ePortfolio and Digital Identity 2008
Newsflash August 2008

Register now: Earlybird rate available until 31 August

In Brief

Conference programme

Regions take a lead in ePortfolio strategies and development

Liberty Alliance HR-EDU SIG Launch at Maastricht

Other news

• Earlybird registration ends 31 August!
• ePortfolio 2008 pre-conference activities
• ePortfolio 2008 sponsorship and exhibition - Winvision to be Silver Sponsor

 EIfEL is recruiting

Conference programme

This year's event will reflect the importance of specific "eportfolio application domains" and their well-established and new special interest groups. ePortfolio 2008 offers members an opportunity to meet and share experiences.

ePortfolio application domains include

•     ePortfolios in Regions and Territories
•     Healthcare ePortfolio
•     employability Portfolio
•     ePortfolio Research, Interoperability, and Digital Identity.

Plenary speakers confirmed include Odile Wolfs, Region of Limburg, Rens de Groot, President of the Board of Calibris, member of the High Level Committee on Labour Market Participation, former President of the Dutch Public Employment Services, Darren Cambridge, George Mason University, USA, Barbara Cambridge, National Council of Teachers of English, USA and Serge Ravet, EIfEL. A special plenary session devoted to the ePortfolio for regions and territories will feature presentations by Norman Longworth, President of the European Lifelong Learning Initiative and Vice-President of the World Initiative of Lifelong Learning, University of Stirling, Paul Wasko, eFolio Minnesota, Paul Messer, Careers Wales and Jangui Le Carpentier, Région Basse-Normandie.

Helen Barrett, international ePortfolio consultant, will be running a 1-day interactive workshop on 22 October on 'Building a Personal Learning Environment in the Web 2.0 Cloud'.

The programme for the 6th international ePortfolio conference is available online.

Regional track

Regions take a lead in ePortfolio strategies and development

Building on the experience of the Nedcar initiative in the Limburg Provincie (the host of ePortfolio and Digital Identity 2008) the Dutch Committee on Labour Market Participation has recently produced a policy document entitled Towards a future that works recommending an ePortfolio for all workers.

• Every member of the labour force will be entitled to a digital e-portfolio, i.e. an electronic inventory of their competencies, diplomas, experience, and accreditation of prior learning (APL). This will give people a better understanding of their position on the labour market and their career prospects, and of any need they have for further training.

In France, following a call for tenders by Région Lorraine published last July, a new call for tenders was published this August by Région Basse-Normandie for the creation of a regional ePortfolio prototype. These initiatives follow the lead of pathfinder territories like Wales, Minnesota (USA) Victoria (Australia), Québec (Canada), Nottinghamshire (UK) and Wolverhampton (UK) who have demonstrated the value of developing ePortfolio strategies at national, regional, county and city levels. Several representatives from these initiatives will be present in a special keynote session (with Paul Messer, Wales, Paul Wasko, Minnesota) as well as in parallel sessions of the ePortfolio Regional Track.

A strong delegation of representatives from regional as well as local and national authorities is expected at the Conference to exchange practices and organise future co-operation.

Liberty Alliance HR-EDU SIG Launch at Maastricht

It is with great pleasure that we announce the official formation of the Liberty Alliance HR-EDU SIG. The formal launch of the SIG will happen during the first day of the ePortfolio and Digital Identity conference.

The list of founding member organizations includes the following industry leaders:  EIfEL, Entr'ouvert, EuroCV.eu, iProfile (fomerly known as SkillsMarket), Stepstone, Symlabs.  This SIG operates fully in the public domain and is open to public membership. Anyone may participate so please feel free to share this announcement with your colleagues.

The HR-EDU SIG has been charted to:

• Become an active public discussion forum for the market development and deployment of new draft ID-SIS profiles relevant for employability and life long learning context such as the HR-ID-SIS draft profile taking into account community needs and existing initiatives (such as European Europass Initiative).
• Become an active public discussion forum for studying cross interoperability issues with other related specifications (Dataportability, OpenID, OpenSocial) and driving consensus on common shared data model (such as CV).
• Develop a detailed roadmap to be published by the SIG participants on the public wiki that will serve to provide recommended next actions for the technical work required to the current stewards of the proposed new profiles and starting with the HR-ID-SIS draft profile.
• To foster long-term adoption of the ID-SIS Specifications especially by creating liaisons with other specifications bodies actives in these fields (AICC, CEN ISSS WS LT, IEEE LTSC, IMS Global, ISO SC36, HR-XML…) in the field of digital identity and social networks (OpenID, Dataportability, OpenSocial) and related projects or working groups (European projects TAS3, Aspect, French Universal CV project, French CV2020 working group…)

The full SIG charter can be found on the new wiki home page here:
- http://wiki.projectliberty.org/index.php/HR-EDU_SIG

All are welcome to join the SIG mail list - sig-hr-edu@lists.projectliberty.org - here:
- http://lists.projectliberty.org/mailman/listinfo/sig-hr-edu_lists.projectliberty.org

Other News

Earlybird rate ends 31st August

Delegates registering and paying before 31 August enjoy substantial discounts.

Discounts are cumulative - why not combine conference entry with EIfEL individual or organisational membership?

ePortfolio 2008 pre-conference activities

Join the members of the conference's community for pre-conference activities. Once you are registered as speaker or delegate, you can join existing groups or create you own to address the different topics of the conference. One of the first groups created is related to regional strategies for ePortfolio.

ePortfolio 2008 sponsorship & exhibition

We are delighted to welcome back Winvision, the Netherlands, as Silver Sponsor.

Do you offer an ePortfolio solution? Are you interested in meeting the international ePortfolio community? See the sponsorship and exhibition packages available to help you maximise your presence.

EIfEL is recruiting a Membership and Events Manager