Re: semantic technologies training/request

> I have not yet found during any of my trips distributed, connected,   
> open training centers
> possibly c/o universities, whre people could drop in and get some  
> guidance on how to get their hands dirty and have the chance to  
> spend some contact hours with students and tutors who may want to  
> share their expertise and help newcomers to become experts

Have you found this in any engineering discipline? It seems unusual to  
me.  If you want that kind of thing in the U.S., you pay very dearly  
for it.

On the U.S. side, our Marine Metadata Interoperability project is  
attempting to do good outreach for its semantic initiative and  
repository (see [1] for example). So we've been holding training  
workshops and the like, to the extent funding allows.  And we try to  
be very responsive to requests for additional training.

But this project (MMI and its semantic work) is not targeted at the  
semantic world, rather it is targeted at environmental scientists/data  
managers who may find some of these specific tools of use. (MMI was  
funded by the US National Science Foundation's Ocean Sciences  
division.)  We have to provide training in order to obtain any  
entrainment at all.

So I wonder, is it possible the amount of outreach is influenced by  
the primary goal of the tool developers -- developing new tools, as  
opposed to serving a particular group of end users?  Just a thought.

Another possibility is that research funding is still rather limited  
on semantic solutions, and making everything work well is hard, so the  
resources all go into development rather than outreach.

John

[1] http://marinemetadata.org/semanticframework

On Dec 28, 2008, at 2:55 AM, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:

> Greetings
>
> I am starting to be introduced to great sw tools being released by  
> the various EU funded projects, for which lots and lots
> of public money is been used
>
> such as
>
> http://ontoware.org/
> as well as lots of others
>
> Although all of these materials have some tutorials and  
> documentation, the need for
> face to face training is mounting, and likely to increase
>
>  I have not yet found during any of my trips distributed,  
> connected,  open training centers
> possibly c/o universities, whre people could drop in and get some  
> guidance on how to get their hands dirty
>  and have the chance to spend some contact hours with students and  
> tutors who may want to share their expertise
> and help newcomers to become experts
>
>
> If this is at all possible, dear Santa, it's on my wishlist, and in  
> my prayers for 2009
>
>
>
>
> -- 
> Paola Di Maio
> *************************************************
>


John

--------------
John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@mbari.org>  -- 831-775-1956
Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org

Received on Monday, 29 December 2008 16:14:38 UTC