Compared to ISWC or ESWC, two other major conferences in the area of semantic web, SemTechBiz is clearly the place to go if you´re interested in semantic web applications. Especially in the last three years we have observed a continuous growth of acceptance and demand for semantic web technologies in various industries. For many information professionals and IT managers it has become clearer than ever before that semantic web applications can solve several well-known problems in the areas of enterprise search, data integration, business intelligence and knowledge management.

Thus it was great news for us to have another SemTechBiz conference in place – this time in Berlin, which is one of the most vibrant cities in the world when it comes to innovative web technologies like linked data or open data. And again we will “explore how semantic solutions and linked data are being embraced throughout companies across a diverse range of disciplines and business categories”.

We hope to meet you at SemTechBiz Berlin 2012 (February 6-7) – PoolParty Team is present as Gold Sponsor and is looking forward to meeting you in the exhibition area to talk with you about your semantic web applications.

Related articles

• SEMTECH 2011: The Semantic Technology Conference (logicamp.wordpress.com)
• Notes from ISWC 2011 (phenoscape.org)
• I-Semantics: Get in touch with Europe´s Linked Data community! (semantic-web.at)

I-Semantics is a conference aiming to bring together science and industry:

• To address the needs and interests of industry the iPraxis track presents enterprise solutions that deal with semantic processing of data and/or information in areas like like Linked Data, Data Publishing, Semantic Search, Recommendation Services, Sentiment Detection, Search Engine Add-Ons, Thesaurus and/or Ontology Management, Text Mining, Data Mining and any related fields.
• In the exhibition area I-SEMANTICS 2012 will offer its participants a unique platform either to present latest and leading edge developments or to catch up with the developments of most innovative IT technologies, content applications, knowledge management trends and emerging market opportunities.
• For the first time in 2012 we will bring to you the I-CHALLENGE, consisting of the Best Paper Award, the Best Poster Award, the Best PhD Paper and the Linked Data Cup.
• I-SEMANTICS 2012 proceedings will be published in the digital library of the ACM ICP Series and will contain all accepted papers from the Research & Application track and the I-CHALLENGE. The topics of interest for research and application papers include (but are not limited to): The Web of Data, Quality of Semantic Data on the Web, Corporate Semantic Web, Semantic Content Engineering, Semantic Multimedia and (Linked) Data Ecosystems & Markets

Website: I-Semantics 2012

Related articles

• Looking back at I-SEMANTICS 2011 (semantic-web.at)
• I-Semantics: The Review in a Car – 2011 Edition (semantic-web.at)
• I-SEMANTICS 2011: Best Paper Award & Triplification Challenge Winners (semantic-web.at)
• I-Know & I-Semantics 2011 (socialsemantics.wordpress.com)

His talk is a plaidoyer for an open internet, that works independent from central control  and political implications, on top of open standards AND net neutrality. This is especially relevant when it comes to open data, where the social machinery of the web will help to improve many flaws democracy is facing today.

So, what are the implications: Study Web Science! And trigger gentle, non-violent change!

It was a pleasure to listen!

Alltogether this is another very important building block for an even broader adoption of the semantic web – and the Semantic Web Company is proud of being able to welcome some of the proponents of rNews in Vienna.

Tomorrow at our first “Open House” event (which is proudly presented by the Vienna Semantic Web Meetup) not only our guest list but also the speakers list is very promising:

• Evan Sandhaus, IPTC Delegate and Lead Architect For Semantic Platforms at The New York Times Company
• Andreas Gebhard, Member of the Board of Directors of the IPTC and a Managing Editor at Getty Images
• Stuart Myles, Lead of the Semantic Web Working Group of the IPTC and Deputy Director of Schema Standards at The Associated Press
• Marco Neumann, Lotico

Live Stream on Justin.tv

We will report about the talks on “the day after” but we are sure that this meetup will bring a lot of light into the ongoing discussion why media and press companies finally should start to adopt semantic web standards.

Related articles

• Impressions on the Schema.org Workshop (w3.org)
• The Semantic Web Media Summit (theconferencecircuit.com)
• New W3C Community Groups in the Semantic Web World (w3.org)

Image based on work by Paolo Mañalac

Thomas Schandl: An especially nice thing about this conference is that it’s co-location attracts people from two separate communities: Knowledge Management and Semantic Web. This serves as a natural facilitator for looking beyond the boundaries of one’s own domain and getting more than a glimpse of what’s currently happening in related fields.

That being said one of the most interesting talks I attended was a talk from KM expert Prof. Martin Eppler and his take on “Sketching at Work“, which introduced loads of sketching methods which can help to solve problems, inspire creativity and support communication.

From the Semantic Web side I enjoyed the innovative approach taken by Hasso Plattner Insitute‘s DBpedia powered quiz game Risq!. It is a Jeopardy-like Facebook game, that (besides being fun) sheds insights as to which facts are especially important to characterize a Linked Data resource. E.g. when the system wants you to guess a specific “female politician” would it help you more to know that she is part of the category yago:LivingPeople or would you rather get the hint that she is dbpedia:Chancellor_of_Germany?
By analyzing the logs of the played games, the researchers can find out which triples have more discriminative power than others.

Through the many personal encounters I also got a lot of input on which new features would be especially interesting for future versions of PoolParty and what we should concentrate on in the LOD interlinking project LASSO that Bernhard Schandl (Gnowsis / Refinder), Stefan Wunder (Neurovation) and me presented at the I-Praxis track.

Andreas Blumauer: Again, this year was absolutely worth coming to Graz also from a business perspective. For me it was the 10th time going to Graz. When I went to the second edition of I-KNOW in 2001 I remember that nearly nobody has ever heard of “semantics”. When I-SEMANTICS came to Graz the first time, this was in 2007, it was still unclear for most visitors how semantic technologies could contribute to a more efficient enterprise knowledge management. Nowadays, 10 years later, there is another question most prominent:

Which kind of semantic technology is solving my problem?

Being most of the time at our exhibition booth I enjoyed talking to visitors who had very concrete plans & ideas about how to use linked data, text mining or knowledge models for their business. The time when we had to explain what the “semantic web” is all about is over.

Christian Dirschl´s (Wolters Kluwer) keynote on Friday was exactly reflecting this fact: It´s good to see how big players have started to integrate the idea of linked data into their processes already. The days when we had to explain the difference between RDF and XML seem to be over. Or at least almost.

Florian Kondert: It was a vibrant atmosphere for me, since I didn’t make it to participate to just one track, but talking to interesting and interested persons at the booth without one break, instead.

From the participant’s perspective the conference as a networking platform was a huge success – and it definitely didn’t stop at dusk! It is worth pointing out the diverse needs and ideas on semantic use cases, that allow us to learn more with every discussion. The bottom line is that semantic solutions are badly needed for many organisations – and they start to realize, that there are no working alternatives at the moment.

On the other hand it is crucial to show up with real life examples, not just with prototypes that might work tentatively! As providers for semantic solutions we face decision makers on the highest level and they demand high level remedies – so, no time to take a break!

Tassilo Pellegrini: As the conference chair I really had an intense, but all in all very positive time at the conference. Interesting people, inspiring talks and a really good time at the socializing events (greetings to Leo Sauermann & Co. – I enjoyed the drinks!). For a general conference overview read my post from a few days ago.

But there is more to such a diverse conference as just talking about semantics. As some of you might know, beside my interest in Semantic Web, I have been involved in some policy consulting lately concerning the topic of net neutrality. At the conference I took the opportunity to talk to some telecommunications-savvy people and had some really great conversations (Harald … I really enjoyed our discussion!). But to my surprise I had to find out that – especially among the engineering guys – there seems to be very little awareness about the pressing social, cultural and economic consequences that an abandoning of net neutrality will have on the Internet as we know it today. For those readers who are into semantic web but not into the net neutrality discourse I want to reduce it to a very simple formula: without net neutrality you can say goodbye to linked open data. And this should really make us think and act!!

Related articles

• Semantic Web Company and punkt. netServices have merged (semantic-web.at)
• Looking back at I-SEMANTICS 2011 (semantic-web.at)

More than 70 scientific and 40 industry presentations provided a valid overview over current technological and organisational trends in various areas of semantic computing like text mining, information retrieval, visual analytics, semantic content engineering, social semantic web and linked data. Especially the last topic appeared in many different contexts, showing that the linked data paradigm is gaining traction as a horizontal topic that crosses domains and communities.

One of the conference’s unique characteristics is the high amount of attendees from industrial domains, searching for inspiration and solutions for practical problems on the one side, but also for diversification potentials of their business on the other side. In this respect the applied scientific approach of I-SEMANTICS / I-KNOW has proven to be a valid approach to scrutinize academic research against its reusability in industrial settings, transfer knowledge and skills between both communities and provide incentives for cooperative research and project engagement.

This cooperative spirit was also represented by the four key note speakers, who took a deliberate practical approach to show how high level research fertilizes organizational reflexivity and triggers change for sustainability on a societal, cultural and economic level. Hence, Daniel A. Heim, Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Konstanz, Germany, showed how visual analytics have a stake in solving organizational problems. Gloria Mark, Professor at the University of California, Irvine, USA, talked about the challenges that derive from informational multi-tasking. Stefan Rueger, Professor at the Knowledge Media Institute of The Open University, United Kingdom, gave a talk about “potential, automation and limits of knowledge discovery in the web” and Christian Dirschl, Head of Content Strategy Department at Wolters Kluwer Germany, gave an insight in how one of the global players in legal publishing is utilizing linked data and semantic web technologies to prepare for the next step in web-based business diversification.
The next I-SEMANTICS will take place from September 5-7, 2012 in Graz again. Hope to see you there and enjoy the impressions …

www.flickr.com

Can you please tell us about the aims and purpose of your tutorial and the importance of incorporating linguistic information in the Semantic Web?

With the continuing growth of linked data and semantic technologies the incorporation of linguistic descriptions into Semantic Web resources has become a challenging issue. The integration of linguistic information especially on a multilingual level could greatly benefit Natural Language Processing (NLP) applications. Furthermore, the continuing growth of ontologies for semantic modeling and the use of terminological resources to add human language descriptions has raised the issue of how to add linguistic information to ontologies and linked data vocabularies and to represent models of lexical and terminological information in a way which is compatible with Semantic Web standards. Prominent examples here are, for instance, multilingual language tags in RDF Schema or SKOS’s success in bringing terminological information to the Semantic Web.

In the Tutorial we would like to discuss trends and novel models such as Lemon – the lexicon model for ontologies – to show possible future directions. The tutorial is targeted at researchers and practitioners interested in learning how to enrich ontologies with linguistic information in one or several natural languages and NLP tool developers interested in understanding how Semantic Web resources can be leveraged fro NLP. There will be two hands-on sessions in this tutorial.

Why did you choose to use PoolParty thesaurus management system in your tutorial?

To create terminology models on the web there are only few tools available which are often very technical and not straightforward to use for non-experts. We found that PoolParty in contrast to other SKOS editors has an attractive and usable interface. In addition the web based interface was preferable, as it did not require the participants to download software, the immediate publishing of linked data is more compatible with linked data principles and the tool has similarities to our own tools for working with lemon.

Thank you for this interview!

The invited speaker of the “Semantic Enrichment” session was Pam Harley, Vice President, Product & Market Development of Semedica, a division of Silverchair.  Pam gave a high-level account of the possibilities and added value which comes with Semantic Enrichment, in a way suitable for the non-technical audience. I personally benefited particularly from the large variety of reasons for adopting Semantic Technologies in publishing which she presented and discussed in her talk (see also her slides).

My presentation (see also the slides) about the Semantic Web journal was part of the “Rethinking the Structure of Peer Review” session, and was focused on the open and transparent review process which we have adopted for the journal. After the presentation, throughout the event, I received ample feedback and remarks which in particular commended us for setting up a realistic improvement of the review process while avoiding radical changes which are likely to meet too much resistance from researchers. I certainly agree with this assessment. The presentation also contains a bit of information on how the journal is doing (in short: it’s doing great).

The seminar was a very enjoyable experience. In particular, it was enlightening to learn about publisher’s perspectives on scientific publishing, reviewing processes, and emerging revenue models. It was also nice to see that Semantic Web as a technology has a natural place in these discussions and is seeing more and more adoption in practice.

If you’re curious to learn more, have a look at the videos of the presentations.

[Author: Pascal Hitzler]

I-SEMANTICS 2011 (www.i-semantics.at) is the 7th conference in the I-SEMANTICS series and takes place from September 7 – 9, 2011 in Graz / Austria. I-SEMANTICS brings together both researchers and practitioners in the areas of Linked Data, Social Software and the Semantic Web in order to present and develop innovative ideas that help realising the “Social Semantic Web” and the “Corporate Semantic Web”.

I-SEMANTICS 2011 will be the host of the 6th AIS SigPrag International Conference on Pragmatic Web as well as the 4th edition of the TRIPLIFICATION Challenge. Further on I-SEMANTICS will be complemented by I-KNOW (www.i-know.at), the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management. This setup is aiming to reflect the increasing importance and convergence of knowledge management and semantic systems.

The scientific track invites long and short papers along the main topics “Linked Data and Web of Data” to “Semantic Web Applications and Application Building Blocks, Studies, Metrics & Benchmarks”. The papers will be published in the ACM ICPS series. The detailed CfP containing all scientific tracks can be found here: http://i-semantics.tugraz.at/scientific-track/call-for-papers

To address the needs and interests of industry the i-Praxis track invites enterprises and public organisations to present industry relevant solutions in the field of semantic technologies. Presenters will be granted free access to the conference and will have generous time slots to present their applications. The presentations will be published on the conference website. Please find more information here: http://i-semantics.tugraz.at/industry-track/call-for-papers

Important Dates:

• Submission Deadline: April 30, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance: May 30, 2011
• Camera-Ready Paper: June 30, 2011
• I-SEMANTICS 2011: September 7 – 9, 2011

I-SEMANTICS 2011 (www.i-semantics.at) is the 7th conference in the I-SEMANTICS series and takes place from September 7 – 9, 2011 in Graz / Austria. I-SEMANTICS brings together both researchers and practitioners in the areas of Linked Data, Social Software and the Semantic Web in order to present and develop innovative ideas that help realising the “Social Semantic Web” and the “Corporate Semantic Web”.

I-SEMANTICS 2011 will be the host of the 6th AIS SigPrag International Conference on Pragmatic Web as well as the 4th edition of the TRIPLIFICATION Challenge. Further on I-SEMANTICS will be complemented by I-KNOW (www.i-know.at), the 11th International Conference on Knowledge Management. This setup is aiming to reflect the increasing importance and convergence of knowledge management and semantic systems.

The scientific track invites long and short papers along the main topics “Linked Data and Web of Data” to “Semantic Web Applications and Application Building Blocks, Studies, Metrics & Benchmarks”. The papers will be published in the ACM ICPS series. The detailed CfP containing all scientific tracks can be found here: http://i-semantics.tugraz.at/scientific-track/call-for-papers

To address the needs and interests of industry the i-Praxis track invites enterprises and public organisations to present industry relevant solutions in the field of semantic technologies. Presenters will be granted free access to the conference and will have sufficient time to present their applications. The presentations will be published on the conference website. Please find more information here: http://i-semantics.tugraz.at/industry-track/call-for-papers

Important Dates:

• Submission Deadline: April 30, 2011
• Notification of Acceptance: May 30, 2011
• Camera-Ready Paper: June 30, 2011
• I-SEMANTICS 2011: September 7 – 9, 2011