 So if everyone gets settled, this is our next talk about city bikes, please welcome our speaker Okay. Thank you all for for coming. I'm I'm a dinosaur And many years ago Well first a question how much people how many people here know about the bike sharing systems Okay, that's huge So many years ago I had this problem that there was no Android app for the local bike sharing system in Barcelona So when whilst trying to to create it, I found out that there was no open date available for me to build this app So that's what I when I learned scraping which is basically some piece of code that connects to a website extracts information and You do something with with this data So when I I got all this information available for me I I Created open visiting which was an Android app for the local bike sharing system in Barcelona And when that was already working I found that that Barcelona was not the only city in the world with one of these bike sharing systems And that many other cities all around the world had exactly the same problem Which is that there was no date available for developers to create apps or projects So instead of creating more apps or more different cities, I created city bikes Which is a bike sharing network aggregator for as many cities as it can fit Nowadays this thing that started in Barcelona. It currently supports more than 480 cities in all the world and And and it's grown into this by by this Python library that Started the project the good thing about these Python libraries that people can contribute these spiders For for their own cities. So let's say a developer from from Italy wants to add support for some cities in in Italy He will just contribute to buy bikes, which is the core part of the of the of the project and I Don't have to do the work for him I mean, I don't have to code this that he will do it He add supports for his own city or maybe it breaks and and he will he will do it so that's That's the cool thing about about about the whole the whole project When you have an open API then people can start creating many things around it And this is an example of many different applications that that work with city bikes and And then we we get to this we get to this to this point where Nowadays we assume that data Open data or something. It's a reality, but this is the sad part of it It's that more than half of it of all the information contained in city bikes It comes from scraping and then only 42 are our license it so actual sources and so You probably know about open data and and the boost work it is Many people politicians City councils they talk about open data. They think they say open data Let's open things and and so on but somehow it doesn't relate with with what's happening here So the problem and something I discovered it's The company is running these projects. They are not They are not opening up to to to developers And That's the and that's the the main issue with with these guys. It's It's that for instance, these Are the the ratings for for a known as an official app for bike sharing and they are terrible and And when when you when you have the open API All these apps have great ratings compared to to the main project For instance, this is the this is the a website of one of these bike sharing systems And and this is the this is the map that they have on the website and it's not an actual map It's an image of a map and you can't even click on it They did that because they want they want to avoid people a spider in this website So what what are they? What are they actually thinking? I mean it doesn't work like that so So that's that's what some of these companies are are are doing in order to avoid Releasing this information. I think it's information. I mean it's public transport information It's it should already belong to us and we should be able to to Participate in in these projects On the way that we that we like and that's that's what city likes it's been it's been trying to do So I will show some examples of things This is a map of all the cities that the project currently supports So this is the whole view of bike sharing a city bikes is it and every splash or every So every green splash or every red splash. It's somebody either taking a bicycle or leaving it So let's look for instance Barcelona and and we can actually see people using the system and thinking Okay, this this is good and this is not something that these companies even were thinking about it Or for instance, let's say That we want to see the nearest stations Near the University here in Brussels, so we will look for it'll be Brussels Hope I Show probably yeah So it found the network. Sorry the internet. It's a bit slow. I should have known that But we can now consult bike sharing system right on your terminal and And that's good And that's something that this the company is providing the service the services Will then will then provide by themselves because they didn't even think that that it's something that people would want I mean who would like to check bike sharing system on their terminals or Some some guy even created a Telegram bot using the city bikes API So let's look and you ask the boat. Okay, leave me Brussels He asks, I don't know less than one kilometer and he sends you where the stations where the stations are And how many empty slots free slots everything so so the point the main point with with all of this and and And why it's important to me and why I'm developing this project mean it's not about bikes anymore It's about trying to to show the companies trying to show city councils all the benefits of releasing this information So we hear a lot with open data with her things like We are releasing information But there are not enough people doing anything with all this information and and the main problem It's not about the data. They are releasing. It's the quality of it And for me this project shows that when you release quality data that it's useful to people people are eager to Participate even in a public project that it's funded with public or private money And and that's for me. That's that's the that's the importance of of the whole project But these city councils should learn that people really want to improve things not even if you are not hard to do it and So in a sense this project the main purpose of this project in fact, it's disappearing because So right now we have this this is like a middle part. I'm Extracting this information and putting it out there in clear But the the the best world or the future world that we would like it's that city bikes It's not a necessary project. It will mean that all this information It's already available for for for everyone and at that point when the project can finally be shut down Because the information is already out there, then I will think I will have completed the task Another cool or important part So what happens when you add a city to the city bikes? it's that suddenly Let's say there is a new system operating a city when they get supported to the API suddenly all the Unofficial applications that there are on the market They work with the city. So even the city council in in in some Way they wouldn't need to create their own app their own shitty up usually They can already use all the different many applications that are using and and that's something really really important Which is in the end? It's the user choice. So as a user of one of these systems You should have the right to use whatever application you want to use you shouldn't be forced to use only the official one Some would respect your privacy some will then some will look Nicer or even you could develop your own because you don't like any of them and having that choice having that power It's what it's all about. Thank you. I think we have plenty of time for questions So is there a set of API's that you sort of support or have developed that you can say with a new scheme You can say ahead of time go to the city and say Right, you whoever implements this needs needs to implement this set of API's and also sort of leading on from that Have you even have you thought about sort of perhaps even implementing open design systems? for the hardware that the That the schemes need to operate as well I'm really sorry, can you can you repeat the question so there was some noise is it? Do you have like a preferred set of API's that new schemes should adopt? Ideally so that you don't have to do the scraping and Have you Are there people sort of? Implementing hardware for the actual bike sharing schemes themselves to to to adopt these API's so maybe an open design for the That they can actually publish the data. Yeah So it it can be answered in in two ways for instance. There is a there is a system called I Think it's called open open bike sharing or something like that and they are releasing Some source code on and some documentation on how to build these projects and The other one would be about Organization or using the same format That's being done in some by some companies in the US and in Canada And they are trying to do something a bit similar to to gtps. Well, I did Google transport So it's for bikes and They started working on this like two years ago and they found one problem and it's that The city bikes API or the syntax that that my API has it's already supported So they released an specification and nobody uses it but it was good for the project because now I Could add support in fact the person that added support It's here in the room for this format and suddenly all their systems are supported in city bikes And they are out there. So somehow without even trying The city bikes API syntax has managed to be the the standard or the de facto standard Which is I think it's a cool way of doing a standard just not trying to do it Just working on it and listening to to the feedback and just keeping adding and adding fields Hello, I'm a bicycle mechanic and it's a very exciting project. I've the first I've seen of it And I was wondering though how how does the project aim to get the bicycles fixed which is a ongoing problem with sharing bicycles They always keep breaking So what do you mean? So the question is with your with the city bike project How do the bicycles get fixed who fixes them and how does that happen? No, no That's so the thing with all these bike sharing systems. They are like public private run projects And they I mean I work come they completely ignore at this project exists So they they work on another level. So they usually have bands moving around they pick the bikes fix them and they have their own Way of looking at the world But but but city bikes the city bikes Hi Yeah, yeah, okay Yeah, I almost forgot my question. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, you you yeah, it's like how many Companies you scrape from a couple of licensed and others I would be interested and I've like several questions What does others mean? Yeah, do you think others when you do with the others other next question? License one. Do you pay for them? They pay you or how does it work? So what is the license about and the scraping? So Who does that? That's like like for each city is a guy who updates the code who gets the data of the website And what have what would you actually do with the example? You showed us that they only publish a picture so that you don't it's like makes it hard to get the data So and what actually for especially from the unlicense one obviously With the unlicense one do they complain do they say hey don't do that or are they just silent look away or not even aware of it? Okay, so the cool part about these questions. It's that somehow they are all connected connected with each other so it works So the first one was about the licensing one though or so this part of the slide that say others, right? Others mean private sources, so it's either a reverse engineered API or it's Some Jason fit that it's feeding their website and it isn't because it doesn't have a license It's not documented. It's not I so really you know What are the terms of this? it's just out there and The second question was about If these companies are paying me or I'm paying for some and no they they don't pay me and I don't pay them also, obviously and Sometimes you had to pay to access some of this information and what that happens You just hook into their private API because they they always have an official client So you think you take this official client? You look at what sources they are they are using which websites and you just pretend to be their own client and Access that information and that works The third was problems, so obviously when you are using private APIs you will have problems and but the Cool thing about this project is that it puts them in a bad position Somehow this project is doing the work that they are not doing So I don't want to be the bad guys that will appear on a local newspaper like big company shuts down Nice guy that was trying to do a favor to to the bike sharing users so They they just ignore it I don't know maybe some of them even ignored it completely like they don't even know how it works or how that happens. I remember one day talking with one guy that was working for one of these companies as a technician and He told me oh, wow, you are the guy that did this. How do you access this information? I told you I mean you should know right And I think I forgot about the fourth Question maybe maybe you guys can talk afterwards because we're really out of time and there's the next talk That's gonna start in two minutes. Okay, give him a big hand for the brilliant project