Re: RDF too geeky, and what to do about it

Hi Adrian Danny and Peter,

My 2 cents
There is always been a problem with people from different disciplines
communicating with each other. Technical and business being just one example
of a generalized problem. I do not thing the issue relates to RDF but how we
present the potential of technical advancements to people with other skill
sets. (The problem may be more noticeable in RDF just because it seems to
attract the type of people who may have more trouble understanding what
others do not understand...)

Personally I am lucky to be now working with a business person who can help
me translate the technical benefits into social, business or marketing
terms. I think that is what you may need to be looking at is simply
explaining why we are using RDF in terms that are relevant to  business:
Benefits verses cost, risk verses opportunity, what areas of business pain
can it hope to solve, etc. you only need a  one sentece overview of what RDF
is and how it works.
What we do not want to do is change RDF so that business department can
review the details of it's development.

I am wondering if a document like that, with business test cases etc, would
not make a realy useful W3C deliverable.  - A bit like what the EO group did
for the WAI

 All the beat

Lisa Seeman
  ----- Original Message ----- 
  From: Adrian Walker
  To: Danny Ayers
  Cc: peter.hunsberger@gmail.com ; www-rdf-interest@w3.org
  Sent: Saturday, December 18, 2004 12:43 AM
  Subject: RDF too geeky, and what to do about it


  Danny, Peter --

  Here are my two cents about...

  "I don't know if it's the semantics or what, but for some reason RDF
  just comes across as too geeky for the business side of the house.
  Maybe it's just that they've been hearing OO for 10 years and believe
  that "Objects" are supposed to be something good so they instantly
  adopt them. (Resource? What's a resource?)."

  The e-Government Presentation at www.reengineeringllc.com argues that RDF
is way too geeky, that this will be dangerous in real world applications,
and that there is something we can do about it without throwing out the RDF
baby with the bathwater.

  That something we can do is to add some real world semantics -- far beyond
the limited view of semantics as equal to type information inside all those
angle brackets.

  The file
http://www.reengineeringllc.com/demo_agents/RDFQueryLangComparison1.agent is
an example of the approach that one can view, run and change using a
browser.

  HTH,   -- Adrian



  Dr. Adrian Walker
  Reengineering LLC
  PO Box 1412
  Bristol
  CT 06011-1412 USA

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