### Good Morning! *Archnet and Performant Software Solutions* - Jamie Folsom - Vice President for Development - Performant Software Solutions, LLC - Email: [jamie@performantsoftware.com](jamie@performantsoftware.com) - Web: [http://performantsoftware.com](http://performantsoftware.com) - Github: [http://github.com/jamiefolsom](http://github.com/jamiefolsom) - Twitter: [http://twitter.com/jamiefolsom](http://twitter.com/jamiefolsom) - These Slides: [http://slides.jamiefolsom.com/archnet/](http://slides.jamiefolsom.com/archnet/) Note: My name is Jamie Folsom. I am vice president for development with Performant Software Solutions. We are a software company with a focus on developing software for the digital humanities. We have skill in building tools for Digital Editions, Historical Data Projects, and repositories and collections very much like Archnet. We were introduced to Dr. Sharon Smith by Ece Turnator, and have provided a proposal regarding hosting services for the Archnet application. We are thrilled to be invited to discuss the Archnet project more generally. Our chief area of interest as a company is in developing custom web applications from scratch for exactly the kinds to meet the goals of projects like Archnet. Our chosen software toolset happens to be the same one which Archnet has used to build its existing web application; that is: ruby-on-rails, backbone and bootstrap, jQuery, postgres, and related technologies, but we are always experimenting with new tools some of which I will mention in passing today. So I would like to respond first to a short list of questions provided to me by Dr. Smith and her colleagues here at the Agha Khan Center. Then I will review our proposal to provide hosting and maintenance services to the project as well. And of course if there are other questions which arise at any point I would be glad to discuss those as well.

### Agenda - Focus Areas - Reliability - Accessibility - Visibility - Usability - Infrastructure - Migration - Hosting - Maintenance - Other ideas, thoughts and questions Note:

### Focus Areas - Reliability - Accessibility - Visibility - Usability Note: It's my experience that technology exists in a social context, and that the best software is only good if it works for the people who use it. That is especially true for a well-established site like Archnet. With sophisticated interfaces for both end users and administrators, developed and refined over years of use Archnet is a product both of the content it makes available, and of the way that content has been used over time. The list of topics for discussion is entirely grounded in considerations of audience, and usage. And while we have expertise in this area, we do our best work in consultation with subject area experts, who can advocate for their own user communities, and those they aim to serve. So my comments and my recommendations are rooted in that perspective.

### Focus Areas *Reliability* - Basics - Process - Improvements - Upkeep Note: - Basics - Backup - Security - Documentation - Process - Needs analysis - Move to github and associated tools for code and process management - Documentation - Improvements - Incremental upgrade rails and ruby versions - Upgrades to dependencies - Performance optimization - Upkeep - Monitoring (automated and assisted)

### Focus Areas *Accessibility* - Audit - Language - Platforms - Sequence Note: - Audit - MIT has good services - Make a list of priorities - Language - UI Strings - Content - Platforms - Most growth is on small touch devices, on cell networks - Should be undertaken as a proper development task, one view at a time. - Can be handled by media queries or using page variants - Sequence: - Digital Divide - Responsive, mobile, touch - Content consumption first - Content production second (user-generated content)

### Focus Areas *Visibility* - Seo, Social media - APIs - Ideas: - Platforms - Standards - Community ownership - User content Note: - SEO and Social Media - We don’t specialize in either of these areas, but we’re well-versed in the technology they depend on, and we routinely enlist specialists if and as necessary, where requirements are outside of our core focus areas. - That said, we think that Archnet would get more traction, and gain more visibility by cultivating more organic growth in their core audiences in other ways. - APIs - Documentation and examples to make standalone visualizations (like LayerCake) easier - Improving Search for Non-Latin queries - Ideas: - New Platforms - Very small screens (mobile) - Very large screens (museums) - Standards adoption - IIIF - Linked Open Data (provider and consumer) - Creative Commons Licensing - Crowdsourcing “Ownership” - Enlist community ownership of sites, categories - First by hand picked content curators - Then by the “grass tops” - Finally, by end users (eg “shared collections”) - Shared collections - Users can create accounts, collect and annotate sites, add their own content, create their own journeys, real and imagined, and share resulting collections with others [nb: moderation becomes a task]

### Focus Areas *User Experience* - Everyone - Public - Admins - Scholars - Technical note Note: - Everyone: "Quicker" - End user: “Immersiveness” - There is so much great content; it should be easier to get immersed in it, move through it. Foreground high-resolution images. - Make it feel faster, lighter weight, and more continuous, with fewer “dead ends”. - Admin: "Ease of Use" - Offer list views, with ease of bulk management. - Scholar: “Discovery” - Bring list views from the admin to the fore; make it quicker to filter. - Technical: Introduce React - One component at a time, from the “bottom up”. Enables central state management, easier development, looser coupling of front end and backend, among other things.

### Infrastructure - Migration - Hosting - Maintenance Note: - Migration - Move to Heroku - More expensive hosting, but lower burden of hourly work to maintain and iterate - Off hours coverage quote based on Heroku - Other options exist - Migration would be undertaken at an appropriate time - Hosting - We would provide and manage all hosting services, and pass those costs along at cost. - Maintenance - Monthly retainer for routine tasks - We would also provide a set number of hours, expandable upon request, for any and all maintenance. - Contracts for intensive “sprints”

### Discussion *Ideas, thoughts, questions* Note:

### Thank you! - Jamie Folsom - Vice President for Development - Performant Software Solutions, LLC - Email: [jamie@performantsoftware.com](jamie@performantsoftware.com) - Web: [http://performantsoftware.com](http://performantsoftware.com) - Github: [http://github.com/jamiefolsom](http://github.com/jamiefolsom) - Twitter: [http://twitter.com/jamiefolsom](http://twitter.com/jamiefolsom) - These Slides: [http://slides.jamiefolsom.com/archnet/](http://slides.jamiefolsom.com/archnet/)