FluidCVPosted on February 11, 2011

I'm starting a new project called FluidCV. It will be a new way to create a resumé/cv, using Fluidinfo as the backend storage. Fluidinfo is an open, social database, where objects are readable and writeable by everyone. Objects are essentially anonymous, except for a unique about tag. Users can tag objects with any tag they want, and have full control over who can read or write to their tags. Fluidinfo also provides a simple query language for finding objects. Using this language, I could for example search for a tech blog post that I really like with

gridaphobe/rating > 7 and gridaphobe/post/category="technology"

This might return an object with the about tag http://lifehac.kr/g1KtPo, which links to a nice post about a new Gmail client for Mac OS X.

Now, if I'm going to tag blog posts that I like, why not tag places I went to school or at which I worked? I used to be a Genius at Apple, so I tagged the object with about tag http://www.apple.com with the tags

  • gridaphobe/employer
  • gridaphobe/company = "Apple Inc."
  • gridaphobe/title = "Genius"
  • gridaphobe/start-date = "2008-02-15"
  • gridaphobe/end-date = "2009-07-15"
  • gridaphobe/functions = ['Diagnosed and resolved customer issues with full range of Apple products.', 'Hired as Specialist, promoted to Genius in Sep. 2008.']

I'm currently a student at The City College of New York, so I also tagged the object with about tag http://ccny.cuny.edu with the tags

  • gridaphobe/attended
  • gridaphobe/school-name = "The City College of New York"
  • gridaphobe/school-location = "New York, NY"
  • gridaphobe/major = "Computer Science"
  • gridaphobe/gpa = 3.95
  • gridaphobe/start-date = "2009-08-28"
  • gridaphobe/end-date = "2012-05-25"

Now I have some nice metadata about where I worked and went to school, but I'm missing the most important part of a resume, my contact info! The solution is simple; every Fluidinfo user has a special object representing them. It has the about tag 'Object for the user named $user.' So I tagged my user object with

  • gridaphobe/given-name = "Eric"
  • gridaphobe/family-name = "Seidel"
  • gridaphobe/cell-phone = "+1 225 276 2830"
  • gridaphobe/email = "eric@eseidel.org"
  • gridaphobe/summary = "Seeking opportunities to further skills and experiences in research that leverage my expertise in software design and implementation, particularly in a multidisciplinary and collaborative environment."

With all the metadata in place (I've had a few internships since I worked at Apple, but this is a simple example) I wrote a simple webapp using Flask, Google App Engine, and the fantastic Fluid Object Mapper, which grabs the metadata from Fluidinfo and places it in a nice template that I found online. It also marks up the resulting resumé using the hResume format, a microformat for writing resumé metadata.

Right now my webapp only shows my info, and doesn't allow me to add new info via a nice web-interface, but that will come soon. I also plan to make it work for anyone with a Fluidinfo account and the correct tags. Feel free to check out the source at GitHub.