Welcome & introductions

Hello everybody and welcome to the Talent Marketplace Signaling W3C 
Community Group <https://www.w3.org/community/talent-signal/> (let's 
call it TalentSignal for short). This is the public mailing list of the 
group. Messages here are visible to anyone whether or not they are a 
member of the group, so this is the best place for us to do our work in 
the open.

I am Phil Barker, and with backing from colleagues from the Job Data 
Exchange project (JDX 
<https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/workforce-development/JDX>) I 
proposed this community group. As this is a new group, I think that we 
should wait a short while longer before we start work in earnest so that 
more people can join the group. But there are a couple of things that I 
think might be useful to do while we are waiting.

I am going to assume that you have read the official description of the 
group and know roughly what you have joined up for, but let's get any 
queries about that sorted out before we start the work. If you have any 
questions about the purpose of this group please ask them here.

Also, it would be really useful to get some idea about who is in the 
group. The basic information of name and affiliation is recorded when 
you join, but I would be interested in a little more about what you hope 
this group will achieve for you.

I'll start.

*Introduction.**
*

I am an independent consultant in the area of technology enhanced 
learning and information systems for education. I am based in Scotland. 
I have worked on structured data to describe educational resources and 
outcomes for some years now, most lately the Learning Resource Metadata 
Initiative DCMI task group [LRMI <http://lrmi.dublincore.org/>], the 
Schema Course Extension community group [Course 
<https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/>], and the 
Educational and Occupational Credentials community group [EOCred 
<https://www.w3.org/community/eocred-schema/>].

I am being paid by the US Chambers of Commerce Foundation to work on 
TalentSignal in order to widen the scope of what has been achieved 
through the JDX project. My big-picture hope for all the work in this 
area is that better expression of job requirements in the same framework 
as can be used to describe qualifications and educational courses will 
lead to better articulation of what is required and what is being 
provided, and to improvements in educational and occupational prospects 
for individuals.

I hope that this group will be able to further this work by providing 
guidance on how to use existing schema.org terms to describe JobPostings 
and by proposing small refinements (e.g. improved definitions) to 
existing relevant schema.org types where we identify that they are 
needed. Where improved signaling cannot otherwise be achieved we can 
suggest new properties for schema.org. Of course the final decision on 
whether anything we do is adopted by schema.org rests with the 
schema.org steering group.

Best regards, Phil Barker. <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>


[TalentSignal] <https://www.w3.org/community/talent-signal/>
[JDX] <https://www.uschamberfoundation.org/workforce-development/JDX>
[LRMI] <http://lrmi.dublincore.org/>
[Course] <https://www.w3.org/community/schema-course-extend/>
[EOCred] <https://www.w3.org/community/eocred-schema/>

-- 

Phil Barker <http://people.pjjk.net/phil>. http://people.pjjk.net/phil
CETIS LLP <https://www.cetis.org.uk>: a cooperative consultancy for 
innovation in education technology.
PJJK Limited <https://www.pjjk.co.uk>: technology to enhance learning; 
information systems for education.

CETIS is a co-operative limited liability partnership, registered in 
England number OC399090
PJJK Limited is registered in Scotland as a private limited company, 
number SC569282.