Ruby Prototyping for Impact
summary
A Ruby on Rails prototype turns messy open-data CSVs into a geocoded map and repair workflow for Toronto Community Housing, ingesting records with Socrata and exporting GeoJSON to plot 55,000 properties for 220,000 residents. The build uses Devise, ActiveAdmin/Flatly, Bootstrap, Paperclip and Cucumber, enforces privacy-by-design with hashed, separated APIs, and ships an anonymized public API that surfaces systemic delays and drives civic pressure — the prototype reaches about 25% user adoption and produces concrete policy and communication changes.
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chapters (12)
- 0:00Introduction and speaker intro
- 4:58Rapid prototyping vs cowboy coding
- 8:17Technologists changing systems
- 14:51Impact projects defined
- 22:07Building a map with Ruby
- 25:01Why Ruby for government projects
- 28:56Prototype features and gems
- 32:31Secret sauce: iterating on feedback
- 34:18Privacy by design in apps
- 38:58Digitizing and transparency impact
- 40:20Encouragement to start impact projects
- 41:59Q&A on bureaucratic hurdles
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