Sarah Allen talks about her experience as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Smithsonian, then poses the question: why was Drupal a good fit for her project, and how did Ruby and Rails fall short?

2. 1. Sarah goes to Washington
2. Ruby sighting
3. What I did @Smithsonian
4. Why not more Ruby?

4. 1st round of five projects was launched in
August 2012 with 18 inaugural Fellows.

5. 2nd Round started in June 2013
with 43 fellows

7. Presidential Innovation Fellows
Round 2 Projects
Disaster Response
MyUSA
RFP-EZ
Cyber-Physical Systems
Open Data
MyData
Innovation Toolkit
21st Century Financial Systems
Development Innovation Ventures
VA Modernization

8. Presidential Innovation Fellows
Round 2 Projects
Disaster Response
MyUSA
RFP-EZ
Cyber-Physical Systems
Open Data
MyData
Innovation Toolkit
21st Century Financial Systems
Development Innovation Ventures
VA Modernization

9. http://MyUSA.gov
easier access to government services

10. What is MyUSA?
MyUSA is a joint initiative between the
White House and the General Services
Administration to reimagine how citizens
interact with government.
A platform for building tools and services
connecting citizens and businesses to
government agencies.

11. MyUSA Discovery

12. MyUSA Account

13. Stack
Phusion Passenger
Apache
MySQL
Ruby on Rails

14. Presidential Innovation Fellows
Round 2 Projects
Disaster Response
MyUSA
RFP-EZ
Cyber-Physical Systems
Open Data
MyData
Innovation Toolkit
21st Century Financial Systems
Development Innovation Ventures
VA Modernization

15. Presidential Innovation Fellows
Round 2 Projects
Disaster Response
MyUSA
RFP-EZ
Cyber-Physical Systems
Open Data
MyData
Innovation Toolkit
21st Century Financial Systems
Development Innovation Ventures
VA Modernization

16. http://bit.ly/exec-order-open-data

19. 19 museums
15 archives
23 libraries
9 research centers

21. My Office

22. the Castle
Freer Sackler
My Office
Hirshhorn
Air & Space
American History
Natural History
Archives of American Art

23. GSA
White House
My Office
Dept of Education
National Archives

24. Smithsonian Digital Collections

25. The Smithsonian has seriously
amazing treasures for...
researchers to
study and
discover,
curators to
organize and
document,
and members of
the public to
learn about.

26. with over...
137 Million
specimens, art works and other treasures...
136,000 cubic feet
of archival material

39. Not Just Pictures of Things

40. Data

41. Digital Volunteers

44. 5M plant specimens

45. 3.7 M
without
digital
records

46. This
is the
record
(structured data)

48. Botany Workflow
Digital
US Herbarium
Surrogate
Validation
EMU
3.7M Plants
Transcription
Center
SI Staff
Volunteer
Work
EMU
1000/wk
SI Staff
SI Staff
SI Staff

49. Improved Botany Workflow
Digital
US Herbarium
Surrogate
Validation
EMU
3.7M Plants
Transcription
Center
Software
Volunteer
Work
EMU
1000/wk
SI Staff
SI Staff
Software

50. transcription.si.edu

51. Writing code...
can be challenging

52. Writing code...
not the hard part

53. Most technical
problems
are already
solved.

55. Dudes. That was just
marketing...

56. You can’t actually build a
real blog in 5 minutes.

58. Over 1 million active Drupal sites

59. Ruby optimizes for
developer happiness

60. What if...?

61. the developer could focus on unique
aspects that require innovation

62. We don’t sustain frameworks...
...with a user experience.

63. Why?