Web 2.0 & SW (was Re: RDF resource list in RDF)

On 20/11/06, Paul Walsh, Segala <paulwalsh@segala.com> wrote:

> F2F looks like it was productive - especially with the amount of tasks Susie
> received ;)

Yes, the minutes suggest it was a very busy time (thanks for
scribing/posting, btw).
(Poor Susie ;-)

Re. Content labelling - not had any involvement in the field myself,
but did see Phil Archer's presentation at SwigAtTp2006 [1], looks very
promising.

> I'd like to take on the responsibility of managing the relationship/bridging
> the gap between the SWEO and Web 2.0 communities. Ivan, to get this started;
> can you please ask TimBL if he will do some interviews? I can set them up
> for the main Web 2.0 commentators (I've already been approached!). I think
> this will be a great 'start' for the outreach. I'm doing some interviews but
> feel TimBL (for some strange reason) will draw in the crowds a little better
> than me :)

Great!

> Doing interviews with the Web 2.0 community is the best start IMHO - getting
> the immediate attention of more than a few hundred thousand qualified
> people, a lot of whom blog themselves, will be much more 'engaging' than
> speaking to a traditional print publication. The traditional publications
> will pick up from these guys anyway...

Yep, although the "Web 3.0" piece caused quite a flurry, getting a
front-page mention in the NYT isn't something we can rely on. On the
other hand, the same eyeballs can be reached by pumping the
blogosphere's echo chamber.

> I would still like the group to focus more on the Semantic Web and not RDF.

When reaching out, I don't disagree. Not least because in many minds
RDF is just Yet Another Technology without any distinguishing
features. (Worse still: Yet Another XML Format)

[snip]

But there is a danger with the sans RDF approach of it coming across
as soley Semantic Web the Vision (= pie in the sky, at best "timbl's
science project"...), and losing the SW Technologies (pixie dust? -
deployable now!) aspect.

When it comes to the Web 2.0 audience, there seems to be more
attention given to neat tricks (and snazzy widgets) than any vision. I
doubt Tim O'Reilly's architectural diagrams and discussions would be
given much credence were it not for the multitude of Web 2.0
applications. Where there is technical innovation, the hands-on aspect
seems critical - Ajax, Ruby on Rails etc.

Basically this all comes back to "showing not telling". There are
obvious limitations on what sweo-ig can do in practice here, building
applications takes time. But I suspect there is a lot that could be
done without much effort - mostly joining together various data
sources and putting a nice-looking (off-the-shelf) viewer (/editor) on
top. Not sure how far into such territory the charter reaches. [Hmm, a
prequisite would be the data/tools lists and some intense
brainstorming - maybe calls for another chunk of Wiki...]

Industry analyst James Governor recently made the point succinctly in
a comment [2]  :
[[
...Its as if none of the rest of us get it, and if we just did what
what we were told, in the formats you lay down, the semweb would be
reality. it has a top down feel to it, which is a little orthogonal to
how the web tends to work.

I realise that you are as aware of these issues as anyone, and i dont
want to belabour the point, but one thing i have said before would
benefit the community would be more showing us and less telling. if
you show us cool stuff we'll definitely adopt it.
]]

What very much is within sweo-ig's capabilities is to identify (and
help to show) deployed/deployable Semantic Web applications that have
some of the Web 2.0 glitter - for example: Lee & EliasT's awesome
SPARQL Calendar work [3], revyu [4], the Venice Project [5].

Cheers,
Danny.


[1] http://esw.w3.org/topic/SwigAtTp2006
[2] http://dannyayers.com/2006/11/10/not-really-flames-more#comments
[3] http://thefigtrees.net/lee/sw/demos/calendar/
[4] http://revyu.com/
[5] http://www.theveniceproject.com/


-- 

http://dannyayers.com

Received on Monday, 20 November 2006 12:41:32 UTC