names, elevator speeches, slides, and marketing

As I mentioned in the last telcon, we're responsible
for marketing this technology as much as developing it.

I heard a bit of grumbling about the name BRQL recently...
please let's hear some suggestions for alternatives.
I don't like "RDF Query Language" for the same reason
I no longer like "XML Schema" -- it's lazy and impolite
to take the generic name, as if all other RDF query
languages will cease to be useful and no new ones
will ever be developed. XML is obviously a successful
choice of names; it's been said that the choice of names
was the most important decision the XML WG ever made.
I like OWL too -- it's based on the name of the technology,
but it's a real word, with connotations of wisdom etc.

When setting up the homepage for our group, I felt obliged
to put a one-sentence "elevator speech" description of
the WG at the top; I tried to find something from the charter,
but nothing really struck me. While doing some recent maintenance,
I decided this bit from UC&R is headed in the right
direction:

"... an RDF query language and data access protocol could be used in the
construction of novel, useful Semantic Web applications in areas like
web publishing, personal information management, transportation, and
tourism."
  -- http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/DataAccess/

I look forward to seeing AndyS's xmlopen slides; I hope
contact with that audience will hope us refine our message.

Speaking of slides, the history of the WG at the bottom
of the homepage includes a couple presentations:

"3 March 2004 
        Querying the Web panel at the W3C Technical Plenary
1 March 2004 
        RDF Data Access Working Group presentation to the SemWeb IG
        meeting"

Anybody who'se preparing to speak about DAWG should
feel free (but not obliged) to borrow from those.

Anybody else doing any outreach? Got any whitepapers
or anything we can borrow from?

How about during the course of convincing your management
that you should spend your time here... did you have
you had any inspired thoughts?



-- 
Dan Connolly, W3C http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/

Received on Sunday, 5 September 2004 19:33:57 UTC