Re: GEDCOM to JSON-LD: Request for Feedback

On 04/22/2015 01:11 PM, Tom Morris wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 12:36 PM, todd.d.robbins@gmail.com 
> <mailto:todd.d.robbins@gmail.com> <todd.d.robbins@gmail.com 
> <mailto:todd.d.robbins@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
>
>     I'm new to the list but would love your feedback on our effort to
>     convert and serialize GEDCOM data [1] as JSON-LD. Take a look at
>     our research notes and source code here:
>
>     https://github.com/earlysaints/database/blob/master/gedcom2jsonld.md
>
>     We're particularly interested in approaches to representing
>     content and nested nodes. This is the beginning of our effort, but
>     we wanted to get the larger community involved now to get a better
>     sense of the challenges other groups have faced when fitting
>     certain data models into JSON-LD.
>
>
> Perhaps there's an underlying motivation for this effort that I'm 
> missing, but, on the surface, it doesn't make any sense to me.

I think it would be fantastic if some of the data in GEDCOMs started 
living out on the Web and could be linked to other information. I think 
it could sprout a large number of innovative projects. IMO, being able 
to access, via the Web, more targeted and granular parts of family trees 
and better link to evidence around the Web would be very powerful in 
furthering genealogical discovery. You could also start to link the data 
more easily with DNA reports and so forth -- potentially opening up the 
ability for running big data algorithms on the Web to put together a 
global family tree. Anyway, I see a lot of upside to using a Linked 
Data, Web-native format.

-- 
Dave Longley
CTO
Digital Bazaar, Inc.
http://digitalbazaar.com