Re: List membership - more women

I'm also female and fairly new to the list...

I joined the list because I've recently started work on the Linking Web 
data for Education (LinkedUp project) [http://linkedup-project.eu] which 
aims to encourage use of linked and open data in particular by 
educational institutions and organizations.

My background isn't technical but I do have a history of working with 
technical people. I suppose my interest lies in moving linked data use 
beyond the usual suspects to the wider community. I've really enjoyed 
the list discussions I've read so far, but it does sometimes feel a 
little like an echo chamber, and there are a lot of assumptions about 
'what people out there know/or should know'. For example I really like 
Dominic's idea of compiling a list of end user applications & use cases. 
These type of lists can be hugely useful for those new to the area of 
linked data, and it's actually something we are working on in my project 
as part of the LinkedUp Challenge [http://linkedup-challenge.org] - a 
competition looking for interesting and innovative tools and 
applications that analyse and/or integrate open web data for educational 
purposes. Yet Kingsely commented "We don't need a central repository of 
anything, assuming we actually know what Linked Data is really about. " 
Sometimes it helps to take a step back.

Anyway I'm keen to participate in more conversations in the future and 
you sound like a friendly list, so I'm hoping there will be no 
judgements on my level of technical knowledge ;-)

After all, the aim is surely to get more people interested in creating 
and using linked data, and that sometimes requires opening up to new 
people who don't fully know the etymology or meaning of terms.

Marieke

-- 

Marieke Guy
Project Coordinator | skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 | 
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On 24/06/2013 10:38, Kate Byrne wrote:
> I participate in this list by reading and don't feel pressure to write 
> unless I have something to say. (This message is partly because 
> non-writers to the list were recently excluded from participating in a 
> poll, so I'm protecting myself for the future.) The point below about 
> ratio of posters to subscribers is surely correct, and perhaps the 
> number of regular posters is too small to allow us to draw conclusions 
> on gender?
>
> The fact that I'm still participating after the quite testing regime 
> of blast, counterblast and tiresome repetition we've been through 
> recently shows how valuable I think this list (usually) is. :-)
>
> Kate
>
> On 06/24/13 10:14, Dan Brickley wrote:
>>
>>
>> On 24 June 2013 10:34, Isabelle Augenstein 
>> <i.augenstein@sheffield.ac.uk <mailto:i.augenstein@sheffield.ac.uk>> 
>> wrote:
>>
>>     Hi Dominic,
>>
>>     I only joined the list a few months ago, so my observations might
>>     be inaccurate, but
>>
>>     - Overall, most discussions on the list seem to be rather
>>     philosophical (What is Linked Data? Does Linked Data require
>>     RDF?), which are not the kind of discussions I was hoping for
>>     when I joined the list in the first place
>>
>>
>> Quite. A lot of the initial enthusiasm about Linked Data was 
>> associated with a despair some felt about the "Semantic Web" slogan, 
>> which had got itself associated with overly-academic, 
>> complex-KR-obsessed and other unworldy concerns. I suspect this sort 
>> of churn is a natural part of the lifecycle of standards work; some 
>> are starting to feel about public-lod the same way.
>>
>>     - My guess would be that the ratio between subscribers and people
>>     posting on the list is rather low in general in addition to few
>>     women being subscribed to the list (But I bet we can get some
>>     statistics for that?)
>>
>>
>>  There are just over 1000 subscribers to the list (no gender figures 
>> available for those). You can see from 
>> http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-lod/2013Jun/author.html 
>> who the most vocal participants are.
>>
>> Dan
>
> -- 
> Kate Byrne
> School of Informatics, University of Edinburgh
> http://homepages.inf.ed.ac.uk/kbyrne3/
> location:http://geohash.org/gcvwr2rkb5hd
> twitter: @katefbyrne
>
> The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
>


-- 

Marieke Guy
Project Coordinator | skype: mariekeguy | tel: 44 (0) 1285 885681 | 
@mariekeguy <http://twitter.com/mariekeguy>
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