Smithsonian 2.0

For the first half of 2007 I worked as a developer on an IBM CCR project based out of IBM’s Chicago Innovation Center. We were tasked with creating a community-based web site for the newest Smithsonian Institution museum, The National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC). The museum was established on December 19, 2003, through federal legislation. The NMAAHC’s Wikipedia entry describes the project best:

The National Museum of African American History and Culture is the first major museum to open on the web before completing a physical structure and is slated to be finished by 2015. The main feature of the web based initiative is the memory book application which allows individuals to contribute to the website via pictures, a story, or audio application in order to spotlight unique experiences in African American culture in America.

It was my first full-blown Ruby on Rails project and one of IBM CEBUD’s first Web 2.0 projects.

A few of the project’s technical highlights include:

• Ability for users to attach media-rich memories (think comments on steriods) to any piece of content on the site. Memories may contain text, audio or images.
• Full tagging support on all site content and user memories
• Full automatic replication of NPR’s StoryCorp Griot audio content using the podcasts RSS interface.
• REST-based web services interface that allow the site’s front-end Flash widgets to pull data from the back-end RDMS.