Drew Bluske and Amrit Panesar presented their capstone project for an online culture magazine called Vital Replica. They designed and implemented a 3-issue prototype in 10 weeks using technologies like HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript, PHP, and MySQL. Their system allows users to view and vote on cultural content and earn points to enter raffles. They discussed the business model, risks, strengths, and lessons learned from the project.

1. V I T A L R E P L I C A
elegance before decadence
CAPSTONE PRESENTATION
Colem an Univers it y – San Diego, Calif orn ia
December 19, 2014
D r e w B l u s k e A m r i t P a n e s a r

2. V I T A L R E P L I C A
elegance before decadence
PERSONNEL
Visionary Architecture & Project Management
DREW BLUSKE
Database Design & Programming Lead
AMRIT PANESAR

3. V I T A L R E P L I C A
SYSTEM DESIGN and
IMPLEMENTATION
elegance bef ore decadence

4. V I T A L R E P L I C A
SYSTEM DESIGN and IMPLEMENTATION
THE CHALLENGE
Design & Code:
3-issue prototype
f or an online week ly culture m agazine and opinion aggregator
in 10 week s
e l e g a n c e b e f o r e d e c a d e n c e

5. V I T A L R E P L I C A
CORE CONCEPTS
VITALITY R EPLICAS
STAR VOTING
e l e g a n c e b e f o r e d e c a d e n c e

6. V I T A L R E P L I C A
SYSTEM DESIGN and
IMPLEMENTATION
W ATCHW ORD (EARNED VITALITY) FR ONT PAGE
REPLICAS JUKEBOX MOVING_PICTURES HOME_ARCADE
VITALITY R EPORT VOX_POPULI
e l e g a n c e b e f o r e d e c a d e n c e

7. V I T A L R E P L I C A
DEMO

8. V I T A L R E P L I C A
business analysis
REVENUE
advertising impressions & raffle tickets (earned by merit) entry ($1)
1 / 100 wins a $100 prize (max winners = 10,000)
after one million subscribers, each user generates $1 per week of profit
example: 2 million users enter the raffle, generates $1M / week

9. V I T A L R E P L I C A
business analysis
RISKS
marketing, good taste decision making, production staff & support,
facilities
OPPORTUNITY: UNIQUE POSITIONING
navigation, education, meritocracy, less is more, contest

10. V I T A L R E P L I C A
business analysis
STRENGTHS
open source technology, tipping point behavior, low overhead
W EAKNESSES
manpower – art, editorial, video production, support, legal, PR,
marketing

11. V I T A L R E P L I C A
business analysis
MISSION
Our mission is to expand your lexicon through play and to elevate
exemplary instances of modern culture by the merits of collective
intellect

12. V I T A L R E P L I C A
business analysis
VALUES
elegance bef ore decadence
what is lik ed by the most is less interesting than
what is lik ed best by the brightest

13. V I T A L R E P L I C A
implementation
CLIENT SIDE
HTML5
CSS3
JavaScript
jQuery, JSON, AJAX

14. V I T A L R E P L I C A
implementation
CLIENT SIDE
SVGs & PNGs
RGBA color
Responsive Size Behavior - Bootstrap, Bootswatch
Single Page – DIV positioning, Semantics (class & id)

15. V I T A L R E P L I C A
implementation
SERVER SIDE
AJAX & JSON
PHP 5
MYSQL
LINUX & LIGHTHTTPD

16. V I T A L R E P L I C A
implementation
SERVER SIDE
Session
Verification
Salty Hash
Issues, Sections, Replicas, Users, Votes, Vitality Earned

17. V I T A L R E P L I C A
implementation
SUCCESSES
Accounts  Persisting Users’ Schemas
Data Aggregation  Information
Design  less IS more

18. V I T A L R E P L I C A
lessons learned
THE FIRST LINES OF CODE ARE THE
HARDEST
PULL, MERGE, PUSH (in that order)
SOMETIMES A BUG IS A FEATURE

19. V I T A L R E P L I C A
THANK YOU
Leticia Rabor Charlie Morgan Darlene Garcia
Jason Abel John Ramos Ethan Bishop
Richard Wells Steve Martin Steve Palmer
Lilypad Preclaro Wayne Beech Aaron Browning
Erich Yanushka Corey Grondin Jeff Elkind
Adam Valdez Carol Koon Sowmya Ganore