Re: Introductions

Hi everyone,

I joined this group because I want to help improve the usability and
findability of social services information, with the ultimate goal of
connecting more people to services and creating new opportunities for
social service-based technology development.   I'm interested in how Linked
Data and a W3C suggested data standard could help service providers and
I&Rs better represent information about their services, and improve how
search engines and other applications "understand" that information.  I
also think it's really crucial to raise awareness about data standards and
markup in the non-profit community, and generally improve the technology
literacy among social service practitioners.

For 2 years, I worked as a database manager for PA 2-1-1 Southwest
(Pittsburgh & surrounding region) and became interested in issues of
data-sharing among information & referral services, grant-making
organizations, and service providers.  During my time there we transitioned
from one I&R software system to another, so I gained some intimate
knowledge of the importance of data standards :-)  I also worked on some
technology- & data-related projects involving disaster response and HMIS.
 I currently work for Google, managing the product taxonomy that is used
for Google Shopping.  My participation in this group is not related to my
role at Google, though my experience with metadata and controlled
vocabularies will undoubtedly be relevant.  I don't have any direct
connection with the teams that work on projects like schema.org or search,
and I will be contributing to the work we do here on my own time.  Before
my work with Google and 2-1-1, I worked in academic libraries.  I have an
MLIS from the University of Pittsburgh.

Looking forward to collaborating with you all, and excited to see where
this takes us!

Sincerely,
Tricia

Tricia Burmeister | Google Shopping > Product Ontology Linguist |
tburmeister@google.com |



On Wed, Jul 2, 2014 at 11:21 AM, Fitch, Dale K. <fitchd@missouri.edu> wrote:

>  Hi All,
>
> I am very much looking forward to participating in this group. I am a
> social worker by training (MSSW ’84), and have focused on the
> implementation of information technology in the human services since my PhD
> in ’01. I worked in both the private and public sectors, small and large
> agencies, and my research continues to take place in those agencies.
> Specific to this project, I have worked on Homeless Management Information
> System and I&R implementations. Derek and I share many of the same
> interests as we both use systems methodologies to understand the “problem”
> and design solutions. This group is ideally targeted on one of the most
> vexing problems – data standardization and interoperability issues. As I
> discuss in some of my articles <
> http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wBhYzAoAAAAJ&hl=en >, knowledge
> derived from information is all dependent upon the underlying data. I
> believe too much of social science research has focused on knowledge
> generalization while ignoring the other two prerequisites.
>
>
>
> To that end, not only would I like for us to develop some tools to address
> the data problem, I would also very much like to publish, publish, publish
> our work via white papers, blogs and journal articles.
>
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Dale
>
> Editor in Chief, Journal of Technology in Human Services <
> http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/wths20/current#.U7QjJPldWuJ >
>
> Board Secretary, husITa < http://www.husita.org/ >
>
>
>
> Dale Fitch, PhD, MSSW
>
> Assistant Professor
>
> School of Social Work
>
> University of Missouri
>
> 703 Clark Hall
>
> Columbia, MO 65211-4470
>
> fitchd@missouri.edu
>
> (573) 884-7405
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> *From:* eric@ejahn.net [mailto:eric@ejahn.net] *On Behalf Of *Eric Jahn
> *Sent:* Sunday, June 29, 2014 12:08 PM
> *To:* public-humanservices@w3.org
> *Subject:* Introductions
>
>
>
> Welcome to the new W3C Human Services Community!  Before we dive into
> creating a charter, I just wanted to introduce myself, and encourage the
> rest of our currently small membership to introduce themselves as well.  So
> here's mine:
>
>
>
> I'm Eric, and I've been working since around 2002 to harmonize human
> services standards, mainly within the United States agency systems.  Over
> the years, I've been surveying human services models and exchange
> specifications, talking with other practitioners in the human services data
> modeling field, and assisting the convergence of identified subdomains of
> human services.
>
>
>
> I've worked with health exchanges (yes, I see healthcare as a subset of
> human services), homeless assistance systems, disaster response, and
> information and referral systems.   Modeling in a platform independent way
> seems to be the only path to achieving any sort of harmonization of a world
> quickly changing technologies and globally dispersed efforts.
>
>
>
> Personally, I have an interest in Linked Data technologies, and how
> vocabularies represented for this format can be translated from general
> UML/ER diagrams.  I see Linked Data (Open or not) as a practical and simple
> way to share information, yet still requiring to purity and freedom of
> platform independent models, like UML.
>
>
>
> I'm eager to learn from you all, but more importantly, to come to a basic
> democratic consensus on a universal way to represent human services
> constructs.  It doesn't have to be perfect, but over time, I feel this
> process will lead to a better result than any national or niche focus can
> provide.  Mainly, because we'll make fewer assumptions.
>
>
>
> Okay, who's next?
>
>
>
> -Eric
>
>
>
>
>
> Eric Jahn
> Data Architect/IT Director
> Alexandria Consulting LLC
> St. Petersburg, Florida
> 727.537.9474
>
> alexandriaconsulting..com <http://alexandriaconsulting.com>
>