Author Archives: Thomas Thurner

Thomas Thurner

Vienna Semantic Web Meetup – the next season

by , Category: Corporate Semantic Web, Enterprise 2.0, Internet & Media, Linked Data & Open Data, Mashups & Web services, Open Government Data

Started mid 2009, Vienna Semantic Web Meetup (VSWM) goes now in it’s third year. Hosted by various partners, from media to culture and from corporate to academic, this regular gathering now counts over 200 members. As it is a good tradition at VSWM, people from abroad are visiting by, giving input and new insights. Also the next season of VSWM will bring this mixture of international connection and informal meeting in putting two upcoming topics onto the agenda.

Digital Identity on the Semantic Web
Thursday, April 7, 2011

While recent developments in ICT make it easier for companies and consumers to reach each other, they can also scatter your personal information more widely, making life easier for criminals. On the other hand public institutions and government agencies are collecting personal data too. So personal data is processed without the consensus (or even the knowledge) of the respective citizen. As we know, leaks in this field may unleash sensible personal data as well. The misuse of personal data can be restricted – this is a challenge to both, the technological and the juridical domain. This meetup takes a look on how Semantic Web Technologies can take over its responsibility in this emerging field.

  • Christof Tschohl (BIM)
    Ludwig Boltzmann Institute for Human Rights
  • Mischa Tuffield (Garlik)
    A Standards-based, Open and Privacy-aware Social Web (W3C)

>> read more, and register for free

Portals, Apps and Visualizations for Open Government Data
Wednesday, June 15, 2011

Picking up Keith Andrews suggestion, this is a MeetUp focusing on tools, services and projects dealing with Visualization, Apps-creation and Portals/Catalogs for Open [Government] Data. As this MeetUp is on the eve of Austrians first Open Government Data – Conference (OGD2011) we expect to meet experts ans enthusiasts from Austria and abroad.

  • Keith Andrews (IICM)
    Institute for Information Processing and Computer Supported New Media at Graz University of Technology
  • Andreas Blumauer (SWC)
    Storing, searching, serving Open Government Data – getting an overview on the growing market for open data solutions

>> read more, and register for free



Thomas Thurner

EU-Report on the requirements for a paneuropean Open Government Data Portal

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data, Open Government Data, Tools & Software

The recently published report on a hearing of an experts in Luxembourg this November, provides a snap-shoot on the discussion if a central open data infrastructure may make sense. The experts group list several positive effects like union-wide comparability of some government data set, as well as the role of being motor for national and regional initiatives. It is stressed several times, that a swift progress, in coming those plans reality, is crucial for success.

Read more at: Report – Technical workshop on the goals and requirements for a pan-European data portal

Thomas Thurner

data.reegle.info – Linked Open Data on Clean Energy

by , Category: Linked Data & Open Data

Following the worldwide trend of Open Government Data as well as Linked (Open) Data the reegle.info team has decided to launch a reegle data portal in November 2010: data.reegle.info.

The idea of providing raw data (first mentioned by Sir Tim Berners Lee in the course of the W3C Linked (Open) Data movement) for free and unrestricted re-use follows the idea and objectives of the reegle.info information system as the single point of access for worldwide clean energy data (renewable energy as well as energy efficiency).

On data.reegle.info you can find data on stakeholders in the clean energy area as well as country (energy) profiles from the 1st day of the launch in November 2010 – later on the reegle.info team will open up its renewable energy and energy efficiency thesaurus (SKOS format) for public re-use and continuously will open up and provide more and more clean energy data on data.reegle.info. As license for data.reegle.info the Open Government Data License for public sector information is used. data.reegle.info follows W3C standards and recommendations for Linked Open Data as well as Open Government Data.

For developers data.reegle.info have created a comprehensive developer guide as well as a SPARQL endpoint as the central API to the reegle.info data. So the the reegle.info consortium  hopes that data.reegle.info initiates a lot of new (data) mash ups as well as innovative apps using data.reegle.info.

Thomas Thurner

Paneuropean Open Government Data Survey – join now!

by , Category: Open Government Data, Tools & Software

LOD2 project is currently circulating a survey aimed at people interested in open government data. If you are interested in government information (whether as a publisher, producer, reuser or consumer) LOD2 – team would be very grateful for 10-15 minutes of your time to let them know about what you would like to see from the technology developed by LOD2.


You can find the survey at survey.lod2.eu
The survey will be open until the 17th December 2010.

Very much appreciated, is any help in forwarding this to relevant colleagues or suggestions for people this should be  to, and for any blogging/tweeting to make sure as many potentially interested people as possible have the opportunity to respond! If you have any questions or issues about the survey please don’t hesitate to contact Martin Kaltenböck <m.kaltenboeck –at– semantic-web.at> or Thomas Thurner <t.thurner–at– semantic-web.at>.