Introduction: Harry Halpin

While I realize many of you many know each other from the previous RDB2RDF 
Incubator Group, I think doing a round of "introductions" before our first 
teleconference would be a great idea. So feel free to follow me!

I'm Harry Halpin, the W3C Staff Contact for this Working Group [1]. My 
role will basically to assist the group in getting the standard through W3C 
process on schedule. I'm more than happy to answer questions about the 
W3C, W3C Process, and our technology (such as the ever friendly Zakim), 
and will also help liason with the W3C in general for this group, 
including publicity, co-ordination with the rest of the W3C, and outreach. 
However, my job has been made a lot easier due the high calibre chairs of 
the group! Overall, I'm an advocate of Linked Data and think this 
technology could fulfill a crucial role in bringing the power of 
relational databases to the Web.

Before joining the W3C as a Fellow (sponsored by Eduserv and the 
University of Edinburgh), I received my Ph.D. in Informatics from the 
University of Edinburgh. However, I'm originally from America, as you'll 
notice on the phone. My academic specialities were in machine-learning, 
information retrieval, and knowledge representation (SemWeb) - and am 
mostly known academically for studying collaborative taggging as a complex 
system. However, I used to be a tutor for Peter Buneman at the University 
of Edinburgh, and thus have a long-standing interest in relational 
databases. I was also chair of the GRDDL WG (W3C record for shortest time 
to full Recommendation), and co-chair the Social Web Incubator Group.

I'll be either "harry" or "hhalpin" in #rdb2rdf on W3C IRC, 
hhalpin@jabber.org, and my contact details are on my homepage[1], and am 
also  available on Skype, Facebook, and the like. Whenever I am in IRC 
feel free to ping me.

Can't wait to meet you all - at least over IRC and phone :)

 		cheers,
 			harry

[1] http://www.w3.org/People/all#harry
[2] http://www.ibiblio.org/hhalpin/

Received on Wednesday, 14 October 2009 17:29:42 UTC