SWEO F2F meeting

Susie introction, achievements

(slides will be on the web, link to be put into the minutes later)

<leobard> susie talks about the agenda...

<leobard> ... Ian Jacobs is going to join us later ...

<leobard> ... susie continues on the achievements of this year ...

<leobard> btw: 26 on the website

<leobard> ivan reports that many people use them and that they are a good success

<MartinD> scribe: MartinD

- a questionnaire has been spread around, to obtain interests, focus, etc from the relevant companies,...

- requested features include collaterals, use cases, case studies (currently 26!) from applied SWT --> useful resource giving multiple examples of how people do things, how they address different aspects of SWT

- over past weeks we got feedback on case studies; from people doing education, analyses and so --> even inspired other groups in W3C to produce something similar for their areas

- also substantial work has been done on collecting information about SWT, putting it all together as a SW portal

- Benji has put sme effort into producing a SW logo, which has been now adopted, people quite like it... some comments were received w.r.t. soliciting feedback from a broader community, this will be looked at

- also, a brochure has been produced (Dunja, Ian J.,...) -> this is now more or less ready to be rolled out, went through W3C comm. dpt.

- Semantic Gatherings have been organized in the Boston area -> about 20 people per meeting, not always the same groups in diff. meetings

--> maybe something similar might be organized in other places, e.g. Amsterdam or so (sounds as a good idea)

<ghard> http://esw.w3.org/topic/HollandSemanticWebGatherings

- SWEO aims to develop strageies and materials to promote SWT and produce relevant materials --> we believe, we're on a good way to fulfill this charter

--- scope: develop online and printed materials for outreach (brochures, use cases, etc.) --> we haven't quite developed tutorials, but some were contributed from the partner institutions and this might be also a consideration for the future

--- our fact sheet, FAQ doc is a useful resource, as are use/business cases (the cases for university are less prominent, but that has been a conscious decision)

--- less work has been done (so far) in the area of actually teaching and producing educational materials (some collab. possible with summer schools on SWT, etc)

--- several SWT are in the pipeline to be released soon, so we should perhaps be more going into an interactive mode and work with other WG @ W3C in identifying needs, priorities

--- one thing that hasn't quite materialized was an outreach to CTOs and CIOs, but we would need to collaborate with some consultancy agencies to achieve this --> however, there is a relationship to SWT cofnerence at the west coast, this one aims at businesses already, so might not be effective to duplicate effort

--- W3C intends to play some role at this SWT conference, as well as at its European counterpart --> so better to focus on these channels, rather than reinvent the same

mode +o

<UldisB> --- a similar event - a panel for CIOs/CTOs - took place at ISWC 2005 in Galway

- we should consider how to wrap up this group and also how this activity should/could/might continue

<leobard> ivan: those people from business/companies that do outreach from business would be interesting as members.

<UldisB> we expected more people from marketing departments in SWEO

<leobard> ivan: at the moment we have many techies, besides Dunja

--- originally, we expected more members coming from marketing depts. = people who do outreach in their respective businesses; in reality, most members are tech.people with some interest in outreach, but mainly technologists (with some notable exceptions)

<UldisB> currently there are more techies in SWEO, which got us in all kinds of technical discussions, while we should focus more on the marketing/outreach side

--- this focus should at some point be revisited, to really get the foot into the marketing rooms

State of the SW, Ivan’s slides

<ivan> http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/CorePresentations

switch to ivan's summary on the "state of union" (= SWT)

<Dunja> +1

<ivan> http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/CorePresentations/State_of_SW/

- there are several sets of slides that include the work of SWEO, these are regularly used by Ivan, W3C, ...

--- a substantial part is about the technologies, which was slightly unconvincing, but SWEO has helped to make a significant progress in this area = now a nice resource

(note: we are looking now at the second URL)

<deanallemang> http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/CorePresentations/State_of_SW/

<leobard> WE NEED GUIS

--- RDF(S): a solid spec from 2004, many tools available (listed on W3C wiki) -> 22+ triplestores, 14+ libraries for several prg. languages

<LeeF> leobard, specific GUIs or general GUIs?

= essentially, anybody can start developing RDF(S) apps today!

--- SPARQL: querying support almost there, W3C recommendation expected in Dec 2007(?); a number of endpoints exists (sending a query over HTTP GET, receive result in XML/JSON) + big data stores already offer SPARQL endpoint!

= lang. has some powerful, expressive capabilities (e.g. CONSTRUCT support), which can also be used as not only a querying engine but also a transformation engine (ivan showing an example)

--> a query can be given URI, which can then be included in any other (even remote) SPARQL endpoint to daisychain several data stores, etc. (emphasize this feature a bit more?)

= some features in SPARQL are still missing, things that cannot be done in 1.0 (e.g. control the entailment regime, modify triple store, querying collections gets complicated, aggregations like counts, max, etc. are also tricky)

--- large datasets: accumulating and growing (e.g. IgentaConnect 200M triples, US COngress 25M triples, Geonames 6M geo triples, RDF book mashup, DBpedia, and many more) --> please provide more information, if you know about these things, about the data sets, public, private, etc. = some impressive numbers showing the potential of the technology

= send input to Ivan, esp. on *really* large and really *realistic* data sets :-)

= what is large (25M is a small-scale effort for bio and life science people, right?) :-)

<scribe> ACTION: maybe SWEO should focus in the future on getting these numbers [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action01]

--- Linking Open Data Prj: expose data sets in RDF, link data from diff. data sets and use SPARQL to query across this distributed space of resources (so far, around 2B triples served @ Aug 2007)

--> example data source: DBpedia = a community effort to extract structured info from wikipedia ('infobox') and turn them into RDF

--- SKOS (simple knowledge organization system): its goal is to represent and share classifications, glossaries, thesauri, etc. --> currently on the path to become a W3C recommendation by summer 2008 (?)

= motivation here is to get more traditional data (e.g. thesauri) into the RDF/OWL world --> SKOS provides infrastructure, vocabulary to make these 'translation' structured, ...

= some examples of SKOS expressivity are in http://www.w3.org/People/Ivan/CorePresentations/State_of_SW/HTML/img21.html

= the point of it is really for SKOS to act as a bridge to digital libraries, which means a huge amount of data (in extent of several billions) getting to be linked to the SW (soon)

(we need to speed it up at this point, due to the agenda)

--- OWL and ontologies: a WG on revising OWL just started......

--- GRDDL: a good progress towards recommendation, helping with micro-formats and exposing their data as RDF via GRDDL engine --> from the messaging viewpoint, this is the way how to get in an easy way data that are produced anyway, and expose them via simple (GRDDL) hooks to the RDF world

= e.g. for business reporting, this is an important point to make data RDF accessible

--- RDF/a concentrating on XHTML with some additional attribute sugar that would add/link to the RDF data, which can subsequently be used by RDF/a engine --> big advantage is that unlike with microformats in general, RDF/a enables linking *numerous* different RDF data sets (FOAF, geo, etc etc

= on a good path to become W3C recommendation by April 2008 (?)

Education and Outreach for New Technologies (POWDER, GRDDL, RDFa, SPARQL, SKOS)

Kai Scheppe & POWDER

- Kai (Deutsche Telekom) talking about POWDER, a project to establish techniques for labelling web resources expressing trust, reliability, etc. by means of annotating the web pages to which these points apply

= POWDER --> protocol for web decsription of resources

= currently, based on RDF, where one can include info like who did it, when, pointers to other resources, content,... which in turn, enables making inferences about the underlying resources

= not only to fulfill obligations re descriptions of web resources, but also enable users to aggregate content, mash-up based on some specific criteria, etc. (e.g. in the context of child protection, where one can express points like 'white listing' vs. 'black listing' and express it by pointing to the description of the resource content)

Q: ideas about how SWEO can help w.r.t. POWDER?

= communicate that there is something like POWDER; i.e. technology, which is not necessarily visible to the outside world, but can be very useful for many users

<scribe> ACTION: add POWDER into SWEO fact sheet + FAQ-s to spread the word around [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action03]

= POWDER is good as it enables authors or content managers to express a claim ("my doc is about..."), claims usually need some form of verification (socially or formally) --> e.g., some guidelines, steps need to be followed to express the content suitability for mobile device, if an author expresses that s/he followed these guidelines, the content can be machine-tested for compliance and the...

scribe: outcome may be made available to end user

= POWDER is for describing web content and these descriptions are not visible to humans --> SWEO may perhaps help to work it out how to make users aware that there is some form of description behind a resource... maybe a case study on this?

<scribe> ACTION: Consider a use case / business case where POWDER-based descriptions are used (e.g. in the apps of DT's partners/customers?) [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action04]

<ericP> i wonder who is lined up for consumers of the data

= what about POWDER capabilities w.r.t. post-certification content checking? --> indirectly, a description may have an expiration date, but there is not really a support for CRC and similar 'hard' content guarantee

= Ralph points to additional facets of POWDER -- e.g. related to FAQ: how do I find content related to a particular web site that has some meta data in it (pointing to additional docs, such as images,...) --> what POWDER supports to some extent is the capability enabling the web server to state that 'there is some more information about a resource with a given URI'

= POWDER also support a function to group resources by

<ivan> Powder grouping document

= Orri says we might be looking in more detail into the capability to integrate this with search engines, to support groupings, etc.

<ivan> Powder document

*note on FAQ/fact sheet revision*: could everybody who talks about their technologies consider checking the FAQs and maybe come up with some specific questions they need to address (or may even have answers to)

<scribe> ACTION: Susie sends the FAQ doc around for reviewing... [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action05]

= Karen asks who is the audience potentially benefiting from messaging related to POWDER --> content providers benefit from a new tool to tell more details about their content (tap into such mechanisms as social networks, certifications, etc. -- each of these needs a better description of what is in it); another group include marketing people who need to better establish the target for a...

scribe: particular product, tool, content, etc

= Ralph asks about the expectations to include these web descriptions into search engines --> maybe premature to make big speeches on this, but it is in the pipeline as an enriched output from search engines = potential implementation supporting the W3C recommendation procedure

<Zakim> Ralph, you wanted to ask about search engine deployment

kai concludes...

Tom Baker: SKOS

- SWEO role in SKOS work and promotion --> a possibility is to add info on SKOS into our fact sheet/FAQ, also good is to have a strong business case for using SKOS (some existing ones already refer to SKOS, but more would great)

--- Tom can contribute with specific messaging materials re SKOS, these can be discussed in more depth in a telecon..

<leobard> thesauri people may use skos....

--- in terms of use cases, we already have a case from FAO that is making use of SKOS; the point of our list of use cases are things that *already* have been deployed, that are running, that have some user base

--- maybe Tom can point us to people or communities using, needing this kind of work (librarians, thesauri people,...)

<leobard> regards skos: wikipedia lists some organizations that used skos: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SKOS#Applications

<Zakim> Ralph, you wanted to suggest (a reference to) SKOS might appear in the answer to " Does one have to understand the theory of formal ontologies and logic to use the Semantic Web?"

--- maybe SKOS is a good example showing that one does need to become ontology specialist and hard core logician to actually make some use of semantic statements, linking, etc. = a good foot in the door to open up the technology to non-techie people?

<leobard> melli: should we focus on "search" when we talk about skos?

<Ralph> see, e.g., "-> http://www.w3.org/TR/skos-ucr/#UC-Aims Use Case #3 � Semantic search service across mapped multilingual thesauri in the agriculture domain

--- should we highlight search as a potential functionality where SKOS may show as useful and as a functionality acknowledged by the SWEO as an area were SWT may be useful

<ericP> Susie, can i get a quick show of hands for CBC just before lunch? i need to get back to their manager about our likely numbers and times

<deanallemang> ericP, Is that for dinner or just drinks?

--- Tom emphasizes that e.g. librarians speak a completely different language than SW techies, so SKOS is indeed a form of translating SWT for this audience (e.g. Dublin Core,...)

<deanallemang> Most of the people who ask me about search are interested in google-like content searching - does SKOS actually provide any assistance for that kind of use?

<ericP> deanallemang, both

<IvanHerman> report of the meeting Tom is just talking about

--> e.g. a new work on Resource Description they do in the context of RDA, most of these (new) vocabularies are expressed as SKOS-compatible, so they can be reused by semantic apps, sparql endpoints,.....

<IvanHerman> RDA page

<ericP> deanallemang, it's a brew pub that serves food. you can mix and match to suite your needs

= essentially, SKOS is good at translating, exposing what is already there done by the librarians on their annotation standards -- this is mainly about expressing their standards in the way accessible (also) to the SWT community

--- are there already tangible results among people who are trying to use SKOS to organize, structure the tags in various apps (flickr and things like that) = an obvious area, but not sure how much is done in the area

<Tom> Alistair's tutorial at DC2007: http://isegserv.itd.rl.ac.uk/public/ajm65/dc2007/tutorial.pdf

--- SKOS might be also a lightweight way to align and relate different formal ontologies and data sets (e.g. in the life science domain)

= a good use case on describing tag ontologies or aligning them using SKOS might be a good opportunity to promote the technology?

(Ralph Swick on RDFa

<UldisB> -- Uldis: there re existing tag ontologies in RDF, can be useful to look how they relate to / can be used with SKOS

- one possibility would be to link the work on RDFa and GRDDL; SWEO may consider RDFa as a specific GRDDL transform

<kidehen> Ivan: is it okay for me to bring Fred in with me?

<UldisB> Uldis to send pointers to those to the list

--- w.r.t. extracting RDF info from microformats is already present in GRDDL, so then one may move to showing the link between RDFa and microformats = vocabularies may have different shapes, etc.

<Susie> Kingsley: that'd be OK.

<danja> (UldisB, Richard Newman's tag ontology is defined from SKOS terms http://www.holygoat.co.uk/projects/tags/ )

--- who's an expected audience for using RDFa; it's not trivial to bring in RDF triples into HTML via RDFa, whereas the transform to XML seems to be easier, so this is an important targeting question.... ivan points that there was a fairly strong push against RDF/XML, so this might be a specific situation causing issues for Dean

= essentially, the answer here is the people who are learning HTML and to whom RDFa gives opportunity to include "a little bit more"; but in general there are some difficulties in HTML authoring tools in general, not mentioning what happens if we extend them with some support for RDFa.... :-)

= the expectations from HTML people is that they want to stick to HTML, so how can people who learn HTML get quickly exposed to RDF world (via RDFa)

= Benjamin suggests an interesting use case in terms of replacing RDF.XML dump with a RDFa dump/transform... which is more human-readible, (for free) provides the opportunity to browse the RDF graph = no need to parse language these people are not comfortable with?

<danja> Operator I believe is getting/has some support for RDFa - but is anyone talking to the browser vendors?

(this may require some change in spec, because the return format for e.g. SPARQL standard is based on RDF/XML serialization, but in practice, tools actually support many different serializations, so the suggestion might be realistic)

<danja> (I don't think SPARQL is based on RDF/XML)

<leobard> I would go back to the topic of target audience

= in other words, RDFa may be an alternative serialization (about 80-90%) of what RDF semantic model actually contain == this may help us to deliver the key message that RDF as a model is totally independent from RDF/XML as *one* of its serializations, so the RDFa direction sounds positive

<bengee> the sparql protocol spec mentions conneg (e.g. to get turtle instead of rdf/xml)

--- Leo suggests producing some tutorials focusing on particular audiences (e.g. people programming WorldPress, Facebook, etc. plugins), so we may actually aim at those as potential intermediaries to promote RDFa

<Ralph> RDFa Use Cases

= currently, we don't have detailed knowledge of this audience, but some communities that already work/play with RDFa --> people who do some annotations (e.g. in bioinformatics, health,...), these are usually lay people, who don't really care about what they annotate their materials in, so RDFa may be a more accessible vocabulary for annotation..

<UldisB> http://kantenwerk.org/2007/07/30/shift-binaries-for-download/

= also bloggers is a good target, as they are (usually) happy to put additional information into their pages..

<UldisB> tools by Knud, a colleague of mine, one of them for producing RDFa from desktop data

<deanallemang> Knud was the fellow I mentioned earlier, whom I encouraged to make his output in RDFa - I am glad to hear that he has done that (at the time, he was not enthusiastic)

= another possibility would to target the browsers as tools exposing the RDF content, so that makes it tool (browser) developers) and content/blog publishers

<kidehen> leobard: hi

<UldisB> deanallemang: i thought so. :) we were using RDF/XML at that time, but you were successful in making him "convert" to RDFa

<deanallemang> Uldis: I need to download his tools, and see if I can do the things I wanted to do last year (and failed) in RDFa

<kidehen> leobard: publishing tools vendors, application developers

= Ralph also says that it is good to target those who promote the use of microformat = rather than inventing new ad-hoc features for microformats, one may go for RDFa and just add a specific relations, etc. there (in hopefully a simpler way)

<scribe> ACTION: SWEO would keep pressure on the RDFa working group to provide some content, which might be included in our FAQs, etc. [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action06]

<UldisB> we need to have the same active community for RDFa as there is for microformats

<UldisB> was mentioned when talking about a RDFa community

<UldisB> re. FAQ entry for RDFa - we need to know what are the unique things that RDFa has benefits over microformats - things that can not be done (easily or at all) with the latter

EricP & Lee on SPARQL outreach ideas

- SPARQL is a tool that has not been conceived as an end itself, it's means to get to the actual content (RDF) --> what kind of outreach is then needed/wanted for this query language --> maybe to present it in a similar manner as SQL?

--- there is a similar work from the past = XQuery --> this has been more or less adopted into products.... Orri agrees that basically all data store vendors support XQuery, which works with docs having some structure, etc.; another thing done by vendors is creating queries on virtual XML docs, etc. but there is no significant evidence that XQuery is at the heart of some specific success...

scribe: story in DB world

--- whereas SPARQL is not something that necessarily is embedded in SQL; the role SPARQL should take is that of a top-level query language for finding and joining data from a large and heterogenous data sets (so in this sense, it is more comparable with SQL than things like XQuery)

= the question really is how to deliver the message that SPARQL is *really* something suitable as a high-level QL

= Kingsley says that two things helped to push SQL: ODBC API and substrate (reporting tools), which we are (to some extent) pushing in the context of SWT (and SWEO)?

<kidehen> MartinD: ODBC the substrate

<kidehen> MartinD: Report Writers (now BI) and Query Tools atop the substrate

= Ivan says that a particular data model has certain (preferred) ways to query it, one can imagine querying RDF in SQL, but actually, the native way is via triples, so this might point toward the need to have this (RDF-native) language as well

= probably no major need to promote SPARQL to the developers and RDF people, as far as high-level query language, this might be worthwhile to push a bit more clearly

Kingsley suggest to start building an "ecosystem of tools" around SPARQL in a similar way as happened for SQL (see the points on ODBC API and tools building upon this API)

Karen emphasizes that SQL is often used as a reference point for "querying (in general)"; so one useful need may be to present the need of a different kind of querying, which in turn would then lead toward SPARQL as a high-level alternative for data querying

Karen Myers on SWEO messaging

- Karen will touch on what people actually say about SWT and some more things

<LeeF> Are these slides on the Web anywhere?

--- with new cool technologies, there is always an issue of how to send a message to the audience beyond the developers about that coolness = examples, support in interpreting the technology, etc. (Karen talks about a few examples of how this can be approached using some preview technologies)

<danja> (coldfusion, bluetooth)

<Susie> Karen presents on Semantic Web marketing.

--- disruptive technologies require new language, putting those developing / spreading the technologies into the shoes of the potential users

<UldisB> Bluetooth - was a disruptive tech & also a paradigm shift

--- we need to get to the point of having suitable, crisp messages about SWT that we can use to get the message out there, but we still need these on different levels of complexity

<danja> (can't hear ericP very well)

<UldisB> eric - may be good to outsource marketing to get the message out

<Zakim> ericP, you wanted to ask about outsourcing

--- there is still a substantial bias of SWEO on technologies and technologists, although these people have interest in outreach and marketing (to certain extent), but would it be useful to get more marketing people on board?

= the reason why we have so few marketing people is perhaps due to maturity of the technology, so far SWT didn't make it onto the rader screens of those marketing depts

<UldisB> we also did specifically not ask for marketing people

= more of a product is actually needed, more ideas about the actual added value needs to be gathered as well

<UldisB> given a choice companies would probably appoint techies (who grok this stuff at a deeper level)

= one issue we have that we get interest from W3C members (incl. companies), but these tend to send in their technology reps rather than marketing people... so one (partial) issue might be in pitching the offer of something like SWEO to the W3C members

--- so we have basically 3 key audiences: developers/techies, IT management, and business level (product mgt, strategists,...)

--- on the enterprise side, there is still not enough developers who would be able to deliver on the technologies, should the business decide to adopt and try the (new, SW) technology

<UldisB> -- companies need to see how a particular business problem of theirs can be solved by SWT

<UldisB> -- when they build a pilot to try it out then they start to "get it"

--- to date SWEO managed to gather (reasonably) enough materials in the form of use cases, which can be used as a support for discussing SWT related issues, opportunities,...

--- media started using the "web 3.0" label, which is not exactly the favoured option of the W3C and the community...

--- web 3.0 is not a fortunate label, to some extent it is an effect of previously allowing web 2.0 as a shorthand for the social, dynamic web technologies

<UldisB> one thing where Web 3.0 is good is if trying to avoid the word "semantic"

<UldisB> which scares the people away

<danja> +1 to "Web of Data" style of branding (in addition to semweb)

--- the point is that the phrase "semantic" also causes problems; it has certain negative connotations, wrong associations, ect

<UldisB> and is also mis-heard by people as Symantec

<UldisB> danja: do regular people "resonate" with the "Web of Data"?

<ghard> smart web?

<danja> (Jason Calacanis claimed the "official" version of Web 3.0 - a direct match for his own product)

---> note: there is a clash between using articles "the" and "a" in connection with ' ' Semantic Web

<danja> !!!!

<danja> (also Semantic Web technologies vs. Semantic Web The Vision)

--- an interesting domain (which has been little / poorly targeted by us) is the rich media (digital music) = this might be the first real adopter for SWT = see the previous chat we had w.r.t. POWDER as an opportunity to attach / associate additional content -- e.g. what else, interests, reviews,.... with the human-understandable content -- music, movie, news story,......)

--- consideration of presenting SW as a "web of data" = generalization, extension of "web of documents" + "web of people"

<UldisB> tell not how it works, but what it will do for them

<ghard> "Smarter web" ;)

<UldisB> "Smart(er) Web"++

<danja> sounds better than "marginally less stupid web")

--- regarding the articles... might be better to talk about semantically enabled web and similarly, rather than "the Semantic Web", which may suggest, there is a single collection of items (like 'the Web')

--- so applications of SWT in companies =/= 'the' Semantic Web, right?

<UldisB> --- when you get web technologies and apply them in an enterprise you get some entirely different values

<UldisB> re. SemWeb vs. SWT

<danja> SWT deployment a necessary precursor of SW...

<UldisB> danja: some argue that when companies use SWT that's not SemWeb as such as it is not on the web

<danja> WS-* has soured the well a little in /apparently/ offering what semweb offers

<danja> UldisB, I think I'd argue that too :-)

<danja> the whole blogging thing demonstrated that there was a lot further to go with the document web than anyone expected...

<UldisB> danja: using SWT when talking w. enterprises can be better than a generic semweb vision

<danja> yup

<UldisB> helps get he messages more clear

<danja> Report: 7 Out Of 10 Americans Experience 'Search Engine Fatigue'

<danja> http://searchengineland.com/071023-093541.php

<UldisB> --- infromation overload

<UldisB> --- Karen: info overload is one of the things we can play on

<danja> sorry -which domain?

--- GoPubMed project might be a good candidate to approach in terms of showing how SWT extends and complements classic search = i.e. to address people's classic point on "...but Google's done it already..."

--- it's important to cover not only (or especially not) conferences and events that are already about SWT

--- the point is to go vertical as well, targeting specialist events (digital libraries, biology, financials, etc etc etc)

=> importance of having (a) a pool of speakers and (b) a pool of unified, simple messages to communicate with

<danja> production of audio/video resources may help?

=> informatin like use cases or ivan's overview of the field are examples of items from such a pool

<danja> no rush

<danja> "metabooth" - I love it

--- SWEO was invited to contribute to Wiltshire Sem. Technologies event.... incl. a booth for outreach, discounts for participants,... (taking place in San Jose, May 2008)

--- more focus on users, consultants = which tools, for what, how to use them, why, why not (might be a good rationale for the next IG/XG?)

--- there is a wiki with technologies, commercial products, etc. = available publicly, but we need to be careful about gathering (justified or not justified) comments, experiences (and critical evaluations) about the products of the members (i.e. specific companies)

Info gathering, preferred documents (Danny, Leo)

<danja> ok, InfoGathering task's job is to gather material (and perhaps present them)

<UldisB> Danny talking on preferred documen t collection

<UldisB> stems from the info-gathering ask

<danja> http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/InfoGathering

<leobard> http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/InfoGathering/RecommendedTutorials

<danja> but turns out to be very time consuming

<UldisB> --- suggestion was to get a recommended tutorials list together

<UldisB> --- talking w. Tom Heath re. using revyu for annotating and providing recommendations

<UldisB> danja took an action for gathering together an initial list

<UldisB> tagging could be v. useful when coming to audience targeting

<UldisB> --- currently is: beg / intermed / advanced classification

<danja> http://tinyurl.com/yobv9t

<danja> http://danja.talis.com/tutorials-howto.html

<UldisB> --- danja's tinyurl is a live query for these materials

<UldisB> --- Susie: what's the main thing you're looking for

<UldisB> --- recommendations, what are good or relevant materials

<UldisB> --- also how to filter it, and how to present it

<bengee> cool stuff, danja!

<danja> sorry - can't hear very well

<UldisB> ACTION: to continue this discussion on the mailing list and future SWEO telcos [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action07]

<UldisB> --- Martin: REASE repository can be a useful source of info

<danja> btw, hot off the press from Kanzaki: http://www.kanzaki.com/works/2007/misc/thisweek-sw

<UldisB> --- REASE distinguishes 2 different audiences, and does ranking based on the popularity

<danja> "This Week's SemWeb" as linked data - note use of Genre

<UldisB> --- Q (by Ivan): will this go on when we are not around any more

<UldisB> there have been efforts previously that have been collecting links, but those repositories have vanished / staled when they stopped work

<UldisB> --- Leo: re. continuity - there are 2 companies interested in continuing REASE. but we only need REASE for 2 weeks to do ranking

<danja> tricky problem, it's data that updates in real time

<danja> kidehen++

<UldisB> --- Ivan: how can we make sure this resource is alive and being updated. static HTML won't do.

<danja> keyword: distributed..?

<UldisB> --- Susie: need a list of resources that's good today and will be there for a year at least. can do manual annotation /ranking first (eg, on a wiki), to get there quickly

<danja> presentation on wiki isn't good for newcomers

<danja> has moin got non-scrapy output?

<UldisB> --- Leo: do you want business people to look at a wiki?

<danja> mediawiki++

<UldisB> danja: i've heard people not being too happy w. mediawiki. it's popular, al right.

<UldisB> i like moinmoin :)

<danja> Uldis, ah ok - but what about data-out?

<UldisB> danja: we can build that.

<danja> Uldis, cool

<UldisB> python's better to code in than php, moinmoin is very nicely OO

<UldisB> but W3C is moving to a mediawiki, as i understand, so it's a question if we need to look at moinmoin or not

<danja> UldisB +1 to python rather than php

<danja> moin -> RDF; RDF -> mediawiki?

<ghard> next topic: use cases and case studies collected. Ivan discussing.

Use cases and Case studies (Ivan)

<ghard> use case categories should be reviewed

<Susie> Use cases are at http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/sweo/public/UseCases/

<ghard> Information on which technologies are used needed in the use cases

<ghard> make collective read of use cases and define which tech used in which

<ghard> Use cases used by people not from their original target group

<ghard> Problem with complexity

<UldisB> - how detailed do we want this information?

<ghard> We could start collecting and categorizing the cases from different points of view. Developers, etc.

<ghard> More focus on why current technologies cannot do what we're demonstrating?

<ghard> Cannot always look in the gift horse's mouth re. use cases received.

<ghard> A mechanism to easily submit new cases is needed.

<ghard> Plus some sort of template.

<ghard> Key benefits, etc.

<ghard> Contact information in the use case template: Ivan left them out to protect from SPAM. CAPTHA could be used, but it's complicated. Shouldn't have them in public without consent.

<ghard> Short (2 sentence) quote could be added as an optional item in the template.

<UldisB> ACTION: make a template for use cases/ case studies - Susie, Ivan [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action08]

<UldisB> "if you have questions, contact Ivan" - add to the template

General messaging and Comm team

<Susie> Ian: Please do join the call.

<UldisB> The Future of SWEO (with the W3C Comm Team) - Ian Jacobs

<UldisB> Ian's in the comm team, valuable input to SWEO.

<UldisB> q: how'd he be interested to work with SWEO in future, ...

<UldisB> --- "listen up, here's how it's gonna be" :)

<UldisB> --- Ian's main goal - to find where comm team's involvement in needed, appropriate, at the right time

<UldisB> --- useful division b/w branding materials and communication materials

<UldisB> --- use cases - comm team interested in being aware of them.

<UldisB> no need for more intense involvement. can provide feedback.

<UldisB> --- anything that does w3c branding need to be co-developed with the comm team

<UldisB> Karen: re. conferences and ways to get messages out. how comm team works on sponsorship, etc. getting messages to analysts, etc.

<UldisB> Karen recaps on what she talked about earlier

<UldisB> --- did not go into w3c comm team's role

<IanJ> w3t-pr

<UldisB> --- can use w3t-pr if there are events that need attention to be paid to

<UldisB> --- r.e sponsorship - some requirements. typically a contract b/w conference and w3c.

<Susie> Interesting conferences are posted at: http://esw.w3.org/topic/SweoIG/TaskForces/Conferences

<UldisB> --- w3t-pr is the place to request that - w3c sponsorship or endorsement

<UldisB> --- tpically asks for some benefits to w3c members, eg, discounts for members

<UldisB> --- Susie: we have lists of interesting conferences. including verticals like lifesciences. db conferences (vldb).

<UldisB> --- Susie: been semi-active aggregating this info.

<UldisB> --- ivan has quite some experience with organising slide-sets

<UldisB> --- goal was that offices would re-use them for their presentations. but there was not that much reuse.

<UldisB> --- difficult to use slide-sets prepared by someone else

<UldisB> --- Susie: creating a library of graphics, which people could mix and match

<UldisB> library of graphics - a good idea

<UldisB> --- Susie: re. earlier POWDER discussion. about "Mobile OK" label.

<UldisB> --- Ian: have mobile-ok logos ready to go

<LeeF> ack

<LeeF> +2s/ack/<something much more eloquent than 'ack'/

<UldisB> is it re. semweb logo?

<UldisB> --- re. licenses - community knows CC

<UldisB> --- also get aditional publicity out of CC search tools

<UldisB> Ian to send attribution info to Ivan, to be added into the SVG files

<UldisB> --- Ian: what are the next steps for SWEO that the comm team should be aware of?

<IanJ> +1 to testimonials as part of use cases

<UldisB> --- ivan: re team of presenters that w3c could use for events

<UldisB> --- ian: would like to develop a matrix of messages, topics and audiences

<UldisB> --- ian: w3c redesigning large portions of the w3c site. going well & is exciting.

<UldisB> --- - one of ideas to provide a lot more content, eg, re semweb

<UldisB> --- - how to manage all that information? wiki? need to generate useful, "normally looking" pages from it.

<IanJ> s/hearing/tolerating/

<UldisB> --- ian: w3 site as a reputation aggregator.

<UldisB> that's in line (damn keyboard) with our info-gathering work

<UldisB> --- ian: not aware of too many groups _rnking_ things. there are people listing things. may want to involve more of a community into the discussion.

<IanJ> thanks all!

Future of SWEO

<Karen> Ivan: Would be difficult to plan too much more between now and end of Charter

<Karen> ...used to be SW Best Practices Deployment WG

<Karen> ...came out after OWL was published

<Karen> ...has a vague and general charter

<Karen> ...clear that most output was technical work

<Karen> ...notes on how to express RDF, OWL, set up server, etc.

<Karen> ...at end of charter decision made to break that group into two

<Karen> ...the Deployment Group and SWEO

<Karen> ...DG does SKOS

<Karen> ...and RDFa

<Karen> ...don't really do materials

<Karen> ...document that Leo co-authored, "Cool URIs"

<Karen> ...probably fit better in Deployment Group, but we're happy to have it in SWEO

<Karen> ...any rechartering needs to look at both groups

<Karen> ...Deployment is about to finish RDFa in spring 2008

<Karen> ...SKOS needs more work

<Karen> ...If we take two charters together, there is a need for documents and deliverables like Leo's

<Karen> ...the community needs things like "Cool URIs"

<Karen> ...it's more of an expert document

<Karen> ...does not include anything technical and new

<Karen> ...just give an explanation of things that community would have difficulty doing

<Karen> ...clearly a need for more things like this

<Karen> ...not weight and size of SKOS

<Karen> ...also a need for [not sure where boundary is] the "marketing" and outreach things

<Karen> ...very difficult to get the "marketing" people to participate in W3C IG

<Karen> ...should we go into writing tutorials?

<Karen> ...I'm opening up the questions and issues

<Karen> ...then the real "marketing" things like the logos

<Karen> ...lesson learned was to introduce to CommTeam sooner to collaborate

<Karen> ...we may have spent more time and energy on logo and brochure than needed

<Karen> ...do we have a group that does more "marketing" work, or does CommTeam do it?

<Karen> ...it probably would not work right now for CommTeam because they don't have the resources

<Karen> ...Perhaps CommTeam dedicates a resource

<Karen> ...And, we need to assess what the community needs

<Karen> ...Ivan opens it up to SWEO to discuss

<Karen> Leo: In next weeks, finish things

<Karen> ...she wants to finish flier in next two to three weeks

<Karen> Ivan: Absolutely

<Karen> ...properly finish what we have started

<Karen> ...Dunja, tutorials, etc.

<Karen> ...make a good job on what we have

<Karen> ..."feature freeze"

<Karen> ...Sorry to those who have joined now

<Karen> ...Holidays are coming up, too

<Karen> Susie: Let's clarify what exact date in February 2008

<Karen> ...I agree with Ivan to wrap up what we have started

<Karen> Ivan: 31st of January

<Karen> ...if we want to extend for one or two months, we can do that

<Karen> Susie: End of January 2008 should be realistic

<Karen> Ivan: We have some other charters that have to be renewed that may have higher priority first

<Karen> ...RIF for example

<Karen> ...I cannot promise that a new charter would go out at end of January

<Karen> ...HCLS new charter also has to be developed

<Karen> Susie: Appreciate time commitments since I'm in both

<Karen> Ivan: So what can be done

<Karen> Susie: We don't have to have all the answers today

<Karen> Ivan: Not decide today, no, but let's start talking

<Karen> Leo: We have one idea

<Karen> ...Outreach thing

<Karen> ...In last month, contact companies that want to deploy SW

<Karen> ...take a service, then agree to write a use case

<Karen> ...each person gives away time

<Karen> Ivan: I have two reactions

<Karen> ...Karen has experience with companies asking for consulting

<Karen> ...with companies coming to W3C

<Karen> ...it's a very tiring job

<Karen> ...Merck meeting was a lot of work

<Karen> ...based on that, it's a question of whether we give free to community

<Karen> ...my reaction is that I would restrict to W3C Members only

<Karen> ...consulting is an expensive service for companies to buy

<Karen> ...but not to just any company; W3C cannot

<Karen> afford

<Karen> Susie: Not clear what you mean by consulting

<Karen> ...Oracle has ranges of general education to 1:1 problem solving

<Karen> Karen: Clarification?

<Zakim> IanJ, you wanted to talk about tutorials

<Karen> Leo: Possibly a two-hour call with big companies that are interested

<Karen> ...we know the good links

<Karen> ...a gold mine of information

<Karen> ...in a two-hour phone call we could cover a lot of information

<Karen> ...idea is to restrict to W3C Members is good

<Karen> ...Member benefit value

<Karen> ...We also want to sell products; connect to potential customers

<Karen> Karen: perhaps a Webinar panel

<Karen> ...MWI did this

<Karen> Ivan: Whom do we contact?

<Karen> Karen: Philipp Hoschka

<Karen> ACTION: Karen to get information on Webinar [recorded in http://www.w3.org/2007/10/24-sweo-minutes.html#action09]

<Karen> Bengee: Focus on ideas that last beyond SWEO

<Karen> ...such as tagging high quality tutorials, collection of tools

<Karen> ...focus on outreach to the community

<Karen> ...Community projects are another example

<Karen> ...could have a longer-term effect

<Karen> ...like tutorials collection, script that DannyA demonstrated

<Karen> Susie: yes, how to expend our remaining resources

<Karen> Bengee: Make it visible so it can be used and available

<Karen> Meli: General comment

<Karen> ...what we have seen in terms of technology getting adopted

<Karen> ...we referred throughout the day to this

<Karen> ...tutorials, documents are viewed from "how to use"

<Karen> ...how do we actually do data integration at a detailed level?

<Karen> ...for example, I spoke with someone who described a problem; asked specific "how to" questions

<Karen> ...one, people don't know how to go about it

<Karen> ...information is not yet at level of detail for a developer

<Karen> ...tools are not mature enough

<Karen> ...not focused enough on specific problem-solving

<Karen> ...we don't know why there aren't more tools

<Karen> ...Oracle expects to partner with companies that make tools

<Karen> ...we tend to direct to companies like Top Quadrant

<Karen> Ivan: I see there is a missing this/that

<Karen> ...is it the job or W3C to do this; to fill these gaps?

<Karen> ...W3C's POV is it's the business world that does this; develops tools

<Karen> ...W3C doesn't want to take away business

<Karen> Dean: Yes, I agree with you

<Karen> Leo: You are asking more the question, "where are the tools?

<Karen> Melli: I agree it's not W3C's charter to do these things

<Karen> Ivan: What can W3C do to get more companies to do that?

<Karen> Dean: Encourage the industry

<Karen> Ivan: If there are things we can do to help, then yes

<Karen> Susie: We should identify the gaps and critical approaches

<Karen> Melli: ID gaps, why they are there

<Karen> ...why did some companies go out of business

<Karen> Dean: Low hanging fruit is to get OWL Lite right; more industrial relevant

<Karen> Ivan: From our POV, when OWL 1.1 came in; goal is to fill that gap

<Karen> Melli: That's one gap

<Karen> Ivan: It could be job of SWEO to look at where the missing features are

<Karen> ...you who are out there in business see the gaps more

<Karen> Martin: To the business point

<Karen> ...not provide solutions

<Karen> ...would like to see more systematic way to approach it

<Karen> Ivan: a bit like the questionnaire, but more interactive and targeted to the tool providers and producers

<Karen> ...who see where limitations are

<Karen> Martin: Medium; choose audience

<Karen> ...like product management level

<Karen> ...relates to Web seminars

<Karen> ...about 15 minutes to the point to ask the right questions

<Karen> ...link to come [videolectures.net]

<Karen> [] Reflects my journey; no one to ask; bewilderment

<Karen> ...some think it's a dead end; it's not all there yet

this is the link related to the interviews I mentioned earlier as a potential medium to solicit those gaps, ideas, needs, etc: http://videolectures.net/site/list/interviews/

<Karen> ...a shock for me; when I started reading, it was hard to follow the path

<Karen> ...I hit walls; wasn't expecting that

<Karen> ...nice to have known it wasn't the "be all end all"

<Karen> Ivan: I said "feature freeze"

<Karen> ...raising one thing here

<Karen> ...look at set of tools on the wiki

<Karen> ...one way to start doing this, is try to look at what tools can do

<Karen> ...and use in a way to explain what the tools solve currently, and what they don't

<Karen> ...like looking at use cases; material is there, but not properly catalogued

<Karen> ...maybe next group

<Karen> ...you have quite a lot of tools, but some have no continuation, so it may be counter-productive

<Karen> ...instead look at problems I want to solve

<Karen> ...and acknowledge when there is no tool yet available

<Karen> Uldis: One thing is about the logo

<Karen> ...I ran it by another irc community

<Karen> ...comments were mainly design question

<Karen> ...is there a version for dark [reverse] background

<Karen> ...is there a black and white version of the logo

<Karen> ...useful for printed materials

<Karen> Susie: Tech ribbons can be changed

<Karen> ...colors of cube are fixed

<Karen> ...if changing colors is a big thing, we should tell Ian

<Karen> ...have to be wary of others who may use different colors or cube

<Karen> Ivan: We would need CommTeam input on this

<Karen> ...let Ian run with it

<Karen> Uldis: maybe some white area for reverse

<Karen> ...other thing, longer perspective, is W3C doing any outreach in virtual worlds like SecondLife?

<Karen> Ivan: some discussion at W3C in SecondLife

<Karen> ...I don't know much more

<Karen> ...as a person, I don't like the idea of it

<Karen> [laughs]

<Karen> Susie: why don't you want an avitar

<Karen> Ivan: over beer

<Karen> Uldis: not a W3C island

<Karen> ...but maybe some information center

<Karen> Ivan: I know the Web conference of 2008 is thinking about this

<Karen> ...I'm surprised to see researchers

<Karen> Karen: CommTeam would be open to talking more

<Karen> Uldis: I would want some help with specific messages

<Karen> Martin: We don't want to do academic research

<Karen> ...possible dissemination

<Karen> ...repetition in these projects

<Karen> ...knowledge systems and ontologies; possibly an additional audience

<Karen> ...perhaps they can commit to recognized activities

<Karen> Ivan: I think this would be very difficult; dynamics of EU projects are very challengin

<Karen> We say goodbye to Leo and Bengee

<Karen> [Ivan notes that teleconferencing has worked well today]