Colin Clark - University of Toronto

Bio

Colin Clark is the lead developer for the Fluid Project, an open source
community dedicated to improving the user experience of other open
source software projects. He is currently involved in user interface
development work within the uPortal, Moodle, Sakai, and Kuali Student
communities. Colin has worked in the field of inclusive design and
software development at the University of Toronto's Adaptive Technology
Resource Centre for ten years.

Colin has contributed his design, accessibility, and development skills
to a variety of web and desktop software projects. Many of these
projects have involved pushing the boundaries of accessibility and
usability techniques in order to provide a more personalized experience
for all users. As a result, he has a deep interest in software
personalization, content aggregation, and portals. Colin also led the
development of large-scale enterprise applications designed to improve
the course calendaring workflow at the University of Toronto. This work
provided him with an awareness of the needs and challenges faced by
developers and implementors in higher education who have to contend with
decentralization, limited budgets, and high student expectation of
academic technology.

Colin has been keenly following the progress of the JA-SIG community for
several years. He has enjoyed getting to know people at the various
conferences and developer workshops over the past year, and looks
forward to committing core improvements to uPortal's user interface in
the coming months. Colin is very interested in finding the best ways to
collaborate with designers and other developers to integrate
user-centered designs into the community source development process.

When he has time, Colin writes about software architecture, usability,
and agile software development at the Fluid Project Blog and his own
Code Scents blog.

Platform Statement

As lead developer of the Fluid Project, I'm committed to working as a
member of the JA-SIG community to help make uPortal's user interface
even more usable and accessible to all users, regardless of ability. In
my mind, user experience issues are essential to the ongoing success and
evolution of the product, and I feel that I can contribute this
perspective to the steering committee by offering advice and direction
towards a seamless user interface for uPortal.

As a community member and someone with a long-standing interest in
personalization and content aggregation, I'm committed to the success of
the uPortal project as a whole. As a stakeholder on the steering
committee, I can also help to ensure that Fluid's timelines and goals
are best aligned with those of uPortal, such that we can contribute to
the highest priority issues identified by the JA-SIG community.

I bring a diverse background and skill set to the uPortal Steering
Committee, with a long-standing interest in software architecture,
inclusive design, and project coordination. I look forward to the
opportunity to share this experience with the community, helping with
the requirements gathering, strategy, and decision-making that will
ensure uPortal's continuing growth and success as a platform for users
in higher education.