A view from Semtech

The day after Schema.org v1.9, containing our latest proposal set, went live on Monday 19th, I had the good fortune to be at Semtech (Semantic Technology and Business Conference) in San Jose.

It is clear that in the web, semantic web and SEO communities, Schema.org is now mainstream.  This was reflected in the two separate keynotes from two Google folks, Dan Brickley (who runs Schema.org on behalf of Google, Bing, Yahoo! and Yandex) and R.V. Guha (well respected Google Fellow who created RSS, was key in RDF development and created Schema.org).  It was standing room only for both of the sessions.  

Through our work in the Schema Bib Extend Group, the bibliographic community has become recognised as a source of valuable input into the Schema.org process. 

In Dan Brickley’s session I lost track of the number of times he referenced SchemaBibEx.  He described in detail our proposal, in the latest Schema.org release that facilitated the description of Journals and their structure, multi-volume works, and light-weight FRBR style relationships between CreativeWorks (although, quite rightly, he didn’t mention the FRBR word).  He also mentioned the broadening of citation to all CreativeWorks, and our influence in making Offer not only applicable to finical transactions.  

SchemaBibEx as a group was also used as an example of the way industry specific groups can come together to influence, add value to, and interact with others, to further the development of Schema.org for the benefit of all.  Embarrassingly, Dan twice picked me out to take credit on behalf of the group, and its efforts.

I think as a group we can be proud of the results of our efforts in making the description and exposure of bibliographic resources more comprehensive and comprehensible in the mainstream structured data web.  Although I believe that credit needs to go to the whole group, I must give special mention to Dan Scott for his tenacity and commitment to not only getting our proposals into shape but also helping to push them through the often tortuous public-vocabs list discussions.


~Richard

Received on Friday, 22 August 2014 21:48:49 UTC