RE: Business Presentation

Lee-

Thank you for feedback and for having your colleagues look it over!

I was definitely hoping that you'd jump in and change some things up, but I
understand how hard it can be to add ideas to prose that somebody else
started.

So I tried a few things in the document today, my comments/pointers to
changes are ID'd inline below:

Best, -Jeff-

-----Original Message-----
From: public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org [mailto:public-sweo-ig-request@w3.org]
On Behalf Of Lee Feigenbaum
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 11:51 AM
To: W3C SWEO IG
Subject: Re: Business Presentation



I've gone over the business presentation with some colleagues and have 
some more general suggestions. I haven't crafted any text yet myself: 
I'm curious to hear whether people agree or not, though I know we're a 
bit crunched or time. I wasn't comfortable taking Jeff's hard work and 
imposing my views on it :)

Here are some things we discussed:

* Could we emphasize future-proofing more? It's a strategic benefit and 
the low risk section starts to talk about it a bit, but I think we could 
emphasize a bit more the constancy of change and how semantics prepares 
an enterprise for adapting to change.
[JTP] 
[JTP] this was definitely an oversight in the technical superiority section.
I suggest not over-emphasizing the "future-proofing" too much (some, but
don't overdo it) because I've experienced a lot of buyers who are still
feeling some degree of bitterness about the "reusability and
future-proofing" hype that came with the Object-Oriented revolution. It's
always a little risky to make promises about how easy things will be in the
future.  But with that said, I've inserted the following the "Tech" section:

" Being purpose-built for change is a particularly striking difference
between Semantic Web technology and conventional data languages.
Conventional approaches rely on static data models and complex query logic,
which causes a type of software development lifecycle that favors the
up-front specification of system behavior. But software developers can
rarely envision how a given system will be used in practice many years from
the point which requirements were developed. In fact, application data will
be always be used in unanticipated ways. 

The Semantic Web specifications are different because they provide for
continually changing data models, inferred classification of data and
taxonomy, and all the richness and power of a declarative query language. "

* Should we address the performance question? The type of early adopters 
and technology enthusiasts that will be excited by this presentation 
will quickly ask about performance. Should this presentation address 
that concern? (Perhaps via general talk of the natural overhead of 
semantics being addressed by modern hardware compute power and 
scalability? I'm not sure.
[JTP] 
[JTP] I would vote "no" on this one.  The issue is too gray.  On one hand,
we could try to parse out some example applications that fit within the
scalability/performance constraints of some flavor of RDF+OWL, or on the
other hand we could begin to describe various kinds of implementations
ranging from full on reasoners to simplistic triple stores w/no inference at
all...but either way feels like a digression and distraction from the main
point.  

* Should we emphasize more that semantics applies to existing (legacy) 
data? The idea of adopting RDF as a standard for virtually representing 
information as it comes out of existing data systems? This is to 
explicitly remove the perception that adopting SW technologies requires 
throwing away existing IT investments.
[JTP] 
[JTP] Inserted the word legacy into the following: " Organizations are
investing in this technology, in most cases, because there isn't a viable
alternative that can address the size, scope or complexity of their legacy
data problems. "

* Perhaps "IT maintenance" is an area that could be included in spending 
categories that are positively impacted by SemWeb technologeis?
[JTP] 
[JTP] Done!  Great catch, and definitely one of the more fruitful areas for
the tech!

* Are the occurrences of "DCP" supposed to be "DCF"?
[JTP] 
[JTP] Yes, thank you!

* Should "policy compliance" (of which one example is regulatory 
compliance) be included as a strategic fit for semantic technologies? 
(Is it considered covered by enterprise governance?)
[JTP] 
[JTP] Done, added...


Lee

Received on Sunday, 3 February 2008 22:29:16 UTC