For the past two months, I participated in Apps for Democracy, a development competition for the Washington, DC government. I watched from the sidelines last year as developers built out amazing applications utilizing DCs data catalog, presenting boring data in useful ways. I was even more excited to learn that this years competition was to build an application with a purpose that could be used by residents.
Ruby on Rails was the language of choice.
So first, I released a library to make it easy for other developers to build their own applications.
Then, I worked with Zach Goodwin, a talented designer (we have a number of projects coming up together), on creating an attractive skin for the application.
Then of course, I built it! Utilizing the latest tools, including the Twilio Phone API, I released an easy to use application to the public. The application was designed and developed to be ridiculously easy to use, to run in kiosks or libraries, and to follow up with you after the work is done, which no other application offers.
And to make it easy for other developers and municipalities, the application is now open source. Two open source projects in one! Of course, if you’re looking for assistance or a developer to adapt this to your needs, I’m available.