Introduction: Thom Bunting

Thom Bunting works on project management of JISC Observatory and Innovation Zone activities as well as developing and managing ISC online resources. In his Web Manager role, Thom plans and creates data-driven websites and looks after existing sites related to UKOLN and some of its previous activities.

Thom’s current interests include:

• content management technologies supporting consumption and production of dynamic data sets
• automated generation of metadata from large collections of content
• sharing of content and data across systems
• visualisation tools capable of producing interactive, data-rich infographics

These interests build on Thom’s previous experience with leading-edge Web, digital TV, and mobile technology developments, within commercial and academic contexts.

As part of a recent development project Thom has created a new platform for the UKOLN online magazine Ariadne, which makes it easier to find connections and track trends across more than 1,600 articles published from 1996 to date. Based on Drupal, and featuring Highcharts JS functionality, this new version of Ariadne includes a tagging system to generate rich sets of metadata and highlight emerging trends across a broad range of content.