[Rubyforchange-talk] Coding for change

[Helder Ribeiro]

2007/8/18, Evan David Light <evan at tiggerpalace.com>:
> I'm not sure that I scraped the surface much further but this project
> appears to have a bit of everything.  Looking at their Summe of Code
> page, they even had some data warehousing work proposed.

Yeah, they are actually a lot bigger than what I thought at first. The
fact that they even got accepted as a mentoring organization is very
nice, and they got over 130 applications!

> ActiveWarehouse anyone?

Well, OpenRMS itself is a Java application, so I don't know if we can
go in that direction. But Baobab has lots ot Rails stuff that would be
interesting to play around with.

In fact, Baobab is like the poor cousin of the two, so they don't have
a big pretty website with clear contribution channels and stuff, but
they already have a big impact and opening up their development
process seems to be an important priority (they are going to speak at
(Rails|Ruby) Conf Europe, in September, so having the "come and
contribute!" parafernalia ready by then is going to make a big
difference).

Until then, though, they have the IRC channel (#baobab) and I talked
to one guy there who was really responsive and told me a lot about the
project. I emailed this other guy who told me they're open for
contributions and seems really interested. I'll forward it in a sec.

>
> Recommend further exploration.
>
> I wonder that if we rallied enough troops behind this whether we could
> take the medical community at large by storm.  That would be a hell of
> a thing.

That would be amazing! It would be spectacular seeing the Ruby world
mass-embrace this and really commit to making a big difference. And
since we're a pretty vocal community, it'd likely draw even more
people into it :-) Oh, the excitement! :-)

>
> Evan Light
> M: (703)615-0710
> http://evan.tiggerpalace.com
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On Aug 17, 2007, at 8:50 PM, "Helder Ribeiro" <helder at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > 2007/8/17, evan <evan at protest.net>:
> >> I met a couple of their developers two years ago at a conference on
> >> open source in africa, (http://www.tacticaltech.org/africasource2)
> >> and
> >> have been following them since. At the time i told them they should
> >> rewrite their windows / VB system with rails, which they did and got
> >> really in to it on their own.
> >>
> >> I managed to get of their developers come out to San Francisco for a
> >> couple conferences in Feb and we hung out.
> >>
> >> I don't know what their license is for the software. If you want to
> >> get involved send them an email, or you could pop over to
> >> irc.freenode.net, they use the #baobab channel to coordinate things.
> >
> > Wow, googled for OpenMRS after seeing it in the channel's topic and
> > got really impressed: they have a website geared towards developers
> > (and a clear "contribute" section with a big TODO list). It's the
> > first time I see that in a "social-outreach-software" (SOS?)
> > initiative. And the website's pretty :)
> >
> > The topic says "OpenMRS and Ruby on Rails", which made it all the more
> > interesting. OpenMRS seems to be a sort of Java webapp though, so I
> > don't know what exactly they mean by that.
> >
> > I don't know about you guys, but for me this sounds like the perfect
> > starting point:
> >
> > - it has good developer information (well, at least OpenMRS);
> > - it relates to ruby/rails;
> > - it has a clear contribution channel;
> > - it is actually being used in production in Africa (which appeases my
> > big fear of putting a lot of effort into something no one will find
> > out about or use and will actually have zero social impact);
> > - it's not too well polished (there's a lot we can do).
> > - we skip the overhead of building something from scratch, making
> > requirements lists, etc., etc.
> >
> > Of course this is just the first impression I got from a quick glance,
> > maybe I'm just hyped up, but what do you guys think? Worth at least
> > looking deeper into it?
> >
> > Cheers,
> >
> > Helder
> >
> >>
> >> -rabble
> >>
> >> On 8/17/07, Helder Ribeiro <helder at gmail.com> wrote:
> >>> 2007/8/17, evan <evan at protest.net>:
> >>>>> As an example, I've heard about this big complex health management
> >>>>> software that is geared towards developing countries and is in
> >>>>> active
> >>>>> use in Africa. That's the sort of thing I'd like to work on, or
> >>>>> something educational, etc., and something that is already in
> >>>>> active
> >>>>> use if I can help it (it's less than ideal coming up with an
> >>>>> idea and
> >>>>> maybe not having the means to actually get people to use it).
> >>>>
> >>>> I know of one project which is doing a rails app for use on touch
> >>>> screen computers in AIDS clinics in Africa. The project is lead
> >>>> from
> >>>> Malawi, but there are contributors from outside africa who
> >>>> contribute
> >>>> a lot.
> >>>>
> >>>> http://www.baobabhealth.org/
> >>>
> >>> Wow, this sounds awesome! I took a quick look at their website and
> >>> it
> >>> all seemed very interesting, but I could find no information
> >>> concerning the specifics of the software they make, the license they
> >>> use and their policy regarding outside contributors. Maybe I just
> >>> didn't look hard enough. Do you know anything about this? I've sent
> >>> them an email asking, anyway.
> >>>
> >>>>
> >>>> They're great folks,
> >>>> rabble
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> --
> >>> http://obvio171.wordpress.com
> >>>
> >>
> >
> >
> > --
> > http://obvio171.wordpress.com
> > _______________________________________________
> > Rubyforchange-talk mailing list
> > Rubyforchange-talk at rubyforge.org
> > http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubyforchange-talk
> _______________________________________________
> Rubyforchange-talk mailing list
> Rubyforchange-talk at rubyforge.org
> http://rubyforge.org/mailman/listinfo/rubyforchange-talk
>


-- 
http://obvio171.wordpress.com