This site is in the process of being created, please be patient with me as I have quite a few commitements on my time. I suspect there will be no visible updates to this page until April 2012 at the earliest as I will be working on things behind the scenes.
myInstitution.org
it all starts with a need
I am a professional engineer, like most professional engineers I dont work alone and I dont work with only people of the same professional expertise. This interdisciplinary lifestyle means I have broad interests, which I like to keep up to date with.
I am currently a member (differing grades) of two professional institutions and I suspect I shall shortly be adding a third to the list or maybe swapping one for another (decision to be procrastinated over).
Currently I spend time hopping around the various insitution websites looking for the information I require. This information of course is not in a standardized format or in the same place, which means I have to spend time working it all out.
So the need, to save me time and effort, I would like a central standardized respository of the information I regularly want to check from my institutions websites.
the concept
A website, that takes information from various professional institutions, reformats it into a standardized structure and delivers it to the end user in a flexible manner.
Phase 1:
- Identify what information I want.
- Select Institutions.
- Ask permission (its their data after all).
Phase 2:
- Create data structure.
- Write code to reformat from old structure to new.
- Create initial output mechanism (probably an rss feed).
Phase 3:
- Seek out some testers.
- Obtain feedback.
- Improve based on feedback.
progress
Where do I stand with this project at the moment? well currently I am somewhere in phase 1.
I have decided that the first datasets I would like to lay my hands on, are the various events databases.
This is because I would find it handy to have a quick way of seeing if there is anything interesting going on, and because it would be helpful for my continous professional development (I have a habit of missing useful meetings and seminars),
The institutions I am going to intially approach are the ones I am (or shortly will be) a member of. Names to mentioned later, if they agree to my proposal. In the end I would like to have the event information from all 36 licensed engineering institutions in the uk.