LectureBank Major Qualifying Project Presentation

8/2/2019 LectureBank Major Qualifying Project Presentation

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Computer Science MQPProject Presentation Day

April 19, 2012

Gregory Philip Dracoulis



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Purpose

Networking tool designed to connectresearchers and event organizers in relatedscientific fields

Allow for creation and discovery ofopportunities to speak

Facilitate exploration of new talent forlectures, seminars, conferences, andsymposia

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Background

Came out of a green-field project to improvestatus of minority groups in STEM

Many causes for underrepresentation, manydisaggregated programs to combat it

Looked to reduce attrition at higher levels,

cause “trickle down” of increase in morale Increase visible opportunities, level of

contact & confidence, fairness

Network based searches reduce homophily

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Sorting

Different needs for two distinct primaryaudiences: speakers and planners

Want to provide relevant, personalizedresults while preserving serendipity

Speakers seek opportunities; show closingsoon, recently added/opened, near them,

and magic “like them”

Planners seek speakers; show thosematching posted opps, most active, mostrecently active

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Searching

Built AJAX autocomplete system first, to tryto minimize junk data

Extended those techniques to build searchsystem across institutions, people, research,and talks/events

Single search box for all queries, optimizedsearches for planners & speakers

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Tagging

Not just user-tagged content

(though we do have that)

HTML5 allows for more semantic markup

ex: section, article, header, footer, time, nav

Microdata makes content machine-readable

Technorati tags help categorize content

rel=“tag”

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Geographic Mapping

Geodata encoded for all users if ZIP code orhome institution provided

Query Google Maps API w/ either piece ofdata when first entered, parse & store result

Also use Maps API for events, to plot location

and allow users to get directions

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Exposing Services

Important to make the service open tointegration

OpenSearch XML file describes searchinterfaces and result formats

Provide RSS feeds for search result pages,

cheap way to set alerts/search agents

URLs and semantic markup makes parsingother pages easier (e.g. for Safari reader)

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Paginating

Each entity on the site has its own stub page witha corresponding “pretty,” memorable, search-

engine friendly URLEnables easier indexing and sharing

Makes it simpler to guess content of page

Improves security by not exposing serverlanguage specific file extensions

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Hosting & Accelerating

Site lives on scalable “cloud” host

Spreads site load across multiple servers (both

Web & DB), bursting as necessary

CDN replicates components of site worldwide,reducing latency, load times, & server load

Compresses images, “minifies” JS/CSS files, andeven provides offline access to some static pages.

Also provides security features like email addressobfuscation and CAPTCHA challenges on

suspicious activity

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Analyzing

Use Google Analytics across all pages

Good for us to be able to see which

institutional networks are accessing site

Shows most popular landing pages andsearch result terms

Allows us to see visitor flow through site, not just pageview stats

Also lets us set goal pages (registration,

activation) and see “funnel” toward them

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Future Work

Work is continuing on this project, we hopeto continually improve it

If you are interested in collaborating, contactProfs. Vidali or Ciaraldi

Looking at integrating with a number of

external servicesGoogle Federated Login

Meetup (handling events)

PubMed (populating speaker publications)

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Thank You!

Questions?

Check out the project at lecturebank.org

Many thanks to my advisors, Professors LuisVidali and Mike Ciaraldi

Thanks to the National Science Foundationfor funding

Thanks to WPI for this opportunity!

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Documents

LectureBank Major Qualifying Project Presentation