<div dir="ltr">Hi all,<br><br>I am Wesa, founder of Finnish based Consumer Gadget. It is a mobile tool for ethical shopper, utilizing barcodes, see <a href="http://consumergadget.org/">http://consumergadget.org/</a>. Consumer Gadget has it's own database of ethical information, but for the three years the service has existed, we haven't been able to grow the database. I am ready to try something new and I am happy to join BILUMI.<br>
<br>I got interested in BILUMI, since Consumer Gadget's information model is pretty much the same, with only small differences. BILUMI has very good philosophy about letting users evaluate nodes, something that Consumer Gadget is completely missing.<br>
<br>I should explain my background, because it may help in understanding my writing. I have graduated from Medialab / Helsinki University of Arts and Design, but I actually started my studies in Helsinki University of Technology. My masters's thesis was about Consumer Gadget. Even though I have done studies in CS, I am self taught programmer and information architecture. This means I don't know the correct terminology, especially in english. I tend to see everything visually, as boxes and arrows, so if my thoughts don't make any sense, it's propably because I have written something else than I see in my head. <br>
I have a lot of experience on the subject, but I have few disadvantages: 1) I have worked pretty much alone for the last three years, so I am really blinded on many things. 2) I haven't coded a single line of Python.<br>
<br>I am really excited about working with BILUMI, because there are many of you and you clearly understand what you do! I have had a lot of support in Finland, managed to do well in competitions with just the idea of Consumer Gadget, but I haven't had anyone to talk to in the level I now can.<br>
<br>I have worked with Finnish NGO's (we actually are one ourselves) and found out that the biggest problem is, that the research goes into too much details, so that the overall picture is lost. There are too many products in the world to focus on everyone of them. We need powerful tools to cover many products easily, even if it goes slightly wrong. My focus is currently on how to model reality efficiently. My focus is not on the ethical debate about the reality, it is a field I really don't understand. Actually my interests in ethical shopping came from Consumer Gadget - purely technical idea, which no one at the time seemed to have came up with before.<br>
<br>I wrote three wiki pages and I would be happy if some of you had the time to read them and discuss about the thoughts presented in them. The terminology I have chosen may not be understandable, it can be even misleading, so feel free to discuss about my thoughts directly on the wiki pages.<br>
<br>Modelling reality efficiently, but not 100% accurately: <br><a href="http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Approximation_groups" target="_blank">http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Approximation_groups</a><br><br>Presenting the information in understandable way to simplified UI:<br>
<a href="http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Rendering_nodes" target="_blank">http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Rendering_nodes</a><br>
<br>Accessing the information through context identifiers:<br><a href="http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Identifying_nodes" target="_blank">http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Identifying_nodes</a><br><br><br><br>Happy to be on board,<br>
Wesa<br></div>