Introduction: Dan Connolly

Hi,

I have been writing software and specs for the Web
since 1991, and I have been on staff at W3C since 1995.

I'm currently team contact for the WebOnt WG, an
appointed member of the TAG, and a member of the
RDF Core WG. You can find out more about those
from my home page
  http://www.w3.org/People/Connolly/
as well as contact info, upcoming travel, etc.
I don't generally give my phone number out in public,
but you can often catch me for a quick chat in IRC.
I'll be in Boston next week and I'm considering
going to Sanibel Island and/or Bristol in October.

I co-chaired the Semantic Web Architecture Meeting
http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/meetings/tech-200303/
and I was there at the Budapest BOF
http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/www-rdf-logic/2003May/0039.html

My research interest is investigating the value of FormalSystems to
describe ChaoticSystems like the WorldWideWeb, especially to address
TheTroubleWithConsensus.
-- http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?DanConnolly

I'm kind of a fan of smalltalk/wiki/patterns culture. I helped set
up the European/Extended Semantic Web wiki early this year
  http://esw.w3.org/topic/FrontPage

While a wiki is not exactly immersive hypertext editing
  http://esw.w3.org/topic/ImmersiveHypertextEditing
it's sorta the closest thing that's deployed amongst all
my peers and collaborators.

I have found it to be a pretty effective mechanism for
capturing emerging Semantic Web Architecture
best practices and design patterns; I hope it will be
useful for this and perhaps other TAG issues.

I have been trying to formalize the way URIs work for a
long time... at least as far back as discussions with
Paul Buchard in 1995. I gave a talk at the Amsterdam
web conference in 2000
  http://www.w3.org/2000/Talks/www9-larch/all.htm
and when I find a technical paper that I particularly
like, I try to convince myself that I understand it
by transcribing it into larch
  http://www.w3.org/XML/9711theory/

I like the feedback I get from the machine.
The larch tools are getting crufty, so I may have to switch
to something else to get that sort of feedback.

I went thru a time of accepting the unambiguity of
URIs as axiomatic... while I still think that's
the right way to look at it 99% of the time, I find
it doesn't work out when formalizing models of
the real world (W3C process, my travel schedule,
etc.). I now think of it as a sort of
Newtonian approximation.

I haven't finished my study of things like
indexical entailment, contexts, modal logic,
and other techniques that might provide
the quantum counterpart to the Newtonian
approximation.

I think this is an important issue, but not terribly
urgent. The Web has survived... flourished, even,
without a crisp formulation of it. As Michael
Sperberg-McQueen said in his closing keynote
at Extreme Markup in August, in response to observations
of the important rules of XML not being in the xml spec,

  I know there's gravity. If I don't publish a paper on it,
  it will still work.

But shared texts with consensus around them, easily
available by following a pointer, are very
valuable. I wouldn't be here if I didn't think so ;-)

So I offer to co-chair, along with Sandro.

If we come up with something by the spring
or summer of 2004, I'll be happy.

I don't expect this forum to merit an hour teleconference every week.
One a month would be plenty, for my tastes. Or even none...
we use scheduled IRC chats for RDF calendar work, and it works
great.
 http://esw.w3.org/topic/ScheduledTopicChat
I have over a dozen hours of teleconferences every
week already, and I'll be happy to avoid another.


As for the first telconference, I lean toward Friday
afternoon, the 12th. Say 3pm my time (Chicago time).
To see what that corresonds to near you, see...
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=12&month=9&year=2003&hour=15&min=0&sec=0&p1=64

Hmm... I guess that's Friday night for folks in
Europe. I have some free time on Thursday, but
I'm flying on Wednesday, and it's risky to schedule
anything the day after travel.

If we go into the next week, I'd prefer Wednesday
morning, say, 10am Chicago.
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?day=17&month=9&year=2003&hour=10&min=0&sec=0&p1=64

I have just two appointments on Thursday the 18th
(11am and 2pm) and one on Friday (9am).

Whenever we meet, I'll do what I can to see that it's
clearly announced 24 hours in advance, per W3C process...
http://www.w3.org/2003/06/Process-20030618/policies.html#GeneralMeetings
Hmm... no, now that I review that, it requires the time
to be announced a week in advance. It's the agenda that's
due 24 hours in advance.

So I guess Friday the 12th is not likely. Oh well...
I suppose we'll figure it out somehow...

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

Received on Friday, 5 September 2003 14:41:58 UTC