

Ask HN: Review my site - RepSheet.com - Look up your elected representatives - brandnewlow

Hi HN,<p>I humbly ask for feedback on a new service my friend and I are announcing today.  Anything from design, to features, to data, to performance...how do we make this SING?<p>http://www.repsheet.com<p>RepSheet lets you look up your local elected representatives, see the political zones you live in and the latest news for your reps.<p>It's a dead simple look up tool.  Punch in your address and RepSheet does the rest, giving you contact info for your reps, maps of your districts and a group news feed you can track by RSS or e-mail.<p>In the YCombinator/37signals spirit, version one has been kept simple.  We're just serving Chicago addresses now but plan on expanding quickly to other major U.S. cities once we have a round of feedback under our belt.<p>We used Django, specifically GeoDjango.  You can read more about technical implementation on our about page http://www.repsheet.com/about<p>This started as an effort to reverse engineer the NYTimes recently released lookup tool, Represent, for Chicago...then we realized we could and should bring this to the rest of the U.S.<p>Thank you.  I'll happily answer questions in the thread below.  We've got about 20 features we want to add, but we're holding off until we get feedback from the wild.
======
sachinag
This needs to be integrated with EveryBlock like yesterday. Have you talked
with Adrian recently?

Also, this would be helpful not just for electeds, but for candidates - if I
was in the IL-5 district, I would like to see information for all the people
running all in one place.

[EDIT] More feedback from a campaign manager of one of the IL-5 campaigns and
a clerk at the Seventh Circuit, who presumably know what they're talking
about:

A step up from Civic Footprint

Links to ISBE and FEC disclosure

It needs to do intersections

It would also be nice, given that neighborhoods are a little ill-defined, if
it gave you an easy way to click over to an adjacent neighborhood. If you type
Lakeview, you get Tom Tunney's ward here. If you live next to Lakeview High,
however, you're in what they define as Ravenswood, and you're Gene Schulter's
ward

[EDIT TWO]

RepSheet lets you... • look up your elected representatives... • see the
political zones you live in... • and track news about your reps. _political
zones?_

Needs county board badly

~~~
brandnewlow
Candidates - _jots it down_

Everyblock - What are you envisioning? One of the things that people like
about RepSheet in testing so far is how simple it is. It's like a single-
serving site. Everyblock doesn't really do anything with elected officials.
It's a different slice at local. They show you what's been published near you,
we're showing you the politics are your address...

During research, we found lots of political lookup tools. We noticed a few
things:

1\. They gave you A LOT of data. More data than the average joe could digest
or ever care about. I'm bored to tears by most local political stories I
read...and I've written and edited a few of them as a reporter. We want to
make it super easy to get into your local politics without overwhleming the
user.

2\. They had names that situate them as targeting "people who really really
care about local politics" RepSheet alludes to the fact that politicos are all
crooks. It's kind of silly, but it shows that we're not aiming for political
zealots, non-profits and academics as our audience. We want to make something
for the average joe who wants to see who's representing him and then suck on
an RSS feed or daily e-mail with updates of their activities.

3\. Their lookup tools were 5-6 step processes that require you to input your
address, state, zip...all separately.

So we want this to be dead simple. Fast and only give you the information you
really want. I think there's a sweet spot somewhere between what we're
offering now and what other lookup tools have.

~~~
sachinag
My thinking was like this: Microlocal + Geodjango = perfect for Everyblock. I
thought it's a great fit since they don't do it now, but this would be a great
complement.

(Personally, I really don't think people are going to go to 18 different
places for crime info (EveryBlock), politics (RepSheet), delivery (GrubHub),
and so on. Someone's going to integrate it all and create a billion dollar
business. Note that all three of those are here in Chicago. Hint, hint.)

Well, if it's going to be an RSS feed, let me choose 1) my language (I get a
lot of Spanish for my 'hood) and 2) my sources - I want the Reader, S-T, and
Trib only, for example. I got the Biloxi Sun-Herald in the list for my
address.

Yeah, I used to use vote-smart, which forced me to find my zip+4, which was
just completely a huge PITA. But the intersections and neighborhoods is a good
idea.

~~~
brandnewlow
I hear you on 18 different services. I would say though...that a generic
"everything" service is...generic.

And isn't google already kind of the generic everything service? if I want
public records they send me to everyblock. If I want food, they send me to
grubhub?

Yeah newsfeed will get a lot better. The language issue is an interesting one.

------
trickjarrett
Well I just played around with it, but here's my feedback as someone outside
of chicago:

1) You need a simple front page, "Live outside Chicago? Signup here to be
notified when we add more regions!"

2) The functionality and mapping looks real good, but is really something
users are looking for when looking up representatives? It seems to sort of
clog and confuse the UI being there on the right. I'd probably move them below
the fold or at the bottom of the page and instead put anchor links or further
info links on the right.

3) RSS - awesome. Email alerts - awesome. Perhaps add the email alert form on
the page itself instead of require an additional page view.

4) Need a more clear link to the front page, the logo at the top I'm more apt
to click on is the one for Windy Citizen rather than RepSheet.

Overall a nice clean app that I'll use once you expand to cover my geo area.

~~~
mandric
Thanks for this input.

Added the "Live outside Chicago?" link to the footer. But don't have time
right now to setup a form. ;( If we get 50 emails today I'll setup the form.

With the sub form, bit of js is a nice idea, also will do.

As far as the maps, it's a bit of eye candy, generally people like maps. It's
just cool to see and leads the eye down the page. Not sure how informational
it is right now, but might be in the future.

Not sure about the front page nav link issue. I think it's pretty simple but
only way to really know is to get feedback and observe people using it. I'm
sure it will undergo some changes soon.

------
okeumeni
Look very nice. I don’t live in Chicago so its hard for me to come up with an
address besides the one you have on the page as sample. I should be able to
type a zip code only, an official name or a city name to get information as
well. I think that information isolate enough an area for you to perform a
meaningful search.

~~~
brandnewlow
Zip code only works. So does town only. We've ammended the js prompt on the
start page to reflect this.

------
jollyjerry
You mentioned reverse engineering NYTime's tool 'Represent'; Have you heard of
their 'Congress API'? [http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-
the-con...](http://open.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/08/introducing-the-congress-
api/)

Maybe you can use this data also.

~~~
brandnewlow
_Jots that down_ If there's enough demand for voting data, we'll add it.

------
nadim
May I suggest geolocation, so that they don't even need to enter their
address. With a simple "Wrong Address?" link in case the geolocation fails.

------
eli
You could tie to <http://www.opencongress.org/> data for the House members

~~~
brandnewlow
Thanks. We'll give it a look.

~~~
eli
Also are you familiar with the Sunlight Foundation? The have some interesting
APIs and I hear they give "mini-grants" to sites like yours.

------
aresant
My two cents - that name is fantastic. Has PR appeal all over it. This sounds
like a brilliant strategy, good luck.

~~~
brandnewlow
A belated thanks. Naming things is hard. We spent weeks throwing around ideas
until that one hit like a thunderbolt.

