Project Summary

Motivations:

• Data is a key instrument for making Broadway the best it can be.
• Broadway data is not accessible for large scale analysis.
• Those using Broadway data for analysis or reporting do so with limited and private datasets – this hinders transparency, collboration, and scalability.

Goals:

• Provide Broadway data for large scale analysis.
• Allow edits to existing data using a role based review process.
  • Use this interface to collect demographic data.
• Make demographic data available for reporting, using role based access control.

Successes:

• We were able to get a POC up and running pretty quickly.
• We were able to deliver a meaningful experience by tailering the platform to our early users.
• Our platform did its job in allowing collection of and secure access to demographic data.

Challenges:

• Getting the data itself is difficult without partnerships.
• Technical limitations:
  • Writing code for a secure platform is challenging – it’s also hard to find volunteers who can do it.
  • Horizontally scalable systems: each layer in a multi-tier architecture needs to scale horizontally to handle spikes in traffic (as well as control server costs). This is hard to architect and build.

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