October Webinar / Technical Tour of HSDS

1

Hi all,

Following @sasha’s request for resources on HSDS at the end of the last committee meeting, I’ll be giving her a quick (~1 hr) “technical tour” of HSDS and we thought it’d be good to open it up to the community as a webinar.

We’ll be covering the following topics:

  • The schemas and how they’re implemented (JSON Schema)
  • The historical formats (Tabular Datapackage) and how that’s still supported (this will be very brief)
  • The API Specification (HSDA) and how it’s implemented (OpenAPI)
  • The specification Github repo and its governance
  • The Profiles Mechanism and how it works (maybe with an example if we have time to prepare one)

This would also briefly touch on the HSDS Schema Tools as part of the looking at the Github repo, and the Profiles mechanism.

We’re thinking of doing this in October, and would like to lock down some dates/times. Does anyone feel strongly about any of the following?

  • 2025-10-01 (Wednesday)
  • 2025-10-02 (Thursday)
  • 2025-10-07 (Tuesday)
  • 2025-10-09 (Thursday)
  • 2025-10-14 (Tuesday)
  • 2025-10-15 (Wednesday)
  • 2025-10-16 (Thursday)
  • 2025-10-17 (Friday)
  • 2025-10-21 (Tuesday)
  • 2025-10-22 (Wednesday)
  • 2025-10-23 (Thursday)
  • 2025-10-24 (Friday)
  • 2025-10-28 (Tuesday)
  • 2025-10-29 (Wednesday)
  • 2025-10-30 (Thursday)
  • 2025-10-31 (Friday, spooky-day)

For the timings, I am partially restricted due to childcare concerns so I would be trying to aim for the same timeslot as the Standing Technical Meetings which are 1600-1700 BST / 1100 EDT.

In the UK, we move from BST to GMT on 2025-10-26, and I understand that in the US the Eastern Timezones move from EDT to EST on 2025-11-02.

This means that for dates between 2025-10-26 and 2025-11-02, we’ll have a time difference of 6 hours rather than 5. If we decide on a date quickly, I can probably wrangle childcare to prioritise US colleagues and start the session at 1700 GMT / 1100 EDT :slight_smile:

2

I have no strong views on the date and time but would it be possible to record the session and share the recording here?

3

Yepp, I believe the intention is the record and share this :slight_smile:

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4

hey yall! im interested in joining. i can do any day EXCEPT 10/14 through 10/17 and 10/29-10/31. 11am EDT works for me.

5

Thanks so much for coordinating, @mrshll ! :slight_smile:

Of the dates provided, I’m available on the following:
2025-10-14 (Tuesday)
2025-10-15 (Wednesday)
2025-10-21 (Tuesday)
2025-10-22 (Wednesday)
2025-10-23 (Thursday)

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6

Excellent! Apologies for my radio silence I’ve been off sick the last few days on top of my annual leave.

I’ll propose a date in this thread soon :slight_smile:

7

Hi folks,

I’ve been off sick for a few weeks so just catching up on everything: obviously we’ve missed the window for a few of these dates!

This leaves the following:

If I suggested 2025-10-23 for people, at 1100 EDT / 1600 BST, would this work?

@switzersc @sasha

8

Sorry to hear you haven’t been well and hope you’re on the upswing,@mrshll!

The 23rd snuck up quick, perhaps we should try again. Could you please share a new block of dates/times for November?

Thank you!

9

Great idea.

In essence, Tuesday – Thursday are the best days. With the 5 hour time difference, the best times I think would be 1000 EST / 1500 GMT or 1100 EST / 1600 GMT, on any of these dates. I could also do earlier, at 0900 EST / 1400 GMT but I’d need a good chunk of notice to wrangle childcare for a later start around 1200 EST / 1700 GMT.

2025-11-04
2025-11-05
2025-11-06
2025-11-11
2025-11-12
2025-11-13
2025-11-18
2025-11-19
2025-11-20
2025-11-25
2025-11-26
2025-11-27

Reckons? I’ll start the bidding with 2025-11-18 (Thursday) at 1100 EST / 1600 GMT.

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10

I’ve created a calendar event now and sent it to a few people. If you would like to come, I think you can use this link:

Also apologies; 2025-11-18 is a Tuesday not a Thursday!

11

@mrshll my calendar is saying it could not find the requested event - I may be doing something stupid. Would you advise how to find the time and book for this please?

12

Hmm, it might be that I’ve used the wrong sharing link on Google. If people drop their emails into this thread, I’ll make sure they’re invited.

Event details:

HSDS Webinar
Tuesday, 18 November · 16:00 – 17:00
Time zone: Europe/London
Google Meet joining info
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/nix-kmuj-gmc
Or dial: ‪(GB) +44 20 3956 5087‬ PIN: ‪398 518 505‬#
More phone numbers: https://tel.meet/nix-kmuj-gmc?pin=8057120703112

13

@mrshll that was a great tour of HSDS online yesterday (18 Nov 2025). Would you post a link to the video here when it’s ready please? I know people that could not attend but want to watch it. Thanks

14

Cheers everyone, I really enjoyed it and I’m glad that you got something out of it :slight_smile:

I’ve prepped a Google Drive folder containing: the Slides, Recording, Transcript (auto-generated), and a zip archive of the examples I did.

You should be able to access the folder here. Let me know if there are any problems:

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15

@mrshll can you give read-only access to that to anyone with the link if we’re OK with that please?

16

Cheers Mike,

I had set it to “anyone with the link” but it didn’t seem to take! I’ve done it again now. Let me know if there are still access issues!

17

@mrshll I’m afraid I’m still getting “Access denied” when I click on the Drive link. (You can test such things from your browser’s incognito mode.) Sorry to be a pain. I’ve got people itching to see the video :slightly_smiling_face:

18

@MikeThacker give me a moment, I’m going to load this into our Youtube channel, which will make for a better experience for sharing

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19

Let me know if this video is accessible: https://youtu.be/_GaCXQonNEU

My next steps are to see how we can enumerate the sections within it and create shortcuts. Never done this before, should i just try Youtube’s “automatic chapters” thing, and edit from there?

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YES it is. Many thanks.