Sched and Other API Integration

The upcoming Legal Appathon relies upon a variety of existing commercial services to enable automated, scalable systems for collaboration. Eventbrite is used for registration and feeds each registered user directly into Sched.org which is used for event calendering and the program guide for all session topics, speakers, locations, times, and other filtered attributes (called "tags") for each activity.

The Sched.org service features a very full REST API enables high degrees of automation for key event workflows, decision points and user journeys. In particular, the API can be used to create or modify large numbers of sessions at one time and to allocate very large numbers of users to sessions. This satisfies multiple key design requirements for mass-scale collaboration on innovation, including the need for real-time statistically generated team formation (accomplished by forming the teams on MIT servers and using the REST API to allocate each participant to the appropriate sched.org session and hence meaningfully creating a team roster (by reference to the participants "signed up" for any given session) and providing a simple topic description, a clear time and direct access to a project collaboation page with the appropriate content and tools such as hangout, hackpad, etc where the team can work on its project. A link is needed to connect a Sched.org session to a project page unless/until Sched.org enables embed code in its session descriptions.

An earlier version of the MIT Online Hackathon system provided a form to propose a session or question or other contribution. The session description doubles as a "project" proposal for Hackathon events. The content of the session proposal form triggers two REST events, first the creation of a new Sched.org session (with title, description, speakers and other relevant data mapped appropriately) and second the creation of a new Wordpress (self-hoseted site) post page which houses the "actual" experience of the session. Sched.org sessions are very good as a listing service but lack core functional capabilities to enable online collaboration or even significant online engagemnt. The team/project page also embeds standard Hangout Onair, a hackpad and other collaborative tool and relevant information for the project. The Wordpress site also supported (through Jetpack) sufficient API functionality to enable to dynamic page generation, modification and high velocity application performance if needed.

A key function of the MIT scalable collaboration system is the use of phased and funneled sets of ratings. These were accomplished in various ways over time, and most effectively deployed using javascript and alternatively using Google scripting language in shared or published Google docs.

For the moment at least, the Wordpress site is being deployed due to security vulnerabilities and instead straight up html files using GitHub pages are used. Options for automatically generating or modifying GitHub Pages content are being investigated.

Given the growing interest to support and extend the evolving FirstToDisclose project, and this project uses Ruby on Rails, would it be helpful to look at Ruby "gems" designed to integrate with SSched.org APIs?