The generous ethos is admirable. Indeed, whereas the spotlight has recently been shone on software developers to become more aware of certain ethical issues, along with pressure to change their practices, there is in fact much to be learnt from that community. I have tried to intimate this in Open Sources: A Higher Consciousness in Software Development, a paper I gave at an unusual conference on the theme of wisdom.

As a developer myself, I am largely self-taught since the 1980s. It may explain why, when solving programming problems, I can be somewhat unconventional and occasionally original.

Open Source contributions

I’m not a prolific or fluent coder, but have contributed to a few open source projects and am currently working on two.

• MakeStaticSite, a static site generator and deployer, is a Bash script that I already use to generate static versions of locally-developed WordPress sites (like this one and research.siga.la). It is release as free/open source software under AGPL v.3 and is available for download.
• WP Offline Search is a further refinement of my fork of WP Static Search by Gergely Szerovay, who developed a WordPress plugin based on Lunr.js. As I’ve not received any response to my pull requests and have reworked quite a lot of the code, I changed the name and intend to set up a new repository.
• epubcheck-web (contributor) – enabling standards-based checking of ePub documents to help self-publishing, motivated by my experiences of self-publishing a Kindle book (see especially the EPUB conversion report slides).

I hope to share the Sigala code likewise, once it has reached a certain level of maturity.

For my work using other people’s software, take a look at the portfolio.

Legacy software, but enduring paradigms

At the turn of the millennium, there was no universal means for authors to edit and maintain their content through their web browser. The technical solutions that existed tended to work only on specific platforms, carried a fee, or else require a Java plugin.

In response, I devised one, NetWedit, possibly the world’s first cross-platform JavaScript-based solution, released under GNU LGPL, in the days when I still thought that the first ‘L’ stood for ‘library’ rather than ‘lesser’. It was experimental and used a crafty method, but it worked well enough for members of Oxford University’s Theology Faculty to maintain their profiles for a teach and learning resources database.

As browser DOM support improved, I subsequently enhanced the functionality, but kept the same basic user interface, to produce RTWedit, which was incorporated into early versions of WebLearn, Oxford University’s centrally-hosted virtual learning environment.

Standards have moved on and browsers only maintain limited backwards compatibility, so my tools don’t work in a standard desktop today, but the approach of working from first principles is ever-relevant. I’ve recorded some notes in a retrospective piece, Adventures in the Read/Write Web.

Nowadays, we take for granted the fact that we can write content in systems such as WordPress and Drupal using a rich text editor with an experience similar to that in a word processor. Such editors, based on packages such as TinyMCE and CK Editor are still written in JavaScript.

Please click on a thumbnail to access project details and slideshows.

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Scope

In the following areas, I indicate the areas that I cover followed by relevant experience, both as an employee and a consultant. I have delivered consultancy projects for public sector organisations, mainly in higher education, in addition to my staff roles at these organisations. Links are provided to projects from my portfolio.

Web publishing lifecycle

I have authored both original (and sometimes idiosyncratic) Web applications and set up and developed content management systems, especially WordPress multisite installations at the Museum of the History of Science and the International Association for Religious Freedom. I have also been involved in every stage of the implementation of a centralised IT system (the WebLearn Virtual Learning Environment at Oxford University), from initial needs analysis, through procurement to operational management,

In the course of all this development, I have covered the full lifecycle, and have become familiar with key issues that affect long-term organisational and system sustainability. I generally seek the whole picture in order to properly identify gaps in in-house technical capacity and organisational processes, with particular sensitivity to how they impact staff roles.

Digital assets and Collections Management

In working for several years for fairly small- to medium-sized cultural institutions, I have experience of formulating policy – such as preservation and data protection – as well as the digital systems to fulfil these policies, from requirements, implementation (including ingestion), to documentation and training. I have worked on projects that integrate collections management and digital asset management systems, seeking the optimal exposure of information for internal and external audiences.

E-Learning

Rooted in a whole person view of online learning, I can advise on systems and platforms for teaching curricula at different levels, particularly for independent learning aided by lightweight (handheld) solutions.

What I don’t cover and where I particularly welcome collaboration:

• graphic design — I am happy to work with artists, typographers and web design specialists, as I have only rudimentary skills in these areas.
• usability analysis — whilst I value and have a solid grounding in usability and accessibility, I am not a specialist in this area and welcome collaboration to ensure that everyone finds using the site straightforward.
• marketing — this is another area where I lack knowledge, though I expect any approach to strongly support measures for privacy and data protection.

Research Projects

In addition to software development projects, I have also provided a range of advice, theoretical and research-oriented advice, to specific challenges. I highlight here one particular project involving final year business undergraduates in Japan. For other work, please refer to the main e-learning page.

E-learning mathematics for business studies undergraduates

Client: Faculty of Economics, Gakushuin University, Tokyo, Japan
Date: March-July 2011
URL (blog posts): https://paultrafford.blogspot.com/search/label/Gakushuin
Papers:
Trafford, P. & Shirota, Y., 2011. An introduction to virtual learning environments. Gakushuin University Economic Review, 48(3), pp. 143-151.
https://www.gakushuin.ac.jp/univ/eco/gakkai/pdf_files/keizai_ronsyuu/contents/contents2006/4803/4803paul/4803paul.pdf
Trafford P. and Shirota Y. 2011. Ubiquitous e-Learning: Designing Web Systems for Economics and Business Mathematics, Gakushuin Economic papers, Vol.48, No.2, pp. 111-128. It is available in HTML and PDF formats.

I worked with Prof. Yukari Shirota on strategic aspects in using e-learning to enhance the teaching of mathematics to business studies undergraduates at the university, ranging from the general promotion of learning management systems to consideration of mobility in the design of personal learning environments. I co-authored three papers, two of which were published externally, one only internally. The consultancy culminated in a week-long research visit to Gakushuin University in July 2011, where a series of discussions were held and I gave a seminar on Game Theory to an undergraduate group.
https://paultrafford.blogspot.com/2011/07/class-in-game-theory-for-management.html

The projects I have been undertaking in the past 25 years or so span theoretical research, software development, policy, implementation and practice. Much is experimental and might not be realized as a product, but in seeking practical benefit, I try to retain what I’ve learnt as it may yet have some application later on. Many problems are recurrent and the approaches (and insights) may be similar at each iteration, albeit with different tools.

My main role has been as a problem solver / developer for/of web applications, mainly for the public sector, in both staff and consultancy roles. At a university, ‘off the shelf’ products are seldom sufficient out of the box: there is usually a considerable amount of customisation required, which motivates in-house solutions.  Thus, I have worked individually and in small teams, particularly the (now closed) Academic Computing Development Team, allowing me to undertake bespoke full-stack development; wherever possible this is in accordance with open standards and using open source components (in the early days, CGI/Perl and then PHP, connecting to SQL databases; then XML and XSLT). These standards underpin the software I am currently developing. Nowadays, apart from Sigala, my development is oriented to customisations of popular systems such as WordPress.  

Whilst most of my experience of development has been small-scale, I have also been heavily involved in an institutional project – WebLearn, Oxford University’s first virtual learning environment, for which I was involved in the procurement and subsequently was responsible for the operational management when it became a centrally-hosted production service. After a while, this involved crunching through tens of millions of event log database rows to generate summary usage figures.

I have also coordinated and managed a few projects, including RAMBLE and, more recently, digital asset management at the History of Science Museum.

For details of past projects, please consult my portfolio. Here, I only highlight the start of current work.

Sigala Research Knowledge Basis (2020-)

Problem

The Sigala project concerns the research, design and development of software systems to support sustainable social networking. There is a substantial body of theory underpinning the software development, but it’s been built up sporadically, initially documented in MS Word, with a few blog posts and the occasional presentation.

To put the research on a more solid footing is a project in itself; it needs to be maintained and disseminated more sustainably, whilst making it easier to manage.  The form in which the research is shared needs to be convenient.

Solution

The references are being managed in Zotero, which not only supports bibliographic standards for records management and import/export, but also has a web-mediated infrastructure that supports shared working.

For dissemination, a WordPress site has been created locally and content migrated from the Word documents.  A workflow enables convenient deployment of a static site on a remote server along with a zip archive of almost identical content.  For added convenience, a WordPress plugin, WP Static Search (based on Lunr.js), has been extended to enable offline searches. Both of these software components will be released as open source software.

URL: https://research.siga.la/