Re: Introductions

Good initiative Antoine, since we are quite a lot of people in this group,
better write presentations down.

I'm Bernard Vatant [1], senior consultant at Mondeca [2], a SME founded in
1999, based in Paris (France) and developing software solutions based on
semantic representations, which I joined in late 2000.

My main task in Mondeca has been to ensure the integration of Semantic Web
languages and standards in production environments, for domains as diverse
as tourism, administration and government, legal publication, bio-medical
terminologies, cultural heritage ... with daily tasks involving building and
tuning of OWL models, migration of data to RDF, and singularly of legacy
vocabularies to SKOS. I'm also in charge of training and evangelization of
our customers and partners regarding the Semantic Web standards.

I've been involved in the Semantic Web community at large and SKOS in
particular for quite a while, with a permanent focus on both integration of
legacy knowledge and linking of communities, bringing up requirements,
questions and issues raised by industrial, "real-world" environments. Since
2007 I've been contributing to a few bubbles in the Linked Data Cloud,
through for example the Geonames.org ontology and RDF service specification
[3], or lingvoj.org [4], as well as to the permathread about identity and
sameness of things, to which I've been dedicated a blog for several years
[5].

Through various projects under the European Community umbrella I've been
involved in the specific issues of managing multilingual vocabularies in
collaborative environments, including contribution to the model extendiing
SKOS to allow management and publication of EUROVOC [6].

Involvment with the Library community includes recent and ongoing work with
the French National Library (BNF) to assess the portability and usability of
library vocabularies in the Semantic Web environments, in the framework of
the TELPlus project.

I've also been participating in the French group of experts involved in the
development of ISO 25964 (although I'm not as active there lately as I
should ...)


[1] http://fr.linkedin.com/in/bernardvatant
[2] http://www.mondeca.com
[3] http://www.geonames.org/ontology
[4] http://www.lingvoj.org
[5] http://blog.hubjects.com
[6] http://www.tenforce.com/Documentation/Ontology.html




2010/6/8 Antoine Isaac <aisaac@few.vu.nl>

> Dear all,
>
> To complete the very short introduction round on our last call [1],
> especially for the participants who were not there, here is another chance
> to talk about yourself :-)
> If you could, give your name, your organization and some background. One
> word on your motivation or hope for joining the group is also much welcome!
>
> I'm Antoine Isaac [2], from the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (Web and Media
> group) and Europeana [3]. I've been researching on applying SW techniques in
> cultural heritage organizations (INA [4], KB [5]) for the past eight years.
> My recent work was focused on the representation and alignment of knowledge
> organization systems using semantic web techniques (e.g., STITCH project
> [6]). This led me to participating to SKOS in the SWD group co-chaired by
> Tom--for example I co-edited the SKOS Primer with Ed and the Use Cases with
> Jon. There I somehow inherited a "SKOS community contact" hat, and thus I'm
> very interested in this XG's findings on how SKOS can be used (and
> complemented) in library LOD applications. My semantic alignment background
> makes me also very interested in the possible connections between library
> data--the salt of LOD!
>  At Europeana I work as a "scientific coordinator", liaising with quite
> many projects and helping "semantic developments" there. This makes it
> crucial for me to have excellent knowledge of the field this XG will
> explore. And to participate--and help developing--our community. I trust
> this XG can play a key role here!
>
> Best,
>
> Antoine
>
> [1]
> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/lld/minutes/2010/06/03-lld-minutes.html
> [2] http://www.few.vu.nl/~aisaac <http://www.few.vu.nl/%7Eaisaac>
> [3] http://www.europeana.eu
> [4] http://www.ina.fr
> [5] http://www.kb.nl
> [6] http://stitch.cs.vu.nl
>
>