SW Marketing: Effective Sales Pitch for VCs and Non-Geeks in General

Hi,

I have to apologize. The previous subject of the thread arguably used
the term girlfriend as a pejorative. I was referring directly to my
girlfriend, who has had the patience to listen to my ramblings on the
semantic web over and over again. Of course the generalization is
totally out of line. It might sound sexist.

What this mistake proves is probably quite the opposite, for the Nth
time: I am the thoughtless one in this relationship!

I copy the original thread below:


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Hausenblas, Michael <michael.hausenblas@joanneum.at>
Date: Thu, Jul 10, 2008 at 1:22 AM
Subject: RE: SW Marketing: Effective Sales Pitch for VCs / Girlfriends / etc?
To: Aldo Bucchi <aldo.bucchi@gmail.com>
Cc: public-lod@w3.org, Semantic Web <semantic-web@w3.org>



[Note: changed LOD mailing list to the new one; the MIT-list is not used
anymore]

Aldo,

+1 to more or less everything you say.

>1) I think Mr Cyganiak's diagram could use some numbers ( how many
"records" are there in this giant database? )

This is actually one of the driving force behind voiD [1] - have a look
at the stats examples; pls. note that we're still defining the
vocabulary, so take this as a strawman proposal, rather. We are
currently heavily working on it, please expect some solid results by end
of August, latest. I've put a simple editor online as well [2]; this
tool should by in sync with the voiD vocabulary all time.

>2) We could setup a space devoted to marketing. Maybe in some of the
community wikis ( does this exist already? )

There is! I'd recommend using

http://community.linkeddata.org/MediaWiki/

for all linked data related marketing; please feel free to add as
needed, there.

Cheers,
       Michael


[1] http://community.linkeddata.org/MediaWiki/index.php?VoiD
[2] http://sw.joanneum.at/ve/


----------------------------------------------------------
 Michael Hausenblas, MSc.
 Institute of Information Systems & Information Management
 JOANNEUM RESEARCH Forschungsgesellschaft mbH

 http://www.joanneum.at/iis/
----------------------------------------------------------


>-----Original Message-----
>From: semantic-web-request@w3.org
>[mailto:semantic-web-request@w3.org] On Behalf Of Aldo Bucchi
>Sent: Wednesday, July 09, 2008 10:03 PM
>To: Semantic Web; linking-open-data-request@simile.mit.edu
>Subject: SW Marketing: Effective Sales Pitch for VCs /
>Girlfriends / etc?
>
>
>Hi All,
>
>Hopefully more and more of you are meeting up with VCs or selling
>internal projects using semantic web technologies.
>
>I sold my first RDF based project 5 or 6 years ago and lately I have
>had some tough VC/fund raising presentations. I realized that I have
>definitely improved my sales pitch over the years, so I thought I
>would share some brief thoughts with you guys and hopefully get some
>feedback and novel ideas.
>
>My current approach when selling a project that includes Semantic Web
>( specifically Linked Data ) technology is simple. I only use only TWO
>slides to talk about Semantic Web per-se:
>
>1) I replaced the web layer cake for this slide[1]
>2) Then I jump to the LOD cloud diagram by Richard Cyganiak[2]. I
>emphasize on the size of the datasets and how this is something that
>has never happened before.
>3) That's it. No more semweb talk. Focus on the value proposition and
>answer questions as they appear.
>
>The other useful diagram I have found useful is Nova Spivack's web
>evolution timeline[3] ( very buzz friendly ). The problem with that
>particular diagram is that it imposes an abritrary classification
>(1.0, 2.0, 3.0 ) and you will most probably run into some friction.
>
>
>So... I am sure lots of you have learned and mastered their
>own sales pitch...
>
>What is yours?
>Any new diagrams that I don't know of?
>
>
>And two suggestions:
>1) I think Mr Cyganiak's diagram could use some numbers ( how many
>"records" are there in this giant database? )
>2) We could setup a space devoted to marketing. Maybe in some of the
>community wikis ( does this exist already? )
>
>And don't tell me that marketing is not important. This whole Linked
>Data / SW re-branding has really made some noise.
>( I know LD is not the SW, but it is a visible part of it ).
>
>
>Thanks!
>A
>
>[1]
>http://blog.aldobucchi.com/2008/07/how-to-explainthe-semantic-w
eb-in-3.html
>[2] http://richard.cyganiak.de/2007/10/lod/
>[3] http://novaspivack.typepad.com/RadarNetworksTowardsAWebOS.jpg
>
>--
>:::: Aldo Bucchi ::::
>+56 9 7623 8653
>skype:aldo.bucchi
>http://aldobucchi.com/
>
>



-- 
:::: Aldo Bucchi ::::
+56 9 7623 8653
skype:aldo.bucchi
http://aldobucchi.com/


-- 
:::: Aldo Bucchi ::::
+56 9 7623 8653
skype:aldo.bucchi
http://aldobucchi.com/

Received on Thursday, 10 July 2008 16:21:37 UTC