(Profile, Preferences, Account) UCamp Update

[Adam Marshall]

We would like to use the profile tool as a repository for interests both
academic and personal (by the use of tagging), then we'd like to use FOAF
(Friend of a Friend) to connect like-minded people together.

One of the key findings of Oxford's 'Building a VRE for Humanities'
requirements gathering project was that researchers wanted a way to find
others in the University who are interested in the same areas: what better
way to allow this than by browsing Sakai user profiles!

See: http://bvreh.humanities.ox.ac.uk/news/Survey_outcomes

Adam 

| -----Original Message-----
| From: Ray Davis [mailto:ray at media.berkeley.edu]
| Sent: 19 November 2007 17:44
| To: Sakai UI; sakai-dev at collab.sakaiproject.org
| Cc: fluid-work at fluidproject.org
| Subject: RE: (Profile, Preferences, Account) UCamp Update
| 
| I've always been sorry that Sakai was unable to coordinate Indiana's
| Profile needs with framework development plans. (At the very least,
| supporting "EduPerson" attributes seems like a pretty basic LMS/CLE
| requirement!) Making Profile a pseudo-standalone tool was probably
| the only practical way for the team to deliver it in a timely
| fashion, but for obvious reasons its services and data end up
| bleeding into apparently separate tools (notably Roster). Similarly,
| the functionality described by Vivie is hardly JForum specific, and
| could be useful to many installations who prefer to deploy other
| discussion software.
| 
| Trying to figure out a single UI that will meet the vastly varying
| detailed functional requirements of all our target users might be
| overwhelming. But I do believe there's a general need for some
| centrally managed store of person data that's more complex than our
| current "User" module or "Preferences" tool support: behind the UI,
| we need to allow for more efficiently handled properties and we need
| to allow for more contexts (e.g., a course-specific email address for
| instructors, or a project-specific username for language classes).
| While the usability research continues, maybe some of the people
| working on the user kernel services could begin to talk about ways of
| handling this problem. It's possible that with services in place, a
| suite of lighter-weight profile-style applications might be more
| cheaply produced.
| 
| Ray
| 
| At 08:36 PM 11/16/2007, Vivie Sinou wrote:
| ...
| >We use Jforum's My Profile which our users love
| >as it offers just in-time member data and opportunities for users to
| learn
| >about each other and connect while collaborating and communicating in
| >discussions.
| >
| >We eliminated Profile two years ago, as it was confusing to users to have
| >two profile tools. Jforum's My Profile is also global, reads Account
| data,
| >and offers great functionality to our users when they need it the most -
| >communicating and collaborating. Jforum's My Profile allows participants
| to
| >set preferences, avatars, IM info, interests, etc. We plan on expanding
| on
| >Jforum's My Profile functionality to provide opportunities for networking
| >and collaborating, based on profile interests.
| 
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