You don't use this view.  You use PopoverView at `helpers/backbone/views/popover.coffee`.  There is documentation in that view already to that effect.  I will add a comment in the `sharing` branch on this as well.

The owner is the element that the popover is attached to.  The popover then sets the actual `.popover` dom element as its `el` once the popover is shown for the first time (it doesn't exist before that).  The only (good) way to get the `.popover` dom element is through the api bootstrap exposes which involves getting the data of the owner element.

The owner also has a number of event handlers attached to it, both to handle clicks (so the popover doesn't auto-hide), and bootstrap events (bootstrap triggers show, shown, hide, and hidden on the owner).