With the advent of Ruby on Rails, DSC were intrigued by the community that was emerging around it. Amongst all the enthusiasm and altruism, it was clear that the community could be made more accessible and thus even more valuable.

DSC created the site as an open project and called it WorkingWithRails. We used a variety of sources and using custom-built parsers and interpreters were able to construct a database of founder community members. From here the community itself took over and built the most comprehensive database of Rails workers, companies, enthusiasts and contributors. But rather than an entirely passive system it linked in to the blogs, source code contributions, etc. of the various community members. The community value of the site was further enhanced by users being able to recommend other Rails experts. The various rankings became incredibly popular amongst "Railers".

Shortly after the launch of the site we added the ability to track information concerning not just people, but companies, projects and web sites.

Next came the Rails blogpshere, which allows users to keep track of the wide variety of Rails related blogs without having to visit all of them individually. This allows users to keep up with the rapidly evolving world of Ruby on Rails in an efficient and user-friendly manner.

Lastly, one of the greatest successes of all of the WorkingWithRails project is the Rails Hackfest. With corporate sponsorship from the likes of the O'Reilly, the hackfest seeks to reward contributors to the Ruby on Rails Core source code with exciting prizes, like conference passes, programming books and so on. The process of tracking the contributions of an individual is fully automated and the charts are generated automatically too.

DSC has created this popular community site as a service to the community, but it also showcases the innovative thinking on offer from the technologists we employ.

To bring this level of innovation to your own web site, contact us today.