Notes from Tuesday morning Semantic Technology Conference

Here are my notes from Tuesday morning at

www.semantic-conference.com

==============================================================================
Tuesday, 6/16/2009
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Opening Keynote Session 8:30AM - 10:00AM

--------------------------------------------------
The Big Picture - How Semantic Technologies Introduce a New Paradigm for Interaction
Tague, Thomas, Thomson Reuters OpenCalais Initiative
Business / Non-Technical
Foundational Topics

How did we get here (e.g., Web 2.0)?
- Web 1.0 - the last web we agree on (destinations)
- Web 2.0 - social; user generated content; atomize assests and distribute

Where are we today?
- Content Rich
- Information Poor
- Experience Poor

Semantic Technology
- 5 years ago: invention; from basic conceptual models to standards
- today: drive value and make money on top

CALAIS

Input to him in 6 buckets
- Tools
- Social
- Advertising
- Search
- Publishing
- Interface

Consultant's Refuge
- The 2x2 grid
  Y: Distinctive User-Derived Value
  X: Marketplace Size
  B | A
  - + -
  D | C
  E.G.: A:Medicine, B:Accordians, C:Soap
  A + B: Various Kinds of Good
  D: Don't go here
  C: Brand Domain (Oil of Olay Soap)

Tools
- Semantic data management
- Semantic data generation
- Databases
- Integration and Workflow

Social
- Semantics-powered link sharing
- Network mining
- News sharing
- Tweet mining

Advertising
- Semantic ad placement
- Contextual ad placement
- Semantically-driving landing pages
- Mashup Ads

Semantic Search
- General "Semantic Search" viz Domain specific semantically enhanced search

Publishing
- A: Content Producers - back office to user experience
- B: Editorial + Aggregation Publishing Models
- D: Robotic publishing - aggregation only

Interface
- Pay attention: gaming industry: 57+ billion
- Videogames viz today's state of the web
  Great story line; highly interactive; immediate response
  No interruptions; Graphically engaging; Seamless; Fun
- Who is trying to change user experience?
  Zemanta; Apture; feedly; GetGlue.com
- If you want to deliver compelling user experience go to where people are:
  browsers, mobile devices
- Why is Google building a browser : it's the integration point

Roadmap
- Web 1.0 : web of destination
- Web 2.0 : fragmentation
- Web 3.0 : unification : "The Web of Me"

Suggestions for success
- Put your indea in the 2x2.  Be honest.  Stay out of deadzone.
- Decide if you care about semantics or about user value.
  If it's semantics - be a tool vendor.
- Don't fund/spend money on semantic infrastructure beyond what is necessary.
  The basic building blocks are available.
- Think hard about user experience.  Make it amazing.

--------------------------------------------------
The Game Changer: Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant
Gruber, Tom, CTO and cofounder: Siri
Business / Non-Technical
Semantic Applications

Bringing Intelligence to the Interface
- Touch screens and cinematic animation
- Global network for info and collaboration
- Awareness of temporal and social context
- Continuous Speech in and out
- Conversational Inteface : assistant talks back
- Delegation of tasks to the assistant
- Assistant use of personal data (trust)

How Close are we?

You can't talkt to a search engine this way.
"The future of search is a conversation with someone you trust" - John Battele

What is needed to put it all together?
location awareness; conversation interface; speech to text;
semantic data; text to intent; task awareness; dialog flow; services apis;
task and domain models; access to personal info

------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Conference Sessions 11:45AM - 12:45PM

--------------------------------------------------
BKN: Building Communities through Knowledge, and Knowledge Through Communities
Bergman, Michael K., Structured Dynamics
Business / Non-Technical
Collaboration and Social Networks

Funded by NSF

Overview of BKN
- Development tools and services for virtual organizations (VO)
- Select, Filter and enhance bibliographic data for each VO
- Bib collections
- AUthoring tols

Points
- VO nodes - collaboration portals
- Gateways - connections to external content
- Hubs - aggregate suppliers of useful datasets
- Individual - dataset contributers and clients

Formats
- BibJSON
- Various existing
- RDF - canonical internal data model

VO nodes
- structWSF - web services frameworks
- CMS: drupal
- RDF triplestore : Virtuoso
- Full-text, faceted search: Solr

Benefits 
- toolset for structured data (semantic Web) conversion, use and exposure 
- Data-drivenvia ontologies; easily scoped, tailored 
- Naïve data formats and RDF APIs via RESTful Web services 
- Web services framework can mix-and-match: 
  standalone, Integrated with any CMS, External tools access 
- Web-wide user and dataset access and permissions 
- Available as a distro of the Drupal CMS 
- Open source and extensible

DEMO
- http://ec2-75-101-176-82.compute-1.amazonaws.com/drupal/content/people
- users, roles, datasets
- http://ec2-75-101-176-82.compute-1.amazonaws.com/drupal/content/people&w... construct for data exchange is DATASET

The Backend Structure 
- Drupal: 
  User interface and theming 
  User and group management 
  Content management system 
  Many third-party tools and modules 
- Virtuoso: 
  RDF triple store 
  SPARQL and endpoints; linked data exposure 
  Some structured data conversions 
- Solr: 
  Full-text indexing 
  Faceting and aggregating (counts) 
  Innovative complete RDF search

structWSF (Web services framework) 
- Standard functionality: 
  Data management:  CRUD
  Browse and search 
  Browse and search 
  Import/export 
  Display templates 
- Dataset registration w/ permissions 
- Ontology registration 
- User authorization and access (IP-based initially) 
- RESTful design

Open-source Structured Content System:
- http://constructscs.com/
- OpenStructs.org

conStruct SCS 
- conStruct SCS is a structured content system 
- Open source version of the BKN project that runs on Drupal 
- Drupal components: 
  Drupal 
  conStruct module (core functionality) 
  structDisplay module (display templating) 
  Required additional modules (e.g., Organic Groups, WYSIWYG, etc.) 
- Structured Dynamics: 
  structWSF (Web services framework) 
- Third parties: 
  Virtuoso RDF triple store 
  Solr full-text faceted search 
  Smarty templating system