Announcing Semantic Web Deployment Working Group (SWDWG); SKOS to W3C Recommendation

Dear all,

As of 14 July this year, the W3C's Semantic Web Activity has been 
officially extended. See the W3C's Semantic Web Activity homepage for 
an overview of all current and planned activities:

http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/

As part of the extended activity, a "Semantic Web Deployment Working 
Group" (SWDWG) has been chartered. A significant responsibility of 
this new working group will be to develop a W3C Recommendation based 
on the current SKOS Working Drafts, within a timeframe of 20 months 
from September/October this year.

The SWDWG hopepage is at:

http://www.w3.org/2006/07/SWD/

The SWDWG charter, which includes background information and a 
breakdown of the schedule for the planned deliverables, is at:

http://www.w3.org/2006/07/swdwg-charter

The publicly archived mailing list for the SWDWG is 
public-swd-wg@w3.org - however I expect all SKOS related discussions 
to continue to be conducted primarily via the public-esw-thes@w3.org 
mailing list.

All of the business relating to the development of SKOS will be 
conducted via public mailing lists, which means that everyone on this 
mailing list (public-esw-thes@w3.org) will be able to comment and to 
contribute. However, if you wish to take a more formal role in the 
development of SKOS (and you belong to an organisation that is a W3C 
member) then you may join the SWDWG as a member representative. If you 
wish to join the working group, speak to your W3C Advisory Committee 
representative ("AC rep").

In preparation for the standardization of SKOS, I have written a paper 
called "SKOS: Requirements for Standardization", which I will present 
at the International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata 
Applications in October of this year. You can obtain a copy of the 
final version of this paper from:

http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/public/skos/press/dc2006/camera-ready-paper.pdf

I've tried in this paper to lay out the critical assumptions that have 
gone into the development of SKOS to date, and some suggestions for 
developing clear and concise requirements for a SKOS W3C 
Recommendation. Hopefully we can discuss these in the lead up to the 
kick-off of the SWDWG, and give ourselves a head-start on the 
requirements deliverable (scheduled for start+3 months). Many thanks 
to those who offered comments on earlier versions of this paper - I 
made some fairly substantial changes in response to comments, so you 
might want to take a look at the final version linked above.

Finally, I'd like to offer many heartfelt thanks to everyone who has 
contributed to the development of SKOS so far. I very much hope you 
will all continue to offer your invaluable insight, as we enter the 
last mile!

Yours,

Alistair.

Please feel free to forward this announcement.

-- 
Alistair Miles
Research Associate
CCLRC - Rutherford Appleton Laboratory
Building R1 Room 1.60
Fermi Avenue
Chilton
Didcot
Oxfordshire OX11 0QX
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: a.j.miles@rl.ac.uk
Tel: +44 (0)1235 445440

Received on Monday, 31 July 2006 12:48:07 UTC