RE: Pre-Telecon Introductions

Hi all -- 

I'm Dan Appelquist and I'll be your co-chair for this voyage of discovery.

I should say that I'm somewhat of a semantic web sceptic, in that I don't
believe in "The Semantic Web."  However, I am a strong believer that the
Semantic Web activity and *community* have produced a raft of important
technologies which we are only now coming to grips with in the wider
community of the Web and which will have a seminal impact on the next step
of the Web's evolution.

I have been involved with W3C as Vodafone's Advisory Committee
representative since 2003. I helped to create the Mobile Web Initiative[1]
in which I am have and am currently co-chairing the Mobile Web Best
Practices working group[2]. I am also involved in the work in Widgets
happening in the Web Applications[3] working group (and in the BONDI
initiative from OMTP[4]).  I was involved in the genesis of the POWDER
working group[5] and in the Content Labels XG that preceded it and I hope
that we can reference work done in that group as one our building blocks.  I
twitter at @torgo and I blog at http://torgo.com/.

I hope I can bring an industrial sensibility to the group.  From a Vodafone
perspective, we are interested in the future of social networking as it
really represents the future of communication and we are in the business of
communication. Through Vodafone and also through my work at MobileMonday
London[6] I am also connected to a number of small in the mobile industry,
many of which are developing social apps, for which I hope our work will be
relevant. 

I see the value of this group as being a place where a number of communities
are coming together. In my experience, when different communities come
together there is a great opportunity for advancement of knowledge and for
innovation, but there is also a great threat of misunderstanding and
mistrust.  I would like to encourage you all to approach the work of this
group with an open mind so that we can realize its potential to incubate
ideas, ecosystems and architectures towards the advancement of the social
web.

Dan Appelquist
Vodafone Group Research & Development

1. http://w3.org/Mobile
2. http://www.w3.org/2005/MWI/BPWG/Group/
3. http://www.w3.org/2008/webapps/wiki/Main_Page#Widgets
4. http://bondi.omtp.org
5. http://www.w3.org/2007/powder/
6. http://mobilemonday.org.uk