"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy."
-- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984
Omeka and Portfolios/CVs/Resumes
0A long time ago, when I first started playing with Omeka, I wondered about using Omeka as an online portfolio/CV/resume tool.
0I finally got around to doing that -- always good after a few years to review and update ye olde cv. The core idea that I'm working from is that if Omeka is good for publishing a history based around a set of artifacts represented online, then it should be good for publishing my portfolio -- my career history told through a set of artifacts (projects, jobs, educational milestones, etc.) -- represented online.
0So far, so good. Mostly. I'm approaching it by creating a new collection in Omeka for each major category that appears on the print CV (while acknowledging that CV's get re-tailored for each job application). Each item, then, is basically a CV line, which somewhat pushes the boundaries of the item types available in Omeka. Here's some preliminary screenshots of what I'm working on from that angle.
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0 But then, the online form will use Omeka's exhibits to put together the real stories. That'll be a tricky process. Not sure quite yet how that'll work out for me.
0 One early result has been the oddity of treating concepts of artifacts. There are abstract, conceptual things like conferences, life decisions, life changes (not decisions on my part), and more that fit into different stories. Making those available as items in Omeka to plug into Omeka exhibits has been surprisingly tricky. That's doubly true because to make them really work, I'd like to have a visual representation/icon for them. It's been an odd reflection.
0 Ohyeah, and then there's the matter of finding just the right image, but not being sure of the rights to reuse the image.
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Comments
Objects
Love the concept and the fact that you are pushing the limits of omeka beyond original intentions/concept. Even re-imagining static vs interactive. Question do you really need visual representation or should you use the object that you describe i.e. the conference video of your talk, the article you published etc...? This may only work for tangible outputs like conference talks, papers but was a little disappointed that "The Poetics of 'Knowing' in Anglo-Saxon Visions".Advisor: A. N. Doane did not take me to your dissertation. Is it a question of item type or the ITEM?
Excellent points
John,
Good point about the "visual representation" vs. object, and I agree that there's a trickiness about item type vs. item.
I think that, ultimately, it'll need both. That is, for the conference example, a still image for to represent the conference, and also, on the item page, include the video. That partly because of how the exhibits are set up to add items to pages via a thumbnail. So, visual representation to make it work well in exhibits, and pile on anything and everything else in the item page. That's the ideal, but I'm realizing just how much work would go into that.
Good point about the diss. not having a link to the diss. itself. I'm hoping that I still have an electronic version of it somewhere. Otherwise, maybe a link to DAI?
Thanks!
Patrick
I love this, but wanted to
I love this, but wanted to see it for myself. Did I miss the link or is it not live yet?
For awhile now I've realized that I need a homepage to aggregate my various online spaces and to reinforce my personal brand. Building it in Omeka sounds like a great way to teach myself this tool.
Link coming soon
Jana,
Glad you like it. I'm thinking much the same thing about using it to be a centralized space for all the various online bits. It has definitely been an adventure in learning Omeka -- I've discovered that I know the code okay, but building a site is a whole different animal!
Interesting to think of
Interesting to think of individual Omeka items as individual lines on a CV, or specific life decisions. I suspect the "Event" item type helped here somewhat. You could pretty easily come up with a whole new set of item types for this kind of site. Have you thought about any possible ontology for individual work or life events, and how that might impact using Omeka for this kind of site?
Item Types and Ontologies
Jeremy,
Hooo, yes, I'm rapidly discovering that a whole new set of item types could appear! Exactly right, I've been making heavy use of the Event type, but also wanting to create different subtypes. I'm hoping to do as much as I can with out-of-the-box Omeka plugins and such, though, so I'm resisting getting too crazy with it. I'll have to see how far I can go with it. It's hard to resist the Drupal-ish urge to create new content types at the drop of a hat.
One interesting twist has been representing conference papers. The conference is an event, so is giving the paper. Should that be one or two items? For now, I'm opting for just one, the conference. Which is an odd reversal of how they're presented in a printed CV where the paper title gets the privileged position. Here, I'll be emphasizing the conference title.
It's all still sketchy and I want to tweak some things before I link to it, but hopefully that'll be soon.
Thanks!
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