This turned into something much longer than I intended, but I think it is relevant.
I am putting together an interactive resume/portfolio site using TiddlyWiki. A complaint that I have always had with resumes is that it is almost impossible to put all, or even most, of the relevant information into one and have it readable. One of the things that I like so much about TiddlyWiki is that it is one of the first tools that I have come across that actually tries to use the new capabilities of a digital medium instead of just translating older media into a digital format. Unfortunately conveying that idea to people seems to be a very difficult task, even to people who are familiar with technology. Even when working with other graduate students doing novel research the prevailing attitude seems to be that having a solution means that finding other solutions is pointless, and when trying to improve something the only things to consider are along already established metrics and ideas. A friend of mine who like to make new things and uses TiddlyWiki classic a lot described it as 'a stack of index cards with all the associated metadata', which is an incredibly powerful and useful tool, but if you define tiddlywiki like that than you are ignoring most of what it can do. While one of the biggest contributions from tiddlywiki is its indexing ability its power comes from mixing that indexing ability with the capabilities of a browser and javascript. Finding new things that are possible with that mixture is where we will find the most useful applications, not just using tiddlywiki as a tool that allows us to do what we could already do in a better and more efficient manner. Wikipedia is the example I generally use. It is a searchable and expandable encyclopedia with good cross referencing and indexing, but the ideas it uses aren't fundamentally different than a normal encyclopedia with a good index. The goal of making an encyclopedia the best that it can be is very useful, but if you frame the task like that than it is also very limiting. That being said, using tiddlywiki to do existing tasks more efficiently is a great use for it, and probably the fastest way to attract new users. I just don't think that using it that way is where we will find the best applications. As a more immediate response, for my resume tiddlywiki I am putting in everything relevant and tagging it appropriately so it can be automatically sorted and indexed for easy navigation (that is if I can get a reasonable interface for it). I think that we could make a resume builder edition that guides you through a similar process and then since there is limited space on a resume you can have checklists for each section you would like on your resume where you pick the items most relevant for whatever job you are using it for and have templates that automatically put together a presentable resume tiddler that is automatically populated with correct typesetting. Or generate LaTeX code if you want something fancier. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TiddlyWiki" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to tiddlywiki+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to tiddlywiki@googlegroups.com. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tiddlywiki. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/tiddlywiki/0d5e4a7c-78f8-4eb7-a142-71139cb72c3d%40googlegroups.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
