Ruby in 79 AD (Open Sourcing my Role as Indiana Jones)
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Marcia, Sean
I'll demonstrate a practical guide on how you can get involved with neat projects by partnering with academics to build open source tools. We all have the ability to be Indiana Jones and I'll show you how through my experience. Come learn the unforeseen benefits of contributing to open source. My contributions to open source garnered the attention of an archaeological team doing research in Pompeii. Before I knew it I had been granted archaeologist credentials and was on my way to Italy as part of the research team collecting data in Pompeii.
 Great. Can you hear me? Awesome. Hi. I'm super excited to be here today. It's RubyConf. It's my birthday. I'm going to be talking today about Ruby in 79 AD and specifically how I'm open sourcing my role as Indiana Jones. Before I get going, I'm Sean Marcia. I work at George Mason University. Specifically, I work for the College of Humanities and Social Sciences. That's me on the Twitter. I'm going to give you a history lesson. I work at university and if I went back and I didn't teach you guys, if I don't teach you guys something, I'll get yelled at by all the academics I work with. I'm going to talk a little bit about higher education, how to get involved open source, open source and higher education, and then some other random details sprinkled in and don't worry, everything's going to come together at the end. Don't worry. I know we just had lunch. If you're really full and you want to just close your eyes and just imagine everything, I'm mostly going to be telling a story for this first part. Feel free to put your heads down. You can even pretend you're back at school and it's 8 AM on a Monday. Let's imagine it's the year 79 AD and this was a really amazing time to be alive. There was both a cultural and intellectual renaissance going on. I guess I should point out that I understand that AD is an anachronism and CE is the accepted term now. I'm going to be using AD and BC in this talk just because that's more recognizable. To really understand though why there was this cultural and intellectual renaissance going on, we actually have to have a little bit more history to explain the history. Back in 44 BC there was this guy named Julius Caesar. If you've ever taken 10th grade English, you probably read a Shakespeare poem about him. He was this badass Roman general who came and declared himself dictator. As dictators do, he started eroding all the power structures in Rome and consolidating all power with himself. Rome was a republic and the Senate thought, hey, this is a bad idea that this guy is taking all the power for himself. They invited Caesar to the Senate and all these senators took turns shanking him. Healthcare then isn't what it is today, so Caesar died. But he was an extremely popular fellow, both because when he died he left all his money to the, or a lot of his money to the Roman people, which in general is a lot of good will, but he also, he was also really popular for just being such a badass general. This led to an uprising and those senators were taken care of and there was a new sort of like there's a triumvirate of people in charge. There was Caesar's nephew who was Gaius Octavius who took Caesar's name, Augustus Caesar, and actually interestingly enough every Roman emperor after Augustus took the name Caesar and even into the Middle Ages when there was the Holy Roman Empire and the name Caesar even kind of entered like the language zeitgeist, like the German word Kaiser comes from Caesar and the Russian word Tsar comes from Caesar, which is kind of interesting. But so these three gentlemen were sharing power, you know, Mark Antony, Augustus and this other guy Lepidus, but Lepidus he disappeared like even faster than Jim Webb and he disappeared even faster than Webb and left the two guys, there was a civil war, Antony he committed suicide, him and Cleopatra left Augustus in charge. But the really smart thing that Augustus Caesar did at this point is he never declared himself emperor, he never declared himself dictator, only ever called himself the first citizen of Rome and the first citizen among equals. But there was no question he was the emperor in any sense, he was the emperor and actually this was his beginning of his reign marks the demarcation point from the Roman Republic to the Roman emperor. But so he did something that a lot of people thought would have been impossible, but because he had so much power he switched the entire economy of Rome from one of constant warfare and bringing back slaves to one of peace. And because of this he was, you know, we had this period that lasted about 200 years that's called Pax Romana, basically Roman peace. But if you have this massive infrastructure of people that aren't, you know, beating on your neighbors all the time, you can do a lot of really amazing things and this is why they had this renaissance going on. The legions during this time they built 55,000 miles of roads, like a paved roads, and that's not even including the 130,000 miles of unpaved roads they built. And again, having good safe roads, that's good for transportation, for trade, for the exchange of ideas, they built amazing works of architecture. This is the Alcantara Bridge in Spain and if you go to this bridge there's an inscription on it by the architect that says, I've built a bridge that will last till the end of time. It was built 2000 years ago and it's still used every day, which is amazing. And like we tend to think that all our philosophy and our laws and our literature is all based in ancient Greece and while that's true it was really during this Roman renaissance that all these ideas were really taken forward and really like developed to a new extent. And they were doing things that even by today's standard that we would just consider completely revolutionary. They opened the Roman Senate up to non-Romans and so they had their first senator who was non-Roman, then they had their first emperor who wasn't Roman. Think about that. Imagine if we had a president here in America who wasn't American. Imagine if we even had a president that people thought was from another country like Kenya or something. Imagine how crazy people would go. Like they were doing like intricate glasswork and like glass in the windows and buildings. And like an interesting side note, like a professor I work with, she was the one who through like residual residue tests found that during this time the Romans were drinking beer, not just wine. And that's something near my heart so that's kind of cool. Concrete. Yes, concrete. It was the Romans who developed concrete and when the Roman Empire fell the world forgot how to make concrete for over a thousand years until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. And they didn't learn how to make the same concrete the Romans did. Like Roman concrete, we only rediscovered that in 2013. And it's amazing. Like they have Roman and sea concrete, things that were built over 2,000 years ago that are still used today. And like our modern concrete, the Portland cement is called, it wouldn't last a tenth of that time in the ocean. And so just like knowing that there's this cultural renaissance going on, it would be amazing if there was some way we could like take a section of like the ancient Roman world and like, you know, bury it away and save it in time for us to like just rediscover now and like really understand what was happening. Like just for like humanity's knowledge, I guess that's not possible. So let's talk about Pompeii, you know, and still in this Pax were a amount of time. And let's imagine it's date. The date is 24th of August, 79 AD. Pompeii is a pretty great place to live. You know, it's even though it's fairly close to Rome, it's actually geographically fairly isolated. You can only really get to it by by sea. And so so the people are very laid back there. It's just a pretty happy place to live. But you know, being the 24th of August, things have been a little disturbing recently, like the ground's been shaking, the subious, the mountain nearby is has been smoking. But like no one's no one's worried about the subious erupting. Just because like yesterday on August 23rd was a volcano, which is the giant festival to the Roman god of fire and volcanoes. And we know that gods aren't capricious. And so, you know, we're not we're not worried. So it turns out gods are capricious. And over the course of about six hours, Pompeii is buried in about 20 to 25 meters of like ash and rock and all sorts of crazy things. And I have a kind of a nerdy sound file here that I want to play that highlights it or highlights what happened next. Can you hear that? And some things that should not have been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for one and a half thousand years, the location of Pompeii passed into the ball knowledge. Oops. I won't get the reference. Okay. So I'm so sorry if anyone saw this movie. It is not accurate, not at all. There was no volcano. There are there was no lava and fireballs from the sky. It was nothing like that. What happened was it was a plenium eruption, kind of like what happened at Mount St. Helens in 1980, where there's a lot of ash, a lot of like smoke and pyroclastic things. And I know you guys, you hear the word plenium, and maybe you're thinking something like this. And if you are, find me later tonight at the bar, and I would love to talk about this with you many times. But interestingly enough, like these two gentlemen, Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, they're the reasons it's called a plenium eruption. Like there's beers named after real people. And they're actually the reason we know so much about Pompeii. Pliny the Elder was like Rome's naval commander, station year Naples. And when the eruption happened, he set off with some ships to try and rescue people. Fortunately he didn't make it. So it's his nephew, Pliny the Younger, all his notes that are why we know so much today. But I guess if we were more accurate, it's probably because some academics and some academic, you know, read these notes, translated them, kind of put them in context and correlated them with other data to really make things make sense. And, you know, like I said, I work at a university, and I feel it's my duty to dispel like a myth, a common misconception about universities, about how universities' tuition is going crazy. And I'm sure we've all seen a chart like this about how the cost of the university tuition has gone up like monumentally over time. Like in the last 30 years, tuition is up about 500%, but the cost of living is up about 100%. And universities are just making so much money. And if that were true, I would encourage you all to talk to my manager who's right there and tell him to give me a raise, but it's not. The sad thing is, universities are state institutions, and so they're governed by state government. And state governments, as we all know, are not always the best with their money. And when it comes time to cut money, higher education is often an easy target because, unfortunately, the people who go to university don't vote. They're of the age, so there's no political repercussions to taking money away from universities. And so my university, for example, in the state of Virginia, back when that graph began, about 70% of its budget was from the state, and now in 2015, it's about 20% of the budget. So that's a pretty large difference. And costs at universities have gone up a lot in the last 30 years. Like there's computer labs, like they're ubiquitous at a school, and computers have software, and software licenses, and all these other costs that didn't exist 30 years ago. My university has two MRI machines, and those are cheap things. And it's led to this idea of university incorporated. And I'm not talking like I went to grad school at the University of Oregon, and at the University of Oregon, we had the Knight Library, the Knight Law School, the Knight Basketball Arena, like, only in BAFTA Philip Knight, one of the founders of Nike, who gives him a lot of money. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this idea that universities are starting to value projects and programs that can foster partnerships with corporations, wealthy individuals, government agencies, more than programs that don't produce those partnerships. And so if I can just, like, maybe get a show of hands from everyone, who doesn't have a traditional computer science degree? Like, who has a degree in the humanities and social sciences? Okay. Awesome. So, and if we look at, like, the funding into the humanities and humanities research, like, it's like the tiny one over there that has next to none. And, but the really scary thing is we're starting to see results like this, like, what just happened in Japan. How the Japanese Minister of Education announced that they're going to either close or scale back the humanities and social sciences at their major universities. And they're 60 major universities. And in fact, at 26 of them, they're closing it completely to better serve the needs of their population. And this is really sad to me and really terrible because, like, the humanities, like, this is our cultural soul, like, like, our art, our literature, like, this is what makes us, like, unique in the universe. And like, and it's kind of sad. And like, there's so many benefits to the humanities. Like, it teaches us how to think. And like, it's because there are no black and whites in the humanities. Like, you know, you have to research, you have to communicate. And like, all these really, really valuable skills it teaches. And they've also done research that people who study the humanities, whether in university or not, they lead fuller, fuller, better informed lives. And I don't know how they, what metrics they study those of by, but it's just really interesting. But like, there is some hope on the horizon. And that hope is coming from, like, the last place I would suspect ever, Silicon Valley. And I'm not sure if you know this gentleman. This is Stuart. And he, and I'm not just using him as an example, because he's Canadian as well. Stuart is the founder and CEO of Slack. And he has degrees, undergraduate degrees in philosophy and a master's degree in philosophy. And a story Stuart likes to tell is one of his employees, a 38-year-old lady with a fine art degree in theater, is responsible for most of Slackbot's functionality. And he credits Slackbot for a great, for most of the reason for Slack's success. Like, because people seem to just go crazy over how awesome Slackbot is. And he credits that to her and hence his company's success. But I don't want to talk anymore about the sort of depressing state of academia. Let's talk about something awesome. Ruby. I love Ruby. I love Matz. He really got things right when he said he built Ruby for developer happiness. And that little Matz, my Ruby group makes Matz stickers, and if you want one, come find me after. But if there's one thing that's not awesome about Ruby, and Chris Mark would probably tell you, it's finding a Ruby job sometimes. Because when you go to look for a Ruby job, we've all probably heard something along the lines of, you know, GitHub is your resume. And you have to contribute to open source if you want to get a Ruby job. And can I understand this from a hiring manager's point of view? Because if you look at someone's code, you can ask them, you can ask them intelligent questions, why they made certain design decisions, why they chose this gem, what kind of problems they encountered while they were building their code. And rather than, you know, when do you use map, when do you select, inject, or code me the Fibonacci sequence? And you know, we're all told, well, if I want to do open source, how should I do it? Like, what's the path for me? And you know, we're all probably told these same three things. I'll commit documentation to projects or replicate errors or, you know, submit pull requests. But like, I don't think that's necessarily the best path for everyone. Like, I know like personally, like when I was getting started, it was a little hard to share your code because, you know, like I have imposter syndrome. And it's, you know, it's not easy because, you know, someone can really tear your part. And like, it's still not easy even, you know, I've been doing this for a number of years. And, you know, to paraphrase this guy, like, you know, the path of the many outweighs the path of the few or the one, maybe into open source. But you know, I would instead say, you know, like, even though it outweighs it, it doesn't have to be the same path. And like for me, I ended up on a different path into an open source project. And like, it started one day, I was at the university out for lunch. And I saw a professor that I worked with and some chat with her. And turns out she's an archaeologist that goes to Pompeii every year. And, you know, she's telling me about this. And I'm like, I'm kind of getting really excited. Because I know you guys are looking at me right now and you think, oh, look at that guy, you know, he probably spends his off time modeling and hanging out with super models. But like, that's not true. I'm actually just a giant nerd. And I love board games and D&D and all that kind of fun stuff. And like, in hearing this, it's just really, you know, giving me like a nerd excitement. And but then at one point, like something perked up my developer ears. And she said, yeah, we're having a problem with our database. I'm like, oh, databases, that's something I can help with. And so I, you know, I got her to, you know, explain, explain what's going on. And it turns out that they, you know, they all go there, they use this thing called FileMaker Pro, they enter in their data, then they come back and they reconcile their data. And then they mail, like they mail, they don't email, they mail a thumb drive to one person who reconciles all the data and then mails, again, not emails, back a thumb drive of, you know, of a complete database for everyone. And, you know, as a developer, I'm hearing this and, you know, like you know what I'm thinking and feeling. And so I asked her, well, can I see what you're using? Like, what do you have? And, you know, they're using this FileMaker and they're, they had a really old version, you know, FileMaker Pro, if you're familiar, I'm sorry if you are. I see one head nodding. And if you are familiar, it was horrible and it would only run on Windows XP or older. And so, yeah. And I tried to get a screenshot of it, but even though I work at a university, I couldn't find a Windows XP computer. But so it looks something like this, but this was much nicer because I guess it's a newer version. And so I'm like, well, I'm going to research into your database issue and I'll get back to you in a couple of days and let's chat about this. So in those two days, I furiously worked. And sorry to Louisa if you saw her talk about design. I did use Twitter Bootstrap. But, you know, I put them together something they could use. And I guess since FileMaker would export to a CSV, I could import all their data and they were good to go. And I heard a story later. She was talking over Skype with one of the other professors in England who's on the project. And they were just like blown away. Like, she must have said it six times how amazed they were that she could update something and he could see the results immediately. And so it was pretty cool. But, you know, I was pretty satisfied with myself, pretty happy. You know, give myself pats on the back, like how great I was. And but then like three or four days later, I got a call from this lady named Betty Jo. And Betty Jo was like, hey, Sean, I saw what you did. That's awesome. Do you want to come to Pompey with us? Fine. But I'm doing it for you. Maybe I was a little more excited. And so what the really cool thing was is I got archaeologists credentials. And, you know, for reference, this is Sean the archaeologist in Pompey. I wanted to have Indiana Jones's head come across the screen and replace mine. But I couldn't figure out how to do that with Twitter Bootstrap. So you have to just imagine. But so if you're ever exploring 2,000-year-old ruins, it's really, really cool. But it's even cooler if you're doing it with archaeologist credentials. Like if you've been to Pompey, you probably recognize like this open square here. And it's usually full of tourists. But when you're an archaeologist, you get in there when there's no people. So it's kind of, well, it's really quiet. It's actually kind of creepy and eerie. But it's really cool. Get into buildings that they're just excavating. And you can see like the scaffolding that's happening and like the building they're excavating here. And you can see that that's my beautiful wife. And you can see things that they're digging out of the ground. Like you can see pots there. And I don't know if that's like a horse or a donkey or a giant dog or something. But just really cool stuff. And so, but the big takeaway that like from this is like this really isn't a project they could have done on their own. Like one, I don't think they knew that this was possible. And they also didn't have like the financial resources to do something like this. But like in doing a little research around and talking to other researchers, I found out that their problems aren't unique problems. Like the things they need, like being able to enter and update data, review that data, then lock it down, provide login functionality, upload information. Like if you can do these four things, you can do 95% of the projects that researchers need. And the amazing thing about our community is these are all problems we've solved in our community. Like we have like just plug four gems into your gem file and you can do these things. And it's amazing. And like the next question is well, why should I do it this way rather than you know commit to RSpec or mini test or some other like really worthwhile project? And like my answer would be is that it's more accessible or I feel it's more accessible. You, you like I remember my very first open source project I was going to commit to. I went and on GitHub they had a phenomenal like committing, committing directions. But like I just switched from Python to Ruby and I'm reading this and, and it's like, well we're testing with bacon and copy barra. And like bacon is a real testing framework. I encourage you to look it up and copy bar and I'm like bacon, what? Copy barra, rat. And like they're saying all these things that just don't really aren't jiving with me as a new developer. And, and but you know, like I think it's a lot easier if maybe a professor were to say to you, hey, I need a way to enter in data about red pandas, upload pictures of those red pandas and then I'll let other people log in, review that data, comment, you know, download the pictures and whatnot. Like that's a lot more, I think accessible. So since I do have a captive audience here, I do want to make a quick pitch for something called Ruby for good. It's an event I, I help run and created. It's, it's in the DC area. We get together for a long weekend and we build applications for like nonprofits, civically good organizations. Like this past year, we helped a place that helps street kids, a food bank, even the humane society. And you know, the cool thing about the humane society is, you know, we got to work with the things that programmers have most, you know, that being kittens. We had kittens at our event and you know, how many revisions do you get to go to that have kittens? And this is our amazing humane society team. They're all awesome and having fun. And so next year, it's going to be June 16th, the 19th and it's going to be at the Smithsonian Mason Research Institute. And that's super cool for two reasons. Like one, it's right next to Shenandoah National Park. And if you've never been to Shenandoah National Park, it's probably one of the prettiest places in the entire country. And the other reason is we have some awesome, awesome neighbors there. For example, since that's where the Smithsonian Zoo does the research, some of our neighbors include Red Pandas. They include Clouded Leopards. I don't know what these things are, but they're there too. You know, and there's Cheetahs and Wolves and Bison and you know, everything else. And it's going to be a lot of fun. But like most importantly, we're going to do a lot of really good projects, help a lot of really good organizations. And even if you can't come and you or your family or friends volunteer somewhere that could use help from us, please get in touch. And like I said, that Red Panda project, that's a real project that we're going to be working on next year. And so yeah, so just keep us in mind when you're planning your conferences. Like maybe you're thinking, oh, should I go to this one? Like actually, earlier yesterday, someone approached me and was like, hey, are you going to Ruby on Ales? There's beer there. And you know, I just asked, well, are there also Red Pandas? And they said no. And so, well, maybe we're going to have to wait a little less. And I encourage you to do the same. But sort of like in summation now, like I do encourage you all to stop by like your local university and get involved. And if that's intimidating to you, please get in touch with me. I would love to put you in touch with people you can help. You know, I can't promise you're going to get a trip to Italy every year like I do, but I can promise that you're going to get to learn really, really, really interesting things. And so if anyone has any questions now, I would love to answer them. Thank you so much. Right. So the question is like what happens with the projects? How are they maintained and going forward? And that's a fantastic question. So like the Pompey one, I guess if I was ever hit by a bus, they would be in a really bad situation because it's just me. You know, for Ruby for good, we, you know, we do our best to foster relationships between the teams and the organizations. Like that's why we send the actual team out to the Humane Society. They meet with them. So there's these personal connections. So, you know, if they do send an email like to the team and they all get notified, you know, they sort of feel obligated then to help or to fix because, you know, they know them as people. And more. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you.
 Great. Can you hear me? Awesome. Hi. I'm super excited to be here today. It's RubyConf.  It's my birthday. I'm going to be talking today about Ruby in 79 AD and specifically  how I'm open sourcing my role as Indiana Jones. Before I get going, I'm Sean Marcia.  I work at George Mason University. Specifically, I work for the College of Humanities and Social  Sciences. That's me on the Twitter. I'm going to give you a history lesson. I work at university  and if I went back and I didn't teach you guys, if I don't teach you guys something,  I'll get yelled at by all the academics I work with. I'm going to talk a little bit  about higher education, how to get involved open source, open source and higher education,  and then some other random details sprinkled in and don't worry, everything's going to  come together at the end. Don't worry. I know we just had lunch. If you're really full and  you want to just close your eyes and just imagine everything, I'm mostly going to be telling  a story for this first part. Feel free to put your heads down. You can even pretend  you're back at school and it's 8 AM on a Monday.  Let's imagine it's the year 79 AD and this was a really amazing time to be alive. There  was both a cultural and intellectual renaissance going on. I guess I should point out that  I understand that AD is an anachronism and CE is the accepted term now. I'm going to  be using AD and BC in this talk just because that's more recognizable. To really understand  though why there was this cultural and intellectual renaissance going on, we actually have to  have a little bit more history to explain the history. Back in 44 BC there was this guy  named Julius Caesar. If you've ever taken 10th grade English, you probably read a Shakespeare  poem about him. He was this badass Roman general who came and declared himself dictator. As  dictators do, he started eroding all the power structures in Rome and consolidating all power  with himself. Rome was a republic and the Senate thought, hey, this is a bad idea that  this guy is taking all the power for himself. They invited Caesar to the Senate and all these  senators took turns shanking him. Healthcare then isn't what it is today, so Caesar died.  But he was an extremely popular fellow, both because when he died he left all his money  to the, or a lot of his money to the Roman people, which in general is a lot of good  will, but he also, he was also really popular for just being such a badass general. This  led to an uprising and those senators were taken care of and there was a new sort of  like there's a triumvirate of people in charge. There was Caesar's nephew who was Gaius Octavius  who took Caesar's name, Augustus Caesar, and actually interestingly enough every Roman  emperor after Augustus took the name Caesar and even into the Middle Ages when there was  the Holy Roman Empire and the name Caesar even kind of entered like the language zeitgeist,  like the German word Kaiser comes from Caesar and the Russian word Tsar comes from Caesar,  which is kind of interesting. But so these three gentlemen were sharing power, you know,  Mark Antony, Augustus and this other guy Lepidus, but Lepidus he disappeared like even faster  than Jim Webb and he disappeared even faster than Webb and left the two guys, there was  a civil war, Antony he committed suicide, him and Cleopatra left Augustus in charge. But  the really smart thing that Augustus Caesar did at this point is he never declared himself  emperor, he never declared himself dictator, only ever called himself the first citizen  of Rome and the first citizen among equals. But there was no question he was the emperor  in any sense, he was the emperor and actually this was his beginning of his reign marks  the demarcation point from the Roman Republic to the Roman emperor. But so he did something  that a lot of people thought would have been impossible, but because he had so much power  he switched the entire economy of Rome from one of constant warfare and bringing back  slaves to one of peace. And because of this he was, you know, we had this period that  lasted about 200 years that's called Pax Romana, basically Roman peace. But if you have this  massive infrastructure of people that aren't, you know, beating on your neighbors all the  time, you can do a lot of really amazing things and this is why they had this renaissance  going on. The legions during this time they built 55,000 miles of roads, like a paved  roads, and that's not even including the 130,000 miles of unpaved roads they built.  And again, having good safe roads, that's good for transportation, for trade, for the  exchange of ideas, they built amazing works of architecture. This is the Alcantara Bridge  in Spain and if you go to this bridge there's an inscription on it by the architect that  says, I've built a bridge that will last till the end of time. It was built 2000 years  ago and it's still used every day, which is amazing. And like we tend to think that all  our philosophy and our laws and our literature is all based in ancient Greece and while that's  true it was really during this Roman renaissance that all these ideas were really taken forward  and really like developed to a new extent. And they were doing things that even by today's  standard that we would just consider completely revolutionary. They opened the Roman Senate  up to non-Romans and so they had their first senator who was non-Roman, then they had their  first emperor who wasn't Roman. Think about that. Imagine if we had a president here in  America who wasn't American. Imagine if we even had a president that people thought was  from another country like Kenya or something. Imagine how crazy people would go. Like they  were doing like intricate glasswork and like glass in the windows and buildings. And like  an interesting side note, like a professor I work with, she was the one who through like  residual residue tests found that during this time the Romans were drinking beer, not just  wine. And that's something near my heart so that's kind of cool. Concrete. Yes, concrete.  It was the Romans who developed concrete and when the Roman Empire fell the world forgot  how to make concrete for over a thousand years until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.  And they didn't learn how to make the same concrete the Romans did. Like Roman concrete,  we only rediscovered that in 2013. And it's amazing. Like they have Roman and sea concrete,  things that were built over 2,000 years ago that are still used today. And like our modern  concrete, the Portland cement is called, it wouldn't last a tenth of that time in  the ocean. And so just like knowing that there's this cultural renaissance going on, it would  be amazing if there was some way we could like take a section of like the ancient Roman  world and like, you know, bury it away and save it in time for us to like just rediscover  now and like really understand what was happening. Like just for like humanity's knowledge, I  guess that's not possible. So let's talk about Pompeii, you know, and still in this  Pax were a amount of time. And let's imagine it's date. The date is 24th of August, 79  AD. Pompeii is a pretty great place to live. You know, it's even though it's fairly close  to Rome, it's actually geographically fairly isolated. You can only really get to it by  by sea. And so so the people are very laid back there. It's just a pretty happy place  to live. But you know, being the 24th of August, things have been a little disturbing recently,  like the ground's been shaking, the subious, the mountain nearby is has been smoking. But  like no one's no one's worried about the subious erupting. Just because like yesterday  on August 23rd was a volcano, which is the giant festival to the Roman god of fire and  volcanoes. And we know that gods aren't capricious. And so, you know, we're not we're not worried.  So it turns out gods are capricious. And over the course of about six hours, Pompeii  is buried in about 20 to 25 meters of like ash and rock and all sorts of crazy things.  And I have a kind of a nerdy sound file here that I want to play that highlights it or  highlights what happened next. Can you hear that? And some things that should not have  been forgotten were lost. History became legend. Legend became myth. And for one and a half  thousand years, the location of Pompeii passed into the ball knowledge. Oops. I won't get  the reference. Okay. So I'm so sorry if anyone saw this movie. It is not accurate, not at  all. There was no volcano. There are there was no lava and fireballs from the sky. It  was nothing like that. What happened was it was a plenium eruption, kind of like what  happened at Mount St. Helens in 1980, where there's a lot of ash, a lot of like smoke  and pyroclastic things. And I know you guys, you hear the word plenium, and maybe you're  thinking something like this. And if you are, find me later tonight at the bar, and I would  love to talk about this with you many times. But interestingly enough, like these two gentlemen,  Pliny the Elder and Pliny the Younger, they're the reasons it's called a plenium eruption.  Like there's beers named after real people. And they're actually the reason we know so  much about Pompeii. Pliny the Elder was like Rome's naval commander, station year Naples.  And when the eruption happened, he set off with some ships to try and rescue people.  Fortunately he didn't make it. So it's his nephew, Pliny the Younger, all his notes that  are why we know so much today. But I guess if we were more accurate, it's probably because  some academics and some academic, you know, read these notes, translated them, kind of  put them in context and correlated them with other data to really make things make sense.  And, you know, like I said, I work at a university, and I feel it's my duty to dispel like a  myth, a common misconception about universities, about how universities' tuition is going  crazy. And I'm sure we've all seen a chart like this about how the cost of the university  tuition has gone up like monumentally over time. Like in the last 30 years, tuition is  up about 500%, but the cost of living is up about 100%. And universities are just making  so much money. And if that were true, I would encourage you all to talk to my manager who's  right there and tell him to give me a raise, but it's not. The sad thing is, universities  are state institutions, and so they're governed by state government. And state governments,  as we all know, are not always the best with their money. And when it comes time to cut  money, higher education is often an easy target because, unfortunately, the people who go  to university don't vote. They're of the age, so there's no political repercussions to  taking money away from universities. And so my university, for example, in the state of  Virginia, back when that graph began, about 70% of its budget was from the state, and  now in 2015, it's about 20% of the budget. So that's a pretty large difference. And costs  at universities have gone up a lot in the last 30 years. Like there's computer labs,  like they're ubiquitous at a school, and computers have software, and software licenses, and  all these other costs that didn't exist 30 years ago. My university has two MRI machines,  and those are cheap things. And it's led to this idea of university incorporated. And  I'm not talking like I went to grad school at the University of Oregon, and at the University  of Oregon, we had the Knight Library, the Knight Law School, the Knight Basketball Arena,  like, only in BAFTA Philip Knight, one of the founders of Nike, who gives him a lot  of money. And that's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about this idea that universities  are starting to value projects and programs that can foster partnerships with corporations,  wealthy individuals, government agencies, more than programs that don't produce those  partnerships. And so if I can just, like, maybe get a show of hands from everyone, who  doesn't have a traditional computer science degree? Like, who has a degree in the humanities  and social sciences? Okay. Awesome. So, and if we look at, like, the funding into the  humanities and humanities research, like, it's like the tiny one over there that has  next to none. And, but the really scary thing is we're starting to see results like this,  like, what just happened in Japan. How the Japanese Minister of Education announced that  they're going to either close or scale back the humanities and social sciences at their  major universities. And they're 60 major universities. And in fact, at 26 of them, they're closing  it completely to better serve the needs of their population. And this is really sad to  me and really terrible because, like, the humanities, like, this is our cultural soul,  like, like, our art, our literature, like, this is what makes us, like, unique in the  universe. And like, and it's kind of sad. And like, there's so many benefits to the humanities.  Like, it teaches us how to think. And like, it's because there are no black and whites  in the humanities. Like, you know, you have to research, you have to communicate. And  like, all these really, really valuable skills it teaches. And they've also done research  that people who study the humanities, whether in university or not, they lead fuller, fuller,  better informed lives. And I don't know how they, what metrics they study those of by,  but it's just really interesting. But like, there is some hope on the horizon. And that  hope is coming from, like, the last place I would suspect ever, Silicon Valley. And I'm  not sure if you know this gentleman. This is Stuart. And he, and I'm not just using  him as an example, because he's Canadian as well. Stuart is the founder and CEO of Slack.  And he has degrees, undergraduate degrees in philosophy and a master's degree in philosophy.  And a story Stuart likes to tell is one of his employees, a 38-year-old lady with a fine  art degree in theater, is responsible for most of Slackbot's functionality. And he credits  Slackbot for a great, for most of the reason for Slack's success. Like, because people seem  to just go crazy over how awesome Slackbot is. And he credits that to her and hence his  company's success. But I don't want to talk anymore about the sort of depressing state  of academia. Let's talk about something awesome. Ruby. I love Ruby. I love Matz. He really  got things right when he said he built Ruby for developer happiness. And that little Matz,  my Ruby group makes Matz stickers, and if you want one, come find me after. But if there's  one thing that's not awesome about Ruby, and Chris Mark would probably tell you, it's finding  a Ruby job sometimes. Because when you go to look for a Ruby job, we've all probably  heard something along the lines of, you know, GitHub is your resume. And you have to contribute  to open source if you want to get a Ruby job. And can I understand this from a hiring manager's  point of view? Because if you look at someone's code, you can ask them, you can ask them intelligent  questions, why they made certain design decisions, why they chose this gem, what kind of problems  they encountered while they were building their code. And rather than, you know, when  do you use map, when do you select, inject, or code me the Fibonacci sequence? And you  know, we're all told, well, if I want to do open source, how should I do it? Like, what's  the path for me? And you know, we're all probably told these same three things. I'll commit  documentation to projects or replicate errors or, you know, submit pull requests. But like,  I don't think that's necessarily the best path for everyone. Like, I know like personally,  like when I was getting started, it was a little hard to share your code because, you  know, like I have imposter syndrome. And it's, you know, it's not easy because, you know,  someone can really tear your part. And like, it's still not easy even, you know, I've been  doing this for a number of years. And, you know, to paraphrase this guy, like, you know,  the path of the many outweighs the path of the few or the one, maybe into open source.  But you know, I would instead say, you know, like, even though it outweighs it, it doesn't  have to be the same path. And like for me, I ended up on a different path into an open  source project. And like, it started one day, I was at the university out for lunch. And  I saw a professor that I worked with and some chat with her. And turns out she's an archaeologist  that goes to Pompeii every year. And, you know, she's telling me about this. And I'm like,  I'm kind of getting really excited. Because I know you guys are looking at me right now  and you think, oh, look at that guy, you know, he probably spends his off time modeling and  hanging out with super models. But like, that's not true. I'm actually just a giant nerd.  And I love board games and D&D and all that kind of fun stuff. And like, in hearing this,  it's just really, you know, giving me like a nerd excitement. And but then at one point,  like something perked up my developer ears. And she said, yeah, we're having a problem  with our database. I'm like, oh, databases, that's something I can help with. And so I,  you know, I got her to, you know, explain, explain what's going on. And it turns out  that they, you know, they all go there, they use this thing called FileMaker Pro, they enter  in their data, then they come back and they reconcile their data. And then they mail,  like they mail, they don't email, they mail a thumb drive to one person who reconciles  all the data and then mails, again, not emails, back a thumb drive of, you know, of a complete  database for everyone. And, you know, as a developer, I'm hearing this and, you know,  like you know what I'm thinking and feeling. And so I asked her, well, can I see what you're  using? Like, what do you have? And, you know, they're using this FileMaker and they're,  they had a really old version, you know, FileMaker Pro, if you're familiar, I'm sorry if you  are. I see one head nodding. And if you are familiar, it was horrible and it would only  run on Windows XP or older. And so, yeah. And I tried to get a screenshot of it, but  even though I work at a university, I couldn't find a Windows XP computer. But so it looks  something like this, but this was much nicer because I guess it's a newer version. And  so I'm like, well, I'm going to research into your database issue and I'll get back to you  in a couple of days and let's chat about this. So in those two days, I furiously worked.  And sorry to Louisa if you saw her talk about design. I did use Twitter Bootstrap. But,  you know, I put them together something they could use. And I guess since FileMaker would  export to a CSV, I could import all their data and they were good to go. And I heard  a story later. She was talking over Skype with one of the other professors in England  who's on the project. And they were just like blown away. Like, she must have said it six  times how amazed they were that she could update something and he could see the results  immediately. And so it was pretty cool. But, you know, I was pretty satisfied with myself,  pretty happy. You know, give myself pats on the back, like how great I was. And but then  like three or four days later, I got a call from this lady named Betty Jo. And Betty Jo  was like, hey, Sean, I saw what you did. That's awesome. Do you want to come to Pompey with  us? Fine. But I'm doing it for you. Maybe I was a little more excited. And so what the  really cool thing was is I got archaeologists credentials. And, you know, for reference,  this is Sean the archaeologist in Pompey. I wanted to have Indiana Jones's head come  across the screen and replace mine. But I couldn't figure out how to do that with Twitter  Bootstrap. So you have to just imagine. But so if you're ever exploring 2,000-year-old  ruins, it's really, really cool. But it's even cooler if you're doing it with archaeologist  credentials. Like if you've been to Pompey, you probably recognize like this open square  here. And it's usually full of tourists. But when you're an archaeologist, you get in there  when there's no people. So it's kind of, well, it's really quiet. It's actually kind of creepy  and eerie. But it's really cool. Get into buildings that they're just excavating. And  you can see like the scaffolding that's happening and like the building they're excavating here.  And you can see that that's my beautiful wife. And you can see things that they're digging  out of the ground. Like you can see pots there. And I don't know if that's like a horse or  a donkey or a giant dog or something. But just really cool stuff. And so, but the big  takeaway that like from this is like this really isn't a project they could have done  on their own. Like one, I don't think they knew that this was possible. And they also  didn't have like the financial resources to do something like this. But like in doing  a little research around and talking to other researchers, I found out that their problems  aren't unique problems. Like the things they need, like being able to enter and update data,  review that data, then lock it down, provide login functionality, upload information. Like  if you can do these four things, you can do 95% of the projects that researchers need.  And the amazing thing about our community is these are all problems we've solved in  our community. Like we have like just plug four gems into your gem file and you can do  these things. And it's amazing. And like the next question is well, why should I do it  this way rather than you know commit to RSpec or mini test or some other like really worthwhile  project? And like my answer would be is that it's more accessible or I feel it's more accessible.  You, you like I remember my very first open source project I was going to commit to. I  went and on GitHub they had a phenomenal like committing, committing directions. But like  I just switched from Python to Ruby and I'm reading this and, and it's like, well we're  testing with bacon and copy barra. And like bacon is a real testing framework. I encourage  you to look it up and copy bar and I'm like bacon, what? Copy barra, rat. And like they're  saying all these things that just don't really aren't jiving with me as a new developer.  And, and but you know, like I think it's a lot easier if maybe a professor were to say  to you, hey, I need a way to enter in data about red pandas, upload pictures of those  red pandas and then I'll let other people log in, review that data, comment, you know,  download the pictures and whatnot. Like that's a lot more, I think accessible. So since I  do have a captive audience here, I do want to make a quick pitch for something called  Ruby for good. It's an event I, I help run and created. It's, it's in the DC area. We  get together for a long weekend and we build applications for like nonprofits, civically  good organizations. Like this past year, we helped a place that helps street kids, a food  bank, even the humane society. And you know, the cool thing about the humane society is,  you know, we got to work with the things that programmers have most, you know, that being  kittens. We had kittens at our event and you know, how many revisions do you get to go  to that have kittens? And this is our amazing humane society team. They're all awesome and  having fun. And so next year, it's going to be June 16th, the 19th and it's going to be  at the Smithsonian Mason Research Institute. And that's super cool for two reasons. Like  one, it's right next to Shenandoah National Park. And if you've never been to Shenandoah  National Park, it's probably one of the prettiest places in the entire country. And the other  reason is we have some awesome, awesome neighbors there. For example, since that's where the  Smithsonian Zoo does the research, some of our neighbors include Red Pandas. They include  Clouded Leopards. I don't know what these things are, but they're there too. You know,  and there's Cheetahs and Wolves and Bison and you know, everything else. And it's going  to be a lot of fun. But like most importantly, we're going to do a lot of really good projects,  help a lot of really good organizations. And even if you can't come and you or your family  or friends volunteer somewhere that could use help from us, please get in touch. And like  I said, that Red Panda project, that's a real project that we're going to be working on  next year. And so yeah, so just keep us in mind when you're planning your conferences.  Like maybe you're thinking, oh, should I go to this one? Like actually, earlier yesterday,  someone approached me and was like, hey, are you going to Ruby on Ales? There's beer there.  And you know, I just asked, well, are there also Red Pandas? And they said no. And so,  well, maybe we're going to have to wait a little less. And I encourage you to do the  same. But sort of like in summation now, like I do encourage you all to stop by like your  local university and get involved. And if that's intimidating to you, please get in  touch with me. I would love to put you in touch with people you can help. You know, I can't  promise you're going to get a trip to Italy every year like I do, but I can promise that  you're going to get to learn really, really, really interesting things. And so if anyone  has any questions now, I would love to answer them. Thank you so much.  Right. So the question is like what happens with the projects? How are they maintained  and going forward? And that's a fantastic question. So like the Pompey one, I guess if  I was ever hit by a bus, they would be in a really bad situation because it's just me.  You know, for Ruby for good, we, you know, we do our best to foster relationships between  the teams and the organizations. Like that's why we send the actual team out to the Humane  Society. They meet with them. So there's these personal connections. So, you know, if they  do send an email like to the team and they all get notified, you know, they sort of  feel obligated then to help or to fix because, you know, they know them as people. And more.  Awesome. Thank you.  Thank you.
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