

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Teen Advisory Board Practice Model

The purpose of this document is to describe the practice model utilized for the Mississippi Teen Advisory Board, titled “Path to Progress”. Many of the methods described by this document are derived from research, general principles, experience, and a bit of trial and error. The Teen Advisory Board (TAB) began under another name, the HOPE Forum (HOPE = Helping Others Prosper Equally). The HOPE Forum was essentially an event held annually as part of a larger event, and provided youth in the foster care system an opportunity to provide feedback about the care they were receiving.

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