It Gets Better

Oct 2010 - Feb 2011
http://www.itgetsbetter.org

Dan Savage, the prominent author, editor, and advice columnist, found himself wishing he could tell every bullied high school student that adulthood is worth living for — and that the rough teenage years will soon pass. He knew this because he went through it himself.

What he wanted to tell bullied LGBT adolescents is this: “It gets better.”

The process

My role in the project can be summed up in 2 parts, 

• Get the videos from users and put them into the Youtube channel
• Take the Youtube videos and populate the website.

Ended up using Youtube direct, a free and open tool provided by Google/Youtube to create a video upload and moderation area. Youtube direct lives on Google App Engine, after it is configured and authenticated to a user's Youtube channel you simply copy and paste iframe snippet onto your 'upload' page. The iframe provides a place for the user to authenticate and post videos to your site. 

Once the videos were approved and placed into the ItGetsBetter YT channel, we used the Youtube API to access the videos and display them on the website. jQuery and jQuery templates were used to simplify the interaction process. 

Overall, one of my favorite web projects to work on - the message, the responses and the energy made the project amazing even before the site had officially launched.