{"id":137,"date":"2024-11-11T16:55:54","date_gmt":"2024-11-11T21:55:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/?p=137"},"modified":"2024-11-11T16:55:54","modified_gmt":"2024-11-11T21:55:54","slug":"open-source-techfinder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/11\/open-source-techfinder\/","title":{"rendered":"Open Source TechFinder"},"content":{"rendered":"Inspired by the AUTM conference, I got inspired to look at some of the common processes techtransfer folks do. Main idea was to try to develop something relatively &#8216;standalone&#8217; that might address a use case I learned about, so I decided on building a web-based open source techfinder tool to publish licensable technologies.<br \/><br \/>The notion of a &#8216;techfinder&#8217; isn&#8217;t specifically new &#8211; many departments have one &#8211; I think AUTM itself even has one. However, I decided I&#8217;d try my hand at putting something basic together, partially as a challenge to build something &#8216;start to finish&#8217; that could stand on its own, as opposed to just enhancements to current systems.<br \/><br \/>A main question that has no simple answer: where to draw the lines around functionality? Having seen various systems, there&#8217;s common behaviour, but lots of variation &#8211; tag clouds vs nested hierarchies vs nothing, for example. Speed &#8211; some systems are fast, some slow. <br \/><br \/>When deciding how much to put in a base system, I&#8217;m also aware that not everyone will have the skills to get everything set up, and I&#8217;m trying to figure out where to draw the line between simplicity and complexity.<br \/><br \/>How important is full text search? Fuzzy searching (to handle spelling mistakes by the end user)? Semantic\/AI-enhanced search? Searching of any provided support documents? Speed? Any type of analytics\/usage tracking?<br \/><br \/>How are you handling techfinder-type systems in your office operations? Would you use them more if they provided more functionality?<br \/><br \/>If you&#8217;re interested in learning more about the system under development, let me know. I&#8217;ll likely post about it here in the coming weeks, but happy to discuss any specific details before then.","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Inspired by the AUTM conference, I got inspired to look at some of the common processes techtransfer folks do. Main idea was to try to develop something relatively &#8216;standalone&#8217; that might address a use case I learned about, so I decided on building a web-based open source techfinder tool to publish licensable technologies. The notion&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"_kad_post_classname":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":138,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/138"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kimsal.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}