I’m Paul Rissen. I’m currently a Data Architect for BBC News Online, but I also teach, speak about the Web as a creative medium, dabble in Python, Flask and RDF/N3, and write fiction. I specialise in linked (and structured) data, am an advocate for open data, agile development, user experience, information architecture and progressive enhancement/adaptive design. My main area of interest is in narrative and its’ application on the fundamental building blocks of the Web – URIs, hyperlinks and REST. I also love Doctor Who.
Here’s some things I’ve written recently. There’s also my newsletter, Write Like Nobody’s Reading, which you can have delivered straight to your email inbox – it’s short pieces of fiction, (almost) every day.
2015
- 17th February: From Void, to Matter, to Meaning, a response to a piece by Cennydd Bowles on the meaning of Information Architecture
2014
- 14th September: The Beauty of Difference of Opinion, a plea for a better standard of discussion and debate over cultural objects
- 22nd July: A Future of Politics and News Online, playing around with BBC News, Parliament and GOV.UK APIs, learning Python (and Flask) whilst doing so.
- 9th July: Falling Out of the World – RIFT’s Macbeth, a review of an immersive theatre experience
- 30th May: Future (and Past) Imperfect, I saw ‘X-Men – Days of Future Past’, and had some opinions about it
- 7th May: Some quick thoughts on URLs, on paying attention to the URLs you craft, the benefits and disadvantages of hiding them from users.
- 13th March: On Design as a Service, should UX teams be centralised in a large organisation?
- 9th January: My Mission for 2014: Writing is Structure, I get all excited about writing, then promptly don’t for a couple of months.
30 Days of Music – 2014 edition
- 24th June: A song from a band you hate
- 27th May: A song from your favourite band
- 23rd May: A song that makes you fall asleep
- 21st May: A song you can dance to
- 18th May: A song you know all the words to
- 17th May: A song that reminds you of a certain event
- 16th May: A song that reminds you of somewhere
- 15th May: A song that reminds you of someone
- 14th May: A song that makes you feel sad
- 13th May: A song that makes you happy
- 12th May: Your least favourite song
- 11th May: Your favourite song
- 9th May: 30 Days of Music, an introduction to a series of music-based writing prompts