[Dev-flock] Joining BILUMI

[Clay Ward]

Thanks for the email, Wesa.  Welcome to the team!

-clay

On Wed, Sep 24, 2008 at 1:49 PM, wesa aapro <wesa.aapro at gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am Wesa, founder of Finnish based Consumer Gadget. It is a mobile tool for
> ethical shopper, utilizing barcodes, see http://consumergadget.org/.
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> 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.
>
> Modelling reality efficiently, but not 100% accurately:
> http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Approximation_groups
>
> Presenting the information in understandable way to simplified UI:
> http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Rendering_nodes
>
> Accessing the information through context identifiers:
> http://bilumi.org/trac/wiki/Identifying_nodes
>
>
>
> Happy to be on board,
> Wesa
>
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>
>



-- 
Clay Ward
President and Founder
Buy It Like You Mean It
http://www.BuyItLikeYouMeanIt.org

"Change the world... one purchase at a time."