Re: What should we call RDF's ability to allow multiple models to peacefully coexist, interconnected?

Hi Mike,
I'm hardly a Polly Anna nor am I an academic.  Most who know me would describe me as rather pragmatic.  FWIW, I've run several successful startups that use/used linked data for pressing concerns including sophisticated terrorism analysis (via the US intelligence agencies), financial fraud, national cultural heritage, and environmental threats to human health.  RDF played a core role in each of these efforts.  They were not research projects.  Organizations paid real dollars ($M's) for data standards interoperability via RDF.

Along with my colleagues helping to evolve & mature the RDF family of standards, we can cite major international companies, publishers, retailers and search engines that use LD to solve real business that could not be solved by other approaches.  We're not in la-la land.  

My opinions are mine alone.  I shared them on this list to advance what seemed to me to be some reticence regarding the use of RDF to solve real & challenging issues of distributed data interoperability.

All that said, I concur with Timothy's sentiment & look forward RDF becoming yet more mature and robust ... but I'm not sitting on the sidelines.  Many of us are solving pressing problems using international data exchanges standards (including RDF) and getting paid to do so.

Cheers,
Bernadette Hyland

PS.  Grants and gov't money are still real money where I come from -- $100B for an EU innovation project that makes data interoperability a guiding principle is good enough for me and hopefully others too.  Remember who initially funded the Internet - the US Government.  And GPS -- oh, the US Government again.  Touch screen displays ... man, the US Government had their fingers in that too?!  And let's not forget that sporty car that you see at almost every 4-way stop in San Francisco ... the Tesla.  Did the government support Elon Musk's car too? Yep.  To quote Mariana Mazzucato (Professor in the Economics of Innovation at the University of Sussex), "truly radical innovation needs patient, long-term, committed finance."


On Mar 10, 2014, at 11:12 PM, Mike Bergman <mike@mkbergman.com> wrote:

> Hi Bernadette,
> 
> I refrained from jumping into this conversation hoping it would gracefully peter away. But, continued pollyannish statements about the "ship has sailed" or "core $100 B" claims or it "isn't a philosophical debate, its business" is mostly la-la land.
> 
> All of the examples you cite are grants and government, not business. Timothy put forward real market responses to the readiness of RDF from his standpoint. And, he was met with a breezy hand.
> 
> He sees a publishing model ("linked data") that does not address his interoperability concerns. We can argue that one (though I tend to agree), but claiming that RDF is big business, when it is clearly not, is only undercutting the credibility of RDF. It also prevents coming to grips with the real business roles that RDF might provide. In my lights, that role is as a canonical data model supporting interoperability. Publishing RDF as linked data is merely a mostly free, secondary benefit.
> 
> I personally can not point to many instances where RDF makes a difference to businesses because of its adoption. Can you or anyone else on this list?
> 
> We can all point to some poster children (BBC, Library of Congress, maybe a bit of VW UK), but where are the actual businesses pushing and making money from this stuff? Best Buy, etc.? I think the argument comes into question once one looks closely.
> 
> My company, like yours, works hard to push this technology forward. I say these things not because I am not a believer. We are building our entire commercial offerings around RDF and semantic technologies.
> 
> But, until there is realism about where this stuff is really working and we can point to real market (that is, business) trends to support that advocacy, I suggest we listen more rather than push fantasies in front of us.
> 
> Sorry to be harsh, but I truly feel this unreality about the "core" role of RDF only delays acceptance by business IT decisionmakers. Semantic technologies and RDF are hard enough; we need to speak and address business concerns if we are to be successful within business.
> 
> Thanks, Mike
> 
> On 3/10/2014 9:26 PM, Bernadette Hyland wrote:
>> Hi Hugh,
>> I'm sure you know better than I since you're closer to the ground re:
>> Horizon2020.  I spent several hours with Barend Mons at CSHALS (Boston)
>> & the National Science Foundation who hosted a National Institutes of
>> Health Big Data meetup (in Washington DC) last week.  Barend indicated
>> that RDF was quite an important piece of the work he is championing (via
>> Elixir).[1]
>> 
>> In any event, I'm just getting more proactive & pushing back when people
>> saying RDF attracts attention from a lot of smart people but it hasn't
>> 'taken off'.
>> 
>> The ship has sailed.  Major companies are using the RDF family of
>> standards because it solves a real pain point.  It will no doubt &
>> mature but let's stop expecting it to be the silver bullet for all
>> vexing information management issues.  It is good for some things & will
>> mature just like any other approach to information management but the
>> fundamentals are strong.
>> 
>> This list is probably all over this, but there are now quite a few books
>> (mass market type & academic peer reviewed), commercially supported
>> products, open source projects, and many big names quietly using RDF.[2]
>> 
>> "A rising tide lifts all boats."
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Bernadette Hyland
>> 
>> [1]
>> http://www.elixir-europe.org/events/elixir-founding-ceremony-and-launch-event
>> [2] http://linkeddatadeveloper.com
>> 
>> 
>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 8:02 PM, Hugh Glaser <hugh@glasers.org
>> <mailto:hugh@glasers.org>> wrote:
>> 
>>> Hi Bernadette,
>>> Unless you are looking at something I haven’t found, I wouldn’t have
>>> said RDF was core to Horizon 2020.
>>> It would be nice if it was!
>>> Best
>>> Hugh
>>> 
>>> On 10 Mar 2014, at 21:23, Bernadette Hyland <bhyland@3roundstones.com
>>> <mailto:bhyland@3roundstones.com>> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Hi Tim,
>>>> RDF is called many things, 'a lingua franca', a 'unicode of data
>>>> models' but recognize that it is the foundation of the Web of data.
>>>> This isn't a philosophical debate, its business.
>>>> 
>>>> Large and small organizations, and some of most ambitious innovation
>>>> projects are using RDF to represent massive amounts of human
>>>> knowledge.  The global research initiative Horizon 2020 is funded to
>>>> the tune of €80 Billion (US$100B) -- RDF is core to this project.
>>>> Google, Facebook, IBM, Oracle and government agencies worldwide are
>>>> all using RDF to get real work done.  They are doing it because it
>>>> solves a real business pain -- data interoperability among other things.
>>>> 
>>>> RDF is a mature international data exchange standard and mature data
>>>> model.  It'll keep evolving and 'be an awesome platform in the
>>>> future' but today, it's pretty darn useful when you want to share
>>>> information with millions of people.
>>>> 
>>>> That is good enough for many of us.
>>>> 
>>>> Cheers,
>>>> Bernadette Hyland
>>>> CEO, 3 Round Stones, Inc.
>>>> 
>>>> [1] http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/horizon2020/en/what-horizon-2020
>>>> 
>>>> 
>>>> On Mar 10, 2014, at 4:43 PM, Timothy W. Cook <tim@mlhim.org
>>>> <mailto:tim@mlhim.org>> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> On Mon, Mar 10, 2014 at 3:17 PM, Martynas Jusevičius
>>>>> <martynas@graphity.org <mailto:martynas@graphity.org>> wrote:
>>>>> 
>>>>> RDF is like Unicode of data models.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Excellent analogy; on a purely conceptual level.
>>>>> 
>>>>> So lets focus on RDF and build it even deeper into the
>>>>> software ecosystem, so we can finally produce some user-friendly yet
>>>>> generic applications.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I certainly hope to see RDF mature and become more robust.  It is a
>>>>> great foundation that may be an awesome platform in the future.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>> Tim
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> 
>>>>> --
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>>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Hugh Glaser
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>>> 
>> 
> 
> -- 
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> Michael K. Bergman
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