A discussion of why sometimes it may be better to use Drupal or WordPress, leading to PHP, rather than Ruby

2. Sarah Allen
@ultrasaurus

3. Sarah Allen
@ultrasaurus

4. Sarah Allen
@ultrasaurus

5. Sarah Allen
@ultrasaurus

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

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

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

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

16. 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.
What is MyUSA?

17. MyUSA Sign In

18. MyUSA Account

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

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

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

24. 19 museums
9 research centers
23 libraries
15 archives

25. Smithsonian Digital Collections

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

39. Not Just Pictures of Things

40. Data

41. Digital Volunteers

42. transcription.si.edu

45. 5M plant specimens

46. 3.7 M
without
digital
records

47. This
is the
record
(structured data)

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

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

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

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

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

54. Why not Ruby?

55. User-centric
API first
Open source

57. github.com/criticaljuncture/fr2

58. Why not Ruby?

59. Writing code...
can be challenging

60. Writing code...
not the hard part

61. Most technical
problems
are already
solved.

63. Choice of Framework
=
Choice of Language

65. Dudes.That was just
marketing...

67. Choosing functionality
can be a “user concern”
(James Edward Gray)
Non-developers co-create our applications

69. Over 1 million active Drupal sites

70. Rails, not Ruby, leads us into a
rigid dev-test-deploy cycle
(Avdi Grimm)

71. Rails, not Ruby, leads us into a
rigid dev-test-deploy cycle
(Avdi Grimm)
UI Features can be added at runtime

72. Ruby optimizes for
developer happiness

73. What if...?

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

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

76. Framework leads to language
Add UI features at runtime?
Non-developers are co-creators