Silicon valley semantic web SIG event(9/5): all about usable semantic web

The semantic web SIG in silicon valley is going to have another exciting
event on sept. 5, featuring Nova Spivack from Radar Networks and Holger from
TopQuadrant. THe them is "how to make semantic web usable?". See below for
complete program. Hope to see some of you there.

-AJ
Co-chair, SDForum semantic web SIG
-

SDForum Semantic Web SIG Event:
How Can We Make Semantic Web Usable?

The Semantic Web has been emerging over several decades but has yet to reach
a stage where it is easily accessible, useable and beneficial to the
majority of end-users on the Web.  Everyone still ask the same question: How
will the Semantic Web become useable? In the first presentation, Nova
Spivack, CEO of Radar Networks, will discuss his outlook for the coming
years as the Semantic Web begins to mature, and the stages it will go
through. He will also discuss barriers to adoption and how to overcome them,
and how forward-looking organizations can start working with the Semantic
Web today. In addition he will discuss how the Semantic Web can benefit key
application categories from advertising to e-commerce to search, publishing,
collaboration and entertainment.

In the second presentation, Holger Knublauch, VP of Product Development from
TopQuatrant, will introduce to you the building blocks of a usable semantic
web: RDF, RDFS, OWL, SPARQL and SWRL. These languages provide distributed
and federated capabilities for resolving semantic differences between
systems and databases. After the hands-on introduction to these powerful
languages using TopBraid semantic development platform, he will
demonstration how ontology-driven applications can be integrated with Web
2.0 technologies.

Time: Wednesday, September 5, 2007, 6:30pm - 9pm
Location: Cubberley Community Center, 4000 Middlefield Rd., Room H-1, Palo
Alto, CA.
Price: $15 at the door for non-SDForum members. No charge for SDForum
members. No pre-registration required
Agenda:
6:30pm - 7:00pm  Registration / Networking / Refreshments / Pizza
7:00pm - 7:10pm  Community announcement
7:10pm - 7:50pm  Towards a Usable Semantic Web, by Nova Spivack
7:50pm - 8:30pm  Semantic Web's Building Blocks: RDF/OWL, by Holger
8:30pm - 9:00pm  Dedicated Q&A period
Contact: ajchen(at)web2express.org or jeff.pollock(at)oracle.com

Panelist Bios:

Nova Spivack, CEO, Radar Networks
Nova Spivack is one of the leading voices of the emerging Semantic Web,
often referred to as Web 3.0.  Nova founded Radar Networks to develop
semantic social software. In 1994, Nova co-founded EarthWeb (IPO 1998). Nova
has worked at Individual, Xerox/Kurzweil, Thinking Machines, and also with
SRI International on the DARPA CALO program and nVention. Nova founded Lucid
Ventures, and co-founded the San Francisco Web Innovators Network.  As a
grandson of management guru Peter F. Drucker, Nova shares his grandfather's
interests in the evolution of knowledge work. He has a BA in Philosophy from
Oberlin College and did graduate study at the International Space
University. In 1999 Nova flew to the edge of space in Russia with Space
Adventures. Nova blogs at Minding the Planet.

Holger Knublauch, VP, Product Development, TopQuadrant
Dr. Holger Knublauch is well known in the Semantic Web community as the
designer and developer of Protégé-OWL. At TopQuadrant he is responsible for
ontology development tools. He holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the
University of Ulm in Germany, 2002.  Dr. Knublauch's work in Germany was has
resulted in the development of various clinical information systems, as well
as in pragmatic design and implementation techniques for these and similar
systems. As a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at Stanford Medical Informatics
at the Stanford University Holger was responsible for research and
development of various components of the knowledge modeling tool Protégé
including Protege OWL, UML interfaces and interoperability with a Meta
Object Facility (MOF) format.  He now is the lead developer of TopQuadrant's
TopBraid product suite that includes the leading professional ontology
development tool TopBraid Composer as well as the rich internet application
platform TopBraid Live.  Holger actively participates in the World Wide Web
Consortium's Semantic Web Best Practices Working Group on developing
guidance for building Semantic Web applications.

Moderator Bios:

AJ Chen, Ph.D., Sr. Search Engineer, Healthline.com
Dr. Chen is an advocate of semantic web and digital health. Currently a Sr.
Search Engineer at Healthline.com, he applies ontology and knowledge base
for developing search engine focusing on consumer healthcare. Working with
various open communities and open source software, he is also experimenting
new and practical approaches that help make semantic data web a reality,
including coordinating the scientific publishing task force for W3C's
Semantic Web HCLS Group. Previously, Dr. Chen had developed genome
sequencing technologies for the vision of personalized medicine, playing
technical and product roles at Hyseq, Callida Genomics, and Complete
Genomics.  Earlier, Dr. Chen worked with Nobel Prize winner Dr. Barry
Marshall to introduce new disease treatments and diagnostics to China. Dr.
Chen earned his Ph. D. in Biochemistry from U. of Utah and did postdoctoral
research at Duke Medical School.

Jeffrey Pollock, Senior Director, Oracle Fusion Middleware
Mr. Pollock is a technology leader and author of the enterprise software
book "Adaptive Information" (John Wiley & Sons 2004). Currently a Senior
Director with Oracle's Fusion Middleware group, Mr. Pollock was formerly an
independent consultant for the Defense Department, Vice President of
Technology at Cerebra and Chief Technology Officer of Modulant, developing
semantic middleware platforms and inference-driven SOA platforms from 2001
to 2006. Throughout his career, he has architected, designed, and built
application server/middleware solutions for Fortune 500 and US Government
clients. Prior to Modulant, Mr. Pollock was a Principal Engineer with Modem
Media and Senior Architect with Ernst & Young's Center for Technology
Enablement. He is also a frequent speaker at industry conferences, author
for industry journals, active member of W3C and OASIS, and formerly an
engineering instructor with University of California at Berkeley's Extension
on the subjects of object-oriented systems, software development process and
enterprise systems architecture.