Sunday, March 15, 2009

Ontology Summit 2009: Toward Ontology-based Standards

A two day event, Ontology Summit 2009: Toward Ontology-based Standards, will be held 6-7 April 2009 at NIST in Gaithersburg MD. The Summit is co-organized by NIST and a number of other organizations.
"This summit will address the intersection of two active communities, namely the technical standards world, and the community of ontology and semantic technologies. This intersection is long overdue because each has much to offer the other. Ontologies represent the best efforts of the technical community to unambiguously capture the definitions and interrelationships of concepts in a variety of domains. Standards -- specifically information standards -- are intended to provide unambiguous specifications of information, for the purpose of error-free access and exchange. If the standards community is indeed serious about specifying such information unambiguously to the best of its ability, then the use of ontologies as the vehicle for such specifications is the logical choice. Conversely, the standards world can provide a large market for the industrial use of ontologies, since ontologies are explicitly focused on the precise representation of information. This will be a boost to worldwide recognition of the utility and power of ontological models. The goal of this Ontology Summit 2009 is to articulate the power of synergizing these two communities in the form of a communique in which a number of concrete challenges can be laid out. These challenges could serve as a roadmap that will galvanize both communities and bring this promising technical area to the attention of others."
The meeting is free, but advanced registration is required. You can also register to participate remotely.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

Video from Tim Berners-Lee 2009 TED talk on linked data

Here is the video of the talk that Tim Berners-Lee gave at the TED2009 conference on linked data.
You can see the slides that TBL used on the W3C site.

I may have missed it, but I don't think he mentioned the phrase "Semantic Web" once during the 16 minute talk.

Monday, March 2, 2009

Ian Davis code{4}lib keynote: data outlasts code

Ian Davis, CTO of Talis, posted the slides from his code4lib2009 keynote talk on slideshare. If you love something... set it free gives a very nicely done description of the motivation behind and hopes for the Semantic Web.

Code{4}lib is a conference series and community focused on the intersection of libraries, technology, and the future. code4lib2009 was held this week in Providence, hosted by the Brown University Library.

Ian's talk contained three conjectures, the first of which I especially liked:
  • Conjecture 1: Data outlasts code
  • Conjecture 2: There is more structured data in the world than unstructured
  • Conjecture 3: Most of the value in our data will be unexpected and unintended
(h/t Danny Ayers)