Zach Beauvais

Curriculum Vitae

Nationality: United States of America (resident without restriction in the United Kingdom)
Born: 1984
Gender: Male

Career Objectives:

To produce positive impact in the most effective and interesting way possible
To take opportunities to apply reasoning through efficient communication to solve problems; and to have the responsibility to make that difference
To help others reach their full potentials while maintaining a good environment in order that the entire network may see positive results

Relevant Employment:

Talis Information Ltd:

April 2008 - Present
Researcher

Talis—Shared Innovation—is exploring and applying semantic web technologies to business, education, and potentially public-sector markets. By researching high-level concepts, and synthesising ideas though blogs and print, as well as at conferences, I am working with Talis to advance its innovations. My position is with the Talis Platform, a Semantic Web enabling medium, and I work through Talis blogs and also edit the magazine Nodalities.

For more information on Talis, or for more information on my perspectives from here, feel free to email me on: zach.beauvais(at)talis.com.

Grandstand Media Ltd

Jan 2007 – Dec 2007
New Media Executive

Grandstand Media, organisers of Horse of the Year Show and the British Open Show Jumping Championships employed me to project-manage their electronic marketing and online presence. I was responsible for furthering Grandstand’s brand on the web—now their primary marketing tool—, for exploring the potential for Social Media involvement and for developing content with the marketing department. My remit included the production of the British Open official programme, press office work, and some graphic and digital design.

Yesterday, I had a nightmare journey. It was the kind you think is made up by travel writers to pad out the pages between interesting sights and ‘how-to’s of ticket management. It didn’t help that my reason for going was to have a chat with the JobCentre Plus (Plus benefits, I assume) about allocation of a National Insurance number.

The first leg of the journey was fine: train to Shrewsbury. I sat down to enjoy a book and baguette (brilliant combination until you take a bite out of your novel) and noticed that the notice on the gantry sign kept changing: next train-on time–next train-cancelled. Well, which one is it? Turns out, I just had to wait 25 minutes for the next one. No worries, I’m reading and drinking caffeine-containing hot stuff (It’s not coffee. This is coffee.)

So, I’m late into Telford, but I was going to be an hour early anyway. I have a Google Map printout, but I don’t want to risk it, so I jump in a Taxi, explaining that I’ll need cash first, then on to the Jobcentre Plus (Plus and Minus?). The Royal Bank of Scotland was just across the retail park which is Telford centre, so I tried to get cash out there… no luck. I shrug embarrassedly at the driver, who shakes his head as if to say: "Oh, bloody hell… I’m taking him to t’JobCentre Plus (Plus Jobs for foreigners, no doubt!) and he’s got no bloody money."

So, across to Asda, which looks more hopeful–there being three cash machines from different banks. Brilliant…but no.

I am a firm believer in the idea that a little knowledge is dangerous. When you overhear a conversation in which one person says to another (imagine whatever derisory accent adds to the flavour-I always seem to hear Watford…):

"Yeah, ever since I watched that (insert celebrity TV show) the other day, I gave up (eating, drinking, buying) + (wheat, white wine, bleach…). Really makes you think, donnit?"

I always, always wince and imagine having the temerity (or bad manners) to break in with questions about the speaker’s level of intelligence, trust in an over-paid celebrity, or belief in a ridiculous cult of misinformation. Allergies seem to be a favourite topic in these conversations, I’ve noticed.

I find the proponents of these ideas far more galling, however. Dieticians, ’scientists’ from dubious academic associations, ’specialists’ and ‘independent consultants’: all these people ruin their very titles for the proper holders. Worse is when people go off half-cocked and make a mint selling their partially-formed philosophy.

I have just discovered a new breed in the person of Lee Siegel. I will, in the interests of transparency, state that I only heard about the man today, at about 16:30, and I know about him only what Wikipedia does, so not much, and therefore have only a limited platform from which to wince and whinge.

After my trial implementation of  AdaptiveBlue’s Smartlink technology on this very site, I was contacted by Director of Business Development, Fraser Kelton, who agreed to a Questions and Answers session about Adaptive Blue’s new technology. For a quick introduction, I have been trying out AdaptiveBlue’s Blue Organiser for a few weeks and found their semantic features helpful and intuitive for finding and retreiving changing information, and decided to try out the Smartlink code to offer this to readers of my blog:

• What makes a link Smart?

  Traditional links are not smart, they’re simple pointers to pages. When we write about a book and link to the book’s page on Amazon we mean to link to the thing but the link points to the page.

  A link is smart when it’s capable of automatically identifying and understanding what the thing is on the page. Once the link is identified to mean a thing a lot of valuable information can be automatically presented to the user that’s contextually correct for the thing.

After my trial implementation of AdaptiveBlue’s Smartlink technology on this very site, I was contacted by Director of Business Development, Fraser Kelton, who agreed to a Questions and Answers session about Adaptive Blue’s new technology. For a quick introduction, I have been trying out AdaptiveBlue’s Blue Organiser for a few weeks and found their semantic features helpful and intuitive for finding and retreiving changing information, and decided to try out the Smartlink code to offer this to readers of my blog:

• What makes a link Smart?

  Traditional links are not smart, they’re simple pointers to pages. When we write about a book and link to the book’s page on Amazon we mean to link to the thing but the link points to the page.

  A link is smart when it’s capable of automatically identifying and understanding what the thing is on the page. Once the link is identified to mean a thing a lot of valuable information can be automatically presented to the user that’s contextually correct for the thing.