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hi everyone God that is bright uh my
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name is Dan Melton I'm the CTO for code
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for
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America um and I'm really excited to be
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here today um I'm also a little bit
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humbled as well to be in front of such
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an amazing array of cers and Engineers
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every day at code for America we use
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many of the tools that a lot of you have
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had hands in to do all kinds of really
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cool interesting things in the
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government uh in the government space uh
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we open up all kinds of interesting
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databases with governments we connect uh
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students and teachers in the
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classroom um and I don't we also we just
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we teach um a lot of your tools when we
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go out to hackathons to college students
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uh and teach them how to be citizen
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coders today I want to talk a little bit
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about what we're doing at code for
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America and then I I want to talk a
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little bit about how the tools that all
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of you in your Cod or caves are actually
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affecting sort of the social and
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political landscape um of our world
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today and talk a little bit about sort
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of some interesting challenges and I
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think opportunities that that presents
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for the Ruby and the Ruby on Rails
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community so first um code for America
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what are we
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doing um our idea is pretty
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simple we're all about generating a big
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ass geek Army our goal is to recruit
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Geeks that's people like you and me
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coders Engineers designers javascripts
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technologists facebookers twitterers you
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you name it and Parry up with
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governments and the simple idea is a
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government sort of opens up their doors
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and their databases and asks you as a
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citizen coder as a geek what would you
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do different so I don't know how many of
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you have gone to the DMV line uh in fact
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um I need to go here soon my driver's
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license is falling apart um and I
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absolutely am dreading going to this DMV
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line because I know it's going to be uh
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forms and triplicate I know it's going
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to be unbelievably long weights and as a
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geek I just walk in there I'm just like
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and as a rails geek how can I dry this
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up you know it's like ah and you stand
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there in line and there's somebody that
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you go up to and you talk to them they
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look at the computer they look at you
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they look back at the computer and
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you're like what's going on oh my
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computer's broke it's not
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working so you're sitting there and
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you're waiting and you're waiting you're
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waiting finally they take a picture and
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you're like oh great give me id and they
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give you a piece of paper that doesn't
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work in the
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airport and then they put it in the mail
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to you and it takes like two to three
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weeks and you got to get a passport you
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got to do all these other things there's
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all these forms and all of these things
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that we have to do and interact with our
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government that frankly just suck so our
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idea is like let's put some Geeks in
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government so meet our Geeks last year
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uh what we did um we we started code for
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America uh Jennifer Paulin and Tim ory
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they got together and they said what if
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what if we take and we put some really
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interesting passionate coders Geeks we
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put them in government and give them a
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year to build really interesting open
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sour Source
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applications and they got together said
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cool let's try it so they put a call out
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with essentially vaporware they're like
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hey everybody we don't know what we're
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going to be doing yet we don't know how
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it's going to work but we'd love for you
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to apply for our fellowship program take
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a year of your life and go into that
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annoying DMV that you really don't like
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and change it up and then we said to
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cities we have no idea who we're going
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to give you we have no idea what it's
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going to look like but they're going to
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be passionate and engaged and we said
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hey who's interested and in two months
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we got about 300 60 applications for 20
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spots um and about 13 cities for four
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spots so clearly there was demand last
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year for code for America and what we're
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doing so code for America would get
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started and these 20 amazing individuals
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about 25 about 20% are rails coders and
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actually after this conference an
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additional two good metrics um uh they
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came out to San Francis San Francisco in
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January and got together and we started
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building app s we put them through a
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boot camp no push-ups there were there
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were code push-ups but no actual
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push-ups put them through a boot camp
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and then we sent them out to the cities
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that included Boston Philadelphia
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Seattle and DC and their whole goal was
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to go into governments into those
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lovely net environments those great
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Windows servers and say let's do things
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um and you can imagine all kinds of
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challenges and interesting things have
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happened in those governments when a
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bunch of rails coders show up and say oh
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we can do that in 10
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minutes
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so you might know one of our coders um
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and I'm really really privileged to have
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him uh join our class as a fellow this
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year uh this is SF Eric um Eric is a
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rails coer he's a ruby coder um and one
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of the reasons why he joined code for
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America is so he could sort of take a
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break he took a year off and basically
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is left the startup world and said you
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know I really want to just give back and
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do open source for a year and this is a
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huge uh win for code for America it's a
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huge win for Ruby and it's a huge win
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for Ruby on Rails because this time
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allows Eric to sort of spend yes working
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with governments but he spends about
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half his time working on a project you
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might have heard called rails admin
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which is a really cool new upand
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cominging product uh project uh modeled
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after the Jango sort of backend um he's
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also a big contributor to the Twitter
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gem Faraday and many other gems and uh
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we're really privileged to have Eric on
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board and one of the reasons why he's
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joining is that there is really no other
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program where Geeks Engineers like you
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and me can just go and do a public
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service of any type you know our options
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are sort of like the military um you
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could maybe go fly a predator drone um
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our options are Teach for America you
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can go and teach science or math to
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seventh graders which is awesome you can
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go volunteer in your soup kitchen uh you
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can you know contribute at church uh you
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could do Peace Corp and maybe go to
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Africa and teach people how to farm
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these these are all great great things
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to do but as engineers and coders like
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what do we do what do we do that
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leverages our skill set that we can give
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back to our communities so our idea at
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code for America is to give you an
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option uh for passionate coders and
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Engineers to give back to your
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communities we we do a modest stipend
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and we cover your health benefits and
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you get essentially a year to just play
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and have fun and build open source
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applications that benefit our world and
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benefit our governments
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and our idea here is that basically if
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we take really passionate Geeks we put
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them inside of governments our hope is
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that longterm we'll be able to sort
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break down these bureaucratic barriers
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so that when you do go stay in the DMV
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line there was a geek a rails cat or a
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ruby cutter who went before you and said
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uhuh this is not going to work anymore
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we're going to do it in a different way
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we're going to dry this process up and
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the idea is sort of break down some of
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these rigid bureaucratic barriers that
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are really preventing governments from
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being agile preventing governments from
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spending crap loads of money on things
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they just don't need to spend and help
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them move faster and be more
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efficient so that's code for America um
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we're currently recruiting for our next
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Fellowship cycle uh you can go here to
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code america.org and apply uh the
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applications are up until August of this
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year and the new cycle starts um in
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January we're going to have about 10
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cities this year uh so some great growth
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some of those cities look like they're
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matching up to be Austin as one of them
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we're really excited about some other
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cities on the east East and the West
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Coast we loved more rails coders and
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Ruby coders to join our class next year
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we think that Ruby and Ruby on Rails is
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really perfect for the government we're
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already seeing all kinds of federal and
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local agencies starting to adopt rails
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and I really would like to see a future
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where our government runs on Rails
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instead
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ofet so that's a little bit about code
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for America
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so um that's code for America and now I
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kind of want to go all meta on you and
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talk a little bit about our
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tools so this is me um i' join the Ruby
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Community um because I'm really
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passionate about building things and I
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think that our community is really as
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Corey says awesome in that we are
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big-time tool Builders and I love tools
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that help me build things and make
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things faster and that's what we're
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really good about when things that I'm
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really passionate about I'm also really
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passionate about sharing and what we do
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really well in this community is share
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our tools uh we share our gems we share
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our forums we do blog posts we um are on
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stack Overflow like crazy we're really
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great about doing Forum posts I love
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waking up on Monday mornings with coffee
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and seeing what Ryan Bates was hacking
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on over the weekend in
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railscast um I love our philosophy of
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sharing and our philosophy of tool
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building you know one thing though that
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we're not not really um big about in the
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Ruby community and so one thing that I
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actually like as well is we're not very
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political um we're definitely social we
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wear mustaches we drink beers we do 5Ks
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we have skinny jeans we play video games
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together we have all these things that
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are great parts of our culture but we
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tend to not be very political as a
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community and like many of you I suspect
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that you get your news um your
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authoritative news if you do want to
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stay up on current affairs from the same
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sources that I
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do um so when I emerge from my coder
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cave and turn on the TV um generally it
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goes to the Daily Show or the colar
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report so I feel that I've got sort of
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my my nightly news intake um I feel like
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I'm current uh so I'm not just a coder
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maybe I'm a little bit more
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cultured and here over the past two
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years The Daily Show especially has been
00:09:57.519
reporting on some really interesting
00:09:59.399
friends I don't know how many of you
00:10:00.920
have been noticing but it seems like
00:10:02.519
about every other episode is all about
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how New Media social media Facebook
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Twitter what have you is sort of being
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used in all kinds of different places
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around the
00:10:12.240
world one of these you might have heard
00:10:14.320
of um I don't know this kind of little
00:10:16.480
Revolt that happened not too long
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ago yeah um really sort of changing
00:10:23.800
landscape um this has happened in
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Tunisia uh hopefully actually I
00:10:28.480
shouldn't say that but might might
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happen in Iran and other places um
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what's interesting is The Daily Show is
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reporting on sort of how New Media tools
00:10:36.560
were instrumental and not the cause but
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the coordination of these
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communities and a lot of the tools that
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were used many of you in this room have
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actually been involved in and been
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engaged in
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building and I think we're at this
00:10:50.720
really interesting time where our tools
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that we've built our gems our
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infrastructure that we've put together
00:10:57.360
as a community um it's really really
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powerful and the world is starting to
00:11:01.600
realize that wow these tools tools are
00:11:03.800
actually really powerful too they're not
00:11:05.560
just for engineers uh they're also for
00:11:07.880
other people to use as
00:11:09.600
well so I'm a big fan of The Daily Show
00:11:12.279
I like some of the reporting I like how
00:11:14.040
they Gest on it I like how sort of they
00:11:16.320
describe what's going on in these
00:11:17.639
regions and sort of provide some social
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and colorful commentary on on how New
00:11:21.680
Media tools are being used um and
00:11:24.360
there's another group that I started
00:11:26.160
paying attention to as a result of The
00:11:27.680
Daily Show and I don't know it something
00:11:29.639
about like iced tea or green tea or like
00:11:32.959
tea party that's right um honestly I I
00:11:35.880
didn't pay much attention at all um uh
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to this sort of group that has has
00:11:41.360
emerged and The Daily Show is one of
00:11:43.240
those things where it sort of again
00:11:44.600
brought um to my attention so what was
00:11:47.320
really interesting about the Daily Show
00:11:48.760
and sort of the reporting on this
00:11:50.519
particular group of
00:11:51.880
people is that they use this service
00:11:54.160
that you might have heard of um called
00:11:57.040
Meetup and what you're looking at is is
00:12:00.120
um a group of really pissed off
00:12:03.240
people many of whom are
00:12:05.639
unemployed and just angry about how
00:12:08.320
powerless they feel about the world
00:12:10.720
sometimes they crumbling cities that
00:12:12.079
they live in what have you and and all
00:12:14.519
of these people who are really pissed
00:12:16.120
off have found each other through this
00:12:18.040
site meet up um two years ago they were
00:12:21.760
there were the groups here if you can
00:12:23.320
see it it might be a little small in it
00:12:25.160
um it was like zero groups today the tea
00:12:27.760
party has 630 groups groups across North
00:12:30.720
America um with approximately 90,000
00:12:33.760
members um in hundreds of
00:12:36.360
cities this is a group of people that
00:12:38.440
have found some of the tools that many
00:12:40.199
again you in this room have had hand in
00:12:42.440
developing to meet to hack their
00:12:45.199
communities and to get together and
00:12:47.000
change the world that they work in now
00:12:50.760
this story about the Tea Party and The
00:12:52.880
Daily Show really got me to thinking I
00:12:54.680
was like you know I know another group
00:12:57.000
of really pissed off people who are
00:12:59.399
really opinionated about how the world
00:13:01.320
works and who also use Meetup um to do
00:13:05.040
all kinds of things around hacking you
00:13:07.320
might have heard of this group
00:13:10.959
too so this is um Ruby and uh our use
00:13:16.959
actually of Meetup and across the world
00:13:19.480
we're in dozens of countries and if you
00:13:21.959
look at us um as an entire group using
00:13:24.800
Meetup um there's about 40 to 60,000 of
00:13:27.880
us um across the entire world dozens of
00:13:30.680
countries hundreds of cities and what I
00:13:33.000
find so interesting about our group is
00:13:36.720
that it's a huge geek Army that's out
00:13:39.399
there we we have this enormous
00:13:41.160
infrastructure that we've built up over
00:13:42.760
the past decade um using our own tools
00:13:45.680
to meet up and again um to get together
00:13:48.920
as pissed off people about a framework
00:13:51.560
um and hacking our communities to make
00:13:53.199
it better like many of you I suspect um
00:13:56.600
I came from chaotic PHP world um and I
00:13:59.720
just wanted to build things and I came
00:14:01.600
screaming and running into the Ruby and
00:14:03.199
Ruby on Rails Community because it was
00:14:04.519
just so damn difficult to build anything
00:14:07.360
um and I found a meetup group actually
00:14:10.120
um about ruby and was completely hooked
00:14:13.399
and since that time I've started
00:14:14.880
thinking especially watching sort of
00:14:16.720
like how the tea parties used meet up
00:14:18.440
I've been asking
00:14:19.720
myself what what's going on with the Tea
00:14:21.800
Party and how they're able to get
00:14:23.240
together versus like our infrastructure
00:14:25.160
and and dare I say some structural
00:14:27.199
similarities between our two groups
00:14:30.440
so what I'd like to do is just uh if you
00:14:32.480
could humor me for like two minutes is
00:14:34.480
I'd like to sort of compare Ruby and
00:14:36.600
Ruby on Rails to a gast the Tea Party um
00:14:40.199
and talk a little bit about our
00:14:41.880
movements and how they're similar uh but
00:14:43.959
how they have widely different
00:14:46.120
outcomes so I think every movement um
00:14:51.199
has got to have really great
00:14:53.759
leaders in the Tea Party they have
00:14:57.320
really amazing leaders who are
00:14:59.120
passionate engaging kooky um interesting
00:15:04.399
um and get parodies and and and all
00:15:06.519
kinds of things on Saturday Night Live
00:15:08.199
about them uh if you don't know this is
00:15:10.079
Tina Fay it's not actually Sarah Palin
00:15:12.120
but I thought this would be a better
00:15:17.600
picture
00:15:20.199
so I think our movement also has some
00:15:23.519
interesting structural similarities to
00:15:25.560
the Tea Party um they have Sarah Palin
00:15:28.319
and earli conference was addressed by
00:15:30.319
dhh and I don't know about you but every
00:15:32.600
time he gets on stage and starts
00:15:34.160
streaming an exploitive of of words out
00:15:36.800
of his mouth about Bad Code habits and
00:15:39.360
how we can make them better it gets me
00:15:40.720
really riled
00:15:41.920
up we have other um really interesting
00:15:44.959
figures that when they get on and
00:15:46.800
deliver
00:15:47.880
presentations
00:15:49.720
um again it gets me really really red up
00:15:53.920
um this is uh from uh tender Love's
00:15:56.279
amazing 5K rubycon prep last year thank
00:15:59.240
you Erin for um for for putting that on
00:16:01.720
YouTube
00:16:06.319
um but I think it's really interesting
00:16:08.560
how you know we've got some really
00:16:10.279
amazing leaders in our community as well
00:16:12.279
very similar to the tea party uh a
00:16:14.560
really I think interesting structural
00:16:17.279
similarities the difference is is that I
00:16:20.199
think ours are really brilliant
00:16:21.720
passionate and interesting and I think
00:16:23.279
theirs are well maybe
00:16:25.680
not so I'm not going to go into too many
00:16:28.399
more but we have have a couple other
00:16:29.720
interesting structural similarties
00:16:31.079
another one is is that the Tea Party
00:16:33.000
generates lots of Buzz some would argue
00:16:35.800
noise um and they also generate now lots
00:16:38.680
of legislation what do we do in the Ruby
00:16:41.120
and rubyan rails communities well we
00:16:44.000
generate lots of code we generate lots
00:16:46.440
of tools um they generate lots of books
00:16:50.000
we generate lots of gems we have all
00:16:52.720
kinds of great manifestos and values
00:16:55.399
buried in our
00:16:57.160
code and I think that
00:16:59.600
what's really interesting to me about
00:17:00.959
our tools um is that uh they embody the
00:17:04.280
values of our
00:17:05.559
community um our tools right now are are
00:17:09.160
are you can just you can see and you can
00:17:11.199
feel just all of the energy and the
00:17:12.679
amazingness has gone into these tools
00:17:15.039
our philosophies how we how we think and
00:17:17.079
how we view the world um has entered our
00:17:20.120
tools and I think we're at an
00:17:21.839
interesting point right now um in our
00:17:24.959
community in that we have this huge
00:17:27.120
decentralized infrastructure this huge
00:17:29.280
Community just like the tea party does
00:17:31.640
uh we have great passionate interesting
00:17:33.520
leaders again like the tea party does we
00:17:36.960
generate tons and tons of words and
00:17:39.160
codes and books and information just
00:17:41.760
like the tea party um but we've taken
00:17:44.240
two radically different routes they've
00:17:47.120
taken a political route and we've taken
00:17:50.039
a tool building
00:17:52.120
route what I find interesting about this
00:17:54.640
and going to go a little meta on you if
00:17:56.240
I haven't already um is that I think
00:17:59.320
we're at a real opportunity now um as we
00:18:01.640
move forward to sort of realize that as
00:18:03.200
our tools that we've put all of our sort
00:18:05.080
of Blood Sweat and Tears into they've
00:18:07.280
become so amazing that as they sort of
00:18:10.000
enter the world and other people see
00:18:11.640
that they're amazing other movements are
00:18:13.200
starting to use our tools and I've been
00:18:15.440
asking myself here over the past year
00:18:17.240
year and a half what happens when the
00:18:19.440
Tool Builders that's
00:18:22.120
us what happens when we start using our
00:18:24.720
tools to maybe advocate for social and
00:18:26.640
political change what happens when we
00:18:29.840
think about the world and we take our
00:18:32.240
values and we make it a ruby world so
00:18:35.600
we've been really great about
00:18:36.559
cultivating over the past decade um our
00:18:39.280
values in our community around sharing
00:18:40.919
around tool building and I've been
00:18:43.280
asking myself how can we take those
00:18:45.760
values and move them out of the Ruby
00:18:48.520
world I shouldn't say move them extend
00:18:50.400
them from the Ruby World out into larger
00:18:52.679
larger
00:18:54.039
ecosystem I think there's a real
00:18:55.799
opportunity for us to sort of start
00:18:57.760
thinking about what the effect of change
00:18:59.679
that we can have using our own tools in
00:19:01.360
our own
00:19:02.640
communities so at code for America I'm
00:19:05.440
really interested in sort of this
00:19:06.960
concept of how we can build the geek
00:19:08.559
Army using the infrastructure that many
00:19:10.840
of you already have in your actual
00:19:12.960
communities through Ruby and Ruby on
00:19:14.760
Rails there's 40 to 60,000 of us across
00:19:18.679
uh the world and we all speak a Common
00:19:20.559
Language have a common culture have
00:19:22.799
common values have common ways of
00:19:24.559
interacting we have our own rallies we
00:19:26.679
have our own places where we gather and
00:19:28.960
I think we have a real opportunity as a
00:19:30.600
group to start saying W we've got great
00:19:32.919
values in a great Community how can we
00:19:35.120
effectively change how can we sort of
00:19:37.120
look at our own cities and our own local
00:19:38.880
communities using our values to make a
00:19:42.280
difference so I'm calling for a geek
00:19:45.840
Army and the idea here is when you go
00:19:48.200
back to your cities think about in your
00:19:50.760
meetups and in your actual groups how we
00:19:52.760
can use the tools that we've built not
00:19:54.320
just to parse XML Json or make really
00:19:56.840
cool applications but how can we build
00:19:59.320
awesome applications that serve and
00:20:01.000
benefit our local communities the idea
00:20:03.320
of a geek Army isn't actually that new
00:20:06.400
the first one was formed in the 1770s by
00:20:08.679
our founding president and the idea of
00:20:10.840
this first geek Army was to sort of
00:20:12.440
Steward our built environment and it's
00:20:14.559
morphed in the 20th century uh to an the
00:20:17.840
US Corps of armed uh of Engineers and
00:20:20.559
their whole purpose is to figure out how
00:20:22.840
can we Steward the tension between our
00:20:24.760
natural environment and our built
00:20:26.120
environment and I think as we move into
00:20:28.080
the 21st Century I think there's a real
00:20:29.799
opportunity for a new geek Army to start
00:20:31.880
thinking about how do we Steward our
00:20:33.679
online environment how do we Steward our
00:20:35.720
social environment online how do we
00:20:37.799
Steward our digital environment and I
00:20:39.960
think Ruby and Ruby on Rails is one of
00:20:41.600
the best communities that's perfectly
00:20:43.440
poised to help steer that conversation
00:20:45.760
as we go into the next Century so when
00:20:48.760
you head back out to your cities I
00:20:50.720
really encourage you to think what can I
00:20:53.039
do in our local meetup groups what can
00:20:54.880
we do in the infrastructure that we
00:20:56.679
already have to sort of make a
00:20:58.320
difference in our local communities what
00:20:59.960
applications what thoughts what things
00:21:01.600
can we do to sort of make our
00:21:03.280
communities better what can we do to
00:21:05.039
help make our world a better Ruby World
00:21:08.120
thanks everybody