Defining What Linked Data Meme is to various audiences (Parents, CEOs, VCs, etc.)

All,

Here is a simple statement that describes the Web inflection ushered in 
by the Linked Data meme:
Describe yourself, your wants, and your offerings clearly, and then 
leave the Web to do the REST.
The emergence of HTML+RDFa combined with vocabularies such as 
GoodRelations makes the above completely feasible in a very webby way.

I know I've stated this in the past, and it certainly was reiterated 
during my recent podcast interview with Jon Udell [1].

Anyway, in response to Juan's question, and for future reference, here 
is how I articulate what the Linked Data meme is about to the following 
audiences:

My parents (assuming they already use the Web) -- How you could find out 
your grandkids want, would like to have, and where to get it, amongst 
many other things that make you instantly cool them, while driving their 
parents nuts :-)

My wife -- How you can express the fact that you want a Nanny or Play 
date for the kids, on a certain date, at a certain time, at a certain 
location etc.. How we find a contractor to deal with house repairs. 
Easily figure out where go for our next date or what's the latest and 
greatest takeout in our area etc..

My siblings -- Figure out openings in our calendars for the next family 
gathering. Ditto preferred locations etc. Keeping track of ourselves

My my friends -- Ditto.

A CEO -- How you effectively support your organization's chosen market 
leadership discipline be it: Innovation, Operational Excellence, or 
Customer Intimacy,  the kicker ultimately comes down to your ability to 
access and process relevant data within shrinking data discovery and 
processing cycles (i.e., Agility).

Marketing & Sales Executives -- Discoverable and discernible 
articulation of product value proposition. For example, what's in your 
product catalog? What are the features and benefits of these products / 
services? How much do they cost, and from what locations can they be 
acquired etc?

The Enterprise Data Analyst / Systems Integrator -- how you finally 
address those age-old data integration challenges (that impede 
productivity and enterprise agility) using RDF Views to construct a 
Virtual Data Layer atop your heterogeneous data sources, thereby moving 
the focus of you data access and manipulation activities from the 
Logical Level (e.g. RDBMS) to the Conceptual Level.

Developer (those who develop solutions deployed to public or private 
HTTP based networks) -- You have a Web Wide Data Source Name (DSN) 
mechanism for your solutions that provides separation of: data identity, 
storage, access, representation, and presentation, at your disposal. 
Thus, you no longer need to build FISHY solutions that are Code Heavy 
and Data Model Lite. Basically, your Code will get thinner while 
actually lasting much longer. You will no longer be held hostage by any 
operating systems, programming language, database engine, application 
deployment platform, or ideological mono-culture in the solution 
development value chain.

A VC and Investors in general -- Access to higher quality market 
research data via the Web, since you can go beyond Press Releases to 
really understand market places, opportunities,  and the real location 
of your much treasured "hockey sticks".

A Government -- Make the people's data openly available to the people 
who actually fund the data creation (tax payers). Open Access to 
structured Data is the most "shovel ready" of all projects; especially 
as are right in the middle of the Information Age. There is no quicker 
way to stimulate the economy than tapping into the immense power of the 
"Citizen Analyst". Just remember, what Blogging did for Politics and News.


The difference between a Web of Linked Data and Web 2.0 re. all of the 
above is that my starting point is a Web addressable Entity endowed with 
an HTTP URI that is a conduit to a negotiated representation of its 
structured metadata.  I have infinite dimensions of exploration at my 
disposal as opposed to a select number of unnavigable data silos endowed 
with questionable longevity. Nothing about the above is incongruent with 
privacy or security, as it relates to broad access to data within the 
enterprise, or across the World Wide Web.



-- 


Regards,

Kingsley Idehen	      Weblog: http://www.openlinksw.com/blog/~kidehen
President & CEO 
OpenLink Software     Web: http://www.openlinksw.com

Received on Thursday, 17 September 2009 15:06:44 UTC