CV Builder plugin for WordPress: a interoperability scenario

September 16th, 2009 • Moi Numérique
Tags: CV, Eduserv, HR-XML, Interoperability, plugin, Resume, rhiz08, Wordpress

Here a diagram of the interoperability scenario for the CV builder plugin for WordPress developed in the field of The Rhizome Project.

Using the plugin to create CVs is a simple 3 steps process: create a Master CV, customise Views and Export them!

1. Once plugged to WordPress, the user can store his data in a single XML file that acts as a vault for personal and professional information: this is the Master CV. The user can create one storage file or Master CV per language, in all official languages of the European Union.
2. With the data contained in the Master CV, the user can create as many customised Views he needs. At least three structured formats are provided: short profile, Europass CV and HR-XML. The user can also take advantage of customisation functionalities in terms of display of information and integration on media to create free form CVs.
3. For each View, a range of Export possibilities exist: ODT, PDF, HTML, XHTML and XML. Online publishing can also be password protected.

Design principles for the custom CV Builder plugin for WordPress compliant with Europass and HR-XML specifications

August 6th, 2009 • Moi Numérique, Portfolio et ePortfolio
Tags: ePortfolio, Europass-CV, Moi Numérique, plugin, rhiz08, Wordpress

The development programme for the custom CV builder plugin follows 10 design principles: user-centric, interoperable, recognised, flexible, multi-lingual, multimedia, secure, portable, accessible and open, all described in detail here:

1. User-centric. The CV builder employs a user-centric approach to personal data management by allowing individuals to control their personal information and digital self-representation. Individuals can decide where to store their data and have administrator rights to manage it. In this way data is not held with third-party web CV repositories or Job Board administered applications. The Europass CV Builder is fully integrated with WordPress, as a plugin application.
2. Interoperable. CVs are compliant with the latest HR-XML Staffing Exchange Protocol specification. By using a standards compliant CV format, individuals are able to establish a fluid exchange of personal information with eRecruitment, eLearning and Human Resources bodies.
3. Recognised. The builder produces CVs that comply with the widest European and internationally recognised standards for representation of personal data, qualifications and competencies. This allows the edition of a complete CV following the official Europass template and latest Europass XML specifications, recognised by audiences not limited by sector or geography.
4. Flexible. The CV Builder can produce flexible and fully modifiable views of CV content. Individuals can customise their CVs and target them according to their personal or professional needs and goals. To create a targeted CV, the user selects relevant content from the Master CV (the vault for personal information) and creates a View. This can be built using out-of the box templates or by creating new templates that can be customised with the addition of extra sections and fields as required. These fields may be outside of the Europass template but present in the HR-XML specification and therefore HR-XML compatibility is maintained. Allowing user-created fields will break standards compliance but this option is being considered to enhance customisability.
5. Multi-lingual. The entire interface is multilingual and content can be filled in by the user in any of the official languages of the European Union.
6. Multimedia. Text fields within the CV can be linked to any media (pictures, certificate, video or audio record); these can be added as evidence of performance alongside the tagging and aggregation of content from distributed locations. Support for WordPress ‘short codes’ allows content integration within blog posts and pages, adding ePortfolio-like capabilities.
7. Portable. Individual CVs are accessible via Internet and can be packaged, exported and moved from physical locations e.g. hosting services compliant with HR-XML specifications.  Users can also select the publishing format of their choice for each targeted CV or View, including: XHTML and HTML (integrated in blog pages), PDF, ODT, HR-XML feed and Europass XML feed.
8. Accessible. CVs are ergonomic, usable and any user, through compliance with accessibility standards such as WAI, can readily access content.
9. Secure. Stored personal data and CVs are secured for personal access via the WordPress authentication protocol. Individuals can set access permissions and the builder is granular enough such that portions personal data can be cordoned off. Publishing rights are available to allow both public versions of a CV for open consultation via the Internet and protected CVs held in a secure location. Each export of a targeted CV or View can be protected by an access code defined by the user.
10. Open. The CV is open and not related to any proprietary technology. Its online forms are built using XForms.

If you want to comment this entry, please go to the Rhizome project blog at: Design principles for the custom CV Builder plugin for WordPress compliant with Europass and HR-XML specifications

Faces of identity: which you do not make visible online and why?

January 10th, 2009 • 1 comment Au fil des rencontres, Moi Numérique
Tags: DigitalSelf, EDID09, Eduserv, identity, Patterns, PlanetProject, rhiz08

During the Eduserv workshop on digital identity pattern design, at the British Library, we have been invited by Yishay Mor and Steven Warburton to warm up and socialize before team work by doing a sketching exercise, called ‘Faces of identity’. (For more on patterns see the JISC funded project: Planet – Pattern Language Network for Web 2.0 Learning)

They gave us three head outlines to draw three different representations of our identity. Then we had to turn them to our group and present them, answering the questions: ‘Of these three identities you have drawn, which do you make visible online online and why?’. And also, ‘which you do not make visible and why?’

This last question drove us to a space where each of us unveiled some aspects of the hidden rhetoric of our digital selves. We then shared our experience about online identity management: swearing versus non swearing spaces, consistence of icons and gravatars, negation of some aspects of our life that we feel may impact our public presence, including our ‘employability factor’  or aspects from our personal life that interfere with our professional life.

Soon we all found that we had a face of our identity, mainly built in relation with others, that was hidden or somehow protected by some reason, say, safety.  Many stories came together in this exercise: Josie negating her motherhood identity for job search purposes, Phil protecting his children by never putting their image or their names online, Sally questioning herself about how their children may contribute to her online identity, and me controlling social interaction to some of the public images of my children.

I really enjoyed very much this session and felt that we were a highly productive team. We produced the Putting others first pattern. For this very reason I want to tell who these people are. And I hope I will have, in the future, the opportunity to work with them again.

5 people worked during the morning session presenting their stories, linking them, finding similarities and identifying the problem space. These were (from left to right in the drawing by Maisie Platts)

• Phil Archer
• Finbar Mulholland
• Margarita Perez Garcia
• Josie Fraser
• Sally Griffin

After lunch, Mark AM Kramer and Jim Hensman joined the group and we produced the pattern all together.

A pity that the patterns repository doesn’t give ownership to the entire group. However, if someone has to be held responsible for the words on the paper, then let’s say that Phil Archer was responsible for this!

I’m also a STARR: Tell me whom you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are

December 29th, 2008 • 7 comments Moi Numérique, Moi-Je par soi-même, Pourquoi ça n'arrive qu'à moi?, Technologies sociales
Tags: Allaitement, Autoportraits, Breastfeeding, Digital self, Femmes, Flickr, Moi Numérique, Moi-Je, Nu, rhiz08, Social Network Services, Social Software

In the field of the Eduserv workshop on digital identities, the 8th January 2009 at the British Library, Steven Warburton and Yishay Mor invited us to share small stories in which we are the main character (or at least a first-hand witness), and which we believe illuminates an interesting aspect, or dilemma, of digital identity.

A few have been collected already : about disaggregated identities, about the pressure of existing within a Twitter community, about students hands-in-hands friends in FB with teachers, about the impact of an online identity in online job search, and also about the exposure of a teenager photo by a counsellor without a full understanding of of CC licences. Yishay also prepared a short presentation that provides guidance to the task with the STARR template.

Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres!

And because, I’m also a STARR, here is my story: Dime con quien andas y te diré quien eres! This is a Spanish saying my mother repeated me to death when I was a teenager. Literally translated into English, it will be: Tell me whom you walk with and I’ll tell you who you are. But the saying translated into another form would be:

• Hunt with cats and you catch only rats
• Birds of a feather flock together
• A man is known by the company he keeps

S/Situation

I have a Flickr account, since 2004. I have always used for both personal and professional aspects of my real persona. I also have a Flickr account for my avatar, Paz Lorenz, since 2006. I use sets and collections to separate personal and professional content. But also to separate different parts of my personal life. I don’t want my self-portraits mixed with my kids. In this first account, I haven’t really engaged in rich conversations with other Flickr users. I didn’t feel the need to complete my profile, I have only 33 contacts, most of them real life friends and belong to a few groups, mainly related with spontaneous and brutal art. Opposite to Paz who maintains a richer social life and spends her time flickering.

My accounts are frequently aggregated by other users who make me their contact. Some of my photos are added as a favorite, and commented. As a consequence, a part of me is automatically added to other people’s profiles and photostreams: I appear in the list of contacts of a given user. My photos appear in the users’ favorite collection, associated, out of context, with other photos, according to a criteria I don’t necessarily perceive or understand.

T/Task

My problems started with a photo that my older son, Sariel, took of me, while breastfeeding my newborn Forest. In one year, ‘Happy breastfeeding’ was seen 3,464 times. My photo started as a project against people who complain because of breastfeeding in public places, after two awful encounters where I’ve been told to ‘stop doing that there”, even though it was discrete and I had a scarf over the head of my one month old baby.

As an answer, I wanted to replicate a photo of another Flickr user that unfortunately isn’t public whose title is ‘For you pervs out there. . .’ In this photo a mother of a toddler is breastfeeding her child, while she gives ‘fuck you’ sign straight to the camera. The photo, as many other of the kind, is published in the Go fuck yourself Flickr group. So I wanted to do the same: nurse not so discreetly while looking straight into the eye of those people who condemn breastfeeding in public and be rude and angry. But this was impossible with my little clown taking the photo. We couldn’t be serious and didn’t help but laughing out loud. And the result was this:

Since, the photo has been marked as a favorite by many ‘pervs’ who maintain fake Flickr accounts where they do not post any photo, but where they collect other users photos showing nudity, partial nudity like mothers breastfeeding showing part of her breasts or children without Tshirts playing in the nature by a hot summer. Suddenly my photo and I appeared associated to pornography, among the contacts and in the collection of users who are also member of ‘Mature women nudes’ and ‘Delicious oral sex’, just to cite the less offensive groups.

A/Action

When I realised that this was happening, I defined a personal rule regarding my content in Flickr: to block any contact or fan of my photos who is associated with pornography: publishes porn photos, belongs to porn groups, has porn favorites or invites one of my photos to a porn pool.

R/Results

I systematically monitor accounts of people who establish any virtual relationships with me in Flickr, and if not compliant, I block.

As a consequence, and to remain those who do not know how blocking functions in Flickr, these users:

• Can’t comment on my photos (All comments on my photos made by them are deleted)
• Can’t comment on my sets (All comments on my sets made by them are deleted)
• I am removed as theirs (They can’t add me as a contact again)
• Can’t add my photos as favorites anymore (Any of my photos marked as their favorites are removed)
• Can’t blog my photos
• Can’t add notes or tags
• Can’t send me FlickrMail

This obliges me to follow up my social activity closely, as I don’t want to be associated or to have my 4 kids associated with these people. Naturally, I could have set my collection to private contacts or friends-only. But I don’t want this. I want a public collection of photos. And ‘Happy breastfeeding’ is my provocative public statement on breastfeeding.

Not directly related, I also don’t tag my children’s pics, so they are not overexposed. And the titles in general are name+date. I changed most of them to be only accessible by contacts and left only the portraits for the public eye.

R/Reflections

The main realisation was that there is a time consumption issue associated with the management of private-public content on the Internet. Most of the mothers who put their children photo on Flickr are subject to this kind of problem, and yet one faces a dilemma between restricting photos to friends only or deploying strong policies for control of interaction around one’s images. Hence users develop their own strategy to control these issues, like:

• using FlickrMails in a chain between mothers to investigate the good intentions of a certain Flickr user. Followed by massive blocking and reporting abuse.

• using one’s profile to explain what type of interaction policy is suitable for one’s account. Like another of my contacts who states in her profile:

“my pics tells about love and sharing, proximity between parents and child, nothing sexual in it i precise!!! i DO NOT wish my pics to be added as favs on people’s account who are looking for erotic or porn aspect , neither be added as contact i am therefore very happy to share my pics with people respectful to that opinion, motherhood is pure… thanx!”

I became more aware of certain threats that have an impact on my digital reputation. The ENISA Position Paper No.1 Security Issues and Recommendations for Online Social Networks was an enlightning read that increased my understanding and awareness of these issues.