Today I felt bold or desperate enough -- actually some of both -- to prod a bit for a reply to a request for advice from a couple of my mentors in my #cidocCRM/#TEI Personal Learning Network. If you are successful developing a really good #PLNet (might as well mint a hashtag for on-going use), your loose group of mentors will, by definition, be EXTREMELY busy beyond your imagining, and the best won't suffer fools lightly. So evolving your #PLNet is always a balancing act. And a big part of that balancing has to do with your patience and the reasonableness of your expectations for what constitutes a good result or reply.
My pressing-inquiry to my #PLNet members revolved around what might be announced or open for discussion based on the preliminary agenda published ahead of the upcoming CIDOC CRM SIG meeting. My absolutely over-tasked #PLNet member found a moment to thoughtfully recommended that I join the CRM SIG mailing list (despite not being a SIG member), and make my interests and recommendations known prior to next week's meeting in Germany. He assured me that while he didn't make these SIG decisions, that my ideas and interest to get involved in the SIG would likely be well-received.
So with that encouragement, I joined the CIDOC CRM SIG mailing list and 'penned' one of my signature TL;DR unsolicited letters of introduction. I honestly don't intend them to be too long nor too deep. It is just that I feel once you step up on the soapbox and unload, the last thing you want to do is sit down and start running through all the things you wished you had said while you were up there. Right? With this context in mind, below the bar is my first post to the CIDOC CRM SIG Mailing List. (A subgoal, as always, is casting the net for connections to Kindred Spirits who are possible collaborators and/or mentors.)
If you get to the end of this note to the mailing list, I've provided a link to a moldy oldie from my Sohodojo days that provides additional insights about how to think about and use Personal Learning Networks to become whatever Empowered Individual you are intending to be. Oh, and there's an infographic to boot! :D
Hello CIDOC CRM SIG Members,
My name is Jim Salmons and my inter-related Citizen Science/History projects are @FactMiners (www.FactMiners.org) and @SoftalkApple (www.SoftalkApple.com).
We are working on two inter-related applied research initiatives; #cidocCRMgraph and #cidocCRMdev, as briefly introduced here: http://goo.gl/XZKkCE. For links to related #cidocCRM posts expressing our interests/insights, please see: http://goo.gl/dpbhPs.
BACKGROUND INFO
For our most complete “manifesto” of applied research interests, please see: https://goo.gl/3Vb0lO contributed and accepted into the CODE|WORDS series, and this GraphGist Edition of my #MCN2014 presentation: http://goo.gl/gS2FJk (especially the 2nd half of the embedded video which introduces, but does not dive too deeply into, our FactMiners #cidocCRM focus). And for some context and link to an unfolding #cidocCRM-related conversation at Schema.org in which I am trying to inject a metamodel-driven design POV, please see: http://goo.gl/x1DSAB. (Also, I am fortunate to have, and personally thank, the members of my #cidocCRM/#TEI Personal Learning Network who are helping me to fast-track my knowledge about the #cidocCRM and #TEI: https://goo.gl/skvhaj.)
CRM SIG MTG – NEW WEBSITE ITEM INTEREST & RECOMMENDATION FOR TEI P5 FORMAT FOR DEFINITION DOCUMENT
As to the upcoming CRM SIG meeting agenda item for next Friday morning to discuss a new cidoc-crm.org website, please note that @FactMiners has a long-standing public “hand raised” to either lead or contribute to this much-needed community project. If this is an open issue and the project’s nature and goals are to be determined through next Friday’s discussion, I would recommend that the new website be built HAND-IN-HAND with adopting TEI P5 as the semantic “format of record” for the CIDOC CRM Definition document. (MS-Word and PDF just won’t cut it moving forward when both humans and our software agents need equal access to this foundation document.)
While there are those who prefer/need an RDF encoding, there will be a growing group of folks like @FactMiners who will be best served by a human- and machine-readable edition of the Definition document “as is” without a complicated graph transformation applied (that can only further obfuscate existing graph-interpretation issues of the current state of the model). A TEI P5 encoding of the Definition document would not just be useful in its own right, but it could figure into an efficient workflow for the SIG in the future whereby the official public-facing website would be generated from (and updated by) releases of the official #TEI Definition document.
If the SIG would prefer not to select a particular lead or other sanctioned “official project” of the SIG, I would ask that you simply consider taking the existing cidoc-crm.org website and put it into a public GitHub repository so volunteer community members could fork it in response to a “CIDOC-CRM.org Website Make-over Challenge” with friendly competition encouraged by general public as well as a category for student/class projects.
There are a number of other active issues/ideas I would like to contribute to the current SIG conversations that will surely take place next week, but I don’t want to dilute my message about @FactMiners interest in contributing to the new website.
RECOMMENDATION FOR PREFERRED SOCIAL MEDIA HASHTAG - #cidocCRM
However, I will slip this recommendation into this self-introduction note to suggest that the SIG consider officially endorsing/recommending the use of #cidocCRM as the preferred hashtag for CIDOC CRM social media communication. My experience is that anything with any variation of tag that has a plain CRM or hyphenated #CIDOC-CRM etc., will attract the “900-pound gorilla” of Customer Relationship Management folks that subvert conversations or spike your followers with inappropriate bots or well-meaning lurkers. My choice of #cidocCRM is that the CIDOC aspect should not be the “shouty” part and that it serves as the “category discriminator” that will help keep our interests separate from “those other” CRM folks.
POSSIBLE SIG MEMBERSHIP?
Finally, given my intense interest in the #cidocCRM and not knowing how ICOM and/or CIDOC SIGs work, I am unsure whether I would be a prospective group member in that I am an unaffiliated, independent Citizen Scientist and on a limited fixed “retirement” budget.
Thank you for your interest and reading this notably long initial letter of introduction.
Happy-Healthy Vibes,
-: Jim :-
Jim Salmons
Twitter: @Jim_Salmons
www.FactMiners.org
www.SoftalkApple.com
If you would like to know more about Personal Learning Networks, I invite you to read a moldy oldie from my and Timlynn's Sohodojo adventure. Personal Learning Network or #PLNet was not what we called these networks fifteen years ago. In "The A-Team and The Sandbox" your #PLNet is your A-Team. The "sandbox" is what Timlynn and I have with our Citizen Science and Citizen History projects, www.FactMiners.org and www.SoftalkApple.com. In inforgraphic format, our post-cancer Portfolio Life looks like this:
