1st Workshop on Friend of a Friend,
Social Networking and the Semantic Web
(FOAF'2004)
*1-2 September 2004, Galway, Ireland*,
sponsored by SWAD-Europe and DERI
*http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/events/foaf-galway/*
Introduction
------------
The FOAF (Friend of a Friend )
project explores a unique combination of themes from social
networking, search engines, knowledge representation and software
development. FOAF was designed as a practical experiment that
would highlight the technical, social and business challenges
raised by the next generation of "Semantic" Web technology. Over
the past few years, the FOAF developer community has been working
on standards-based techniques for publishing and harvesting
machine-readable descriptions of people, the links between them,
and the things they create and do. The working assumption of the
project is that such techniques will underpin the deployment of
the next generation of Web technology, W3C's "Semantic Web".
The FOAF project was created in the expectation that
these machine-readable descriptions will grow, as the Semantic Web
platform matures, to cover companies, organisations, documents,
groups, products, file sharing and many other aspects of life,
both online and off. The time has come to evaluate these
assumptions in the context of the opportunities and challenges
presented by the rise of FOAF and the
Semantic Web.
Social networking is a recent topic gaining much interest and
publicity. Social networking sites are community sites where users
can maintain an online network of friends or associates for social
or business purposes: whether looking for a job, reconnecting with
old friends, moving to a new area, or dating. Most of these sites
are based on a centralised architecture: all users' descriptions
are stored in one big database. There is, however, growing user
and business interest in portability between such sites, and for
sophisticated "single sign-on" mechanisms that reduce the need for
data re-entry, while allowing users to manifest different aspects
of themselves in different contexts. FOAF-based import/export
allows such sites to address user demand for control of "their"
data; however, many deployment, privacy, authentication and
engineering issues have not yet been fully explored. To what
extent do mechanisms such as FOAF change the environment they
attempt to describe? How can the visibility of personal data be
restricted to certain audiences? How can businesses make money
when their customers can migrate to new services with increased ease?
This workshop on FOAF, social networking and the Semantic Web
provides a first chance to discuss the unusual combination of
perspectives - academic and scientific, engineering, social, legal
and business - drawn together by these trends. The workshop aims
to bring together for the first time researchers interested in the
effects, analysis and application of social networks on the
(Semantic) Web as well as practitioners building applications and
infrastructure. The workshop will also try to give a snapshot of
current developments, as well as setting a roadmap for the future
of both FOAF and social networking - especially in the context
of the Semantic Web.
Topics of interest for full papers include, but are not limited to
the following:
* Social network metadata standards
* Trust issues in social networks
* Profiles of FOAF, subsets, mapping to other vocabularies and formats
* Federated digital identity, single sign-on (decentralized identity
management)
* Business models for the Semantic Web (life after banner
advertisements)
* Integration with desktop and mobile applications (chat, IM, P2P,
Bluetooth, address books, RSS/Atom)
* Privacy, etiquette and best practice issues for aggregators
* Infrastructure for social networking
* Applications of online social networking
* Knowledge management with social networks
* Mathematical analysis of social networks
* Exchange of social network information
* Applications of online social networks
* Shared annotations
* Use of digital signatures and encryption with RDF/XML
* RDF-based search engines, data harvesting and syndication
* GUIs (browsers, editors) for FOAF and Semantic Web data
* Formalisms that address practical problems of heterogenous
changing data
* Pragmatics of sharing data schemas across subtly different datasets
Submission and Important Dates
------------------------------
The workshop will be organized in part around talks presenting
selected research results in the relevant fields. Another
important part of the workshop will be open discussions, where
participants define the agenda themselves, focusing on the
interests of the participants with respect to social networking,
FOAF, and the Semantic Web. Depending on the nature of the
submissions, some time may be allocated to discussion of
the future development and coverage of the FOAF specification.
We invite the submission of position statements and demonstration
descriptions as well as full papers. Position papers and
demonstration submissions should not exceed 1000 words, full
papers should not contain more than 6000 words. Documents should
be be submitted as tarred/zipped archives containing exactly one
index.html file and all accompanying files to
team-foafws-org@w3.org (or alternate address(danbri+foafws@w3.org>).
Papers to be published and/or presented will be selected by in
peer review process.
* Full paper submissions due: *18th July 2004*
* Position papers and demonstration proposals due: *22nd July 2004*
* Notification for acceptance: *5th August 2004*
* Web-ready versions due: *16th August 2004*
* Workshop date: *1st-2nd September 2004*
Chairs
------
* Dan Brickley , W3C.
* Stefan Decker , DERI.
* Libby Miller , ILRT.
* R.V.Guha , IBM.
Programme Committee
-------------------
* Lada Adamic
* Tom Baker
* Orkut Buyukkokten
* Marc Canter
* Edd Dumbill
* Dieter Fensel
* Morten Frederiksen
* Nick Gibbins
* Jen Golbeck
* Jan Hauser
* Jim Hendler
* Mashide Kanzaki
* Paul Martino
* Brian McBride
* Wolfgang Nejdl
* Chris Schmidt
* Guus Schreiber
* Nova Spivak
* Jack Park
* Barney Pell
* Norman Walsh
* Danny Weitzner
Location
--------
Galway was founded in the
13th century by the Anglo-Norman de Burgos as a medieval
settlement on the eastern bank of the River Corrib. It became a
walled and fortified city state ruled by fourteen powerful
merchant families, later known as the "Tribes of Galway". Today
the city is a vibrant, bustling centre of the arts and commerce,
though it still retains a relaxed and intimate atmosphere. Galway
is also one of the most popular tourist destinations in the
country. The city, with its medieval streets, waterways, extensive
range of shopping facilities, wealth of music sessions and other
cultural events, is a place to be treasured. The seaside town of
Salthill, a Galway suburb, is a renowned summer resort. Its fine
beaches open directly onto spectacular Galway Bay. Galway's
numerous annual festivals and celebrations - among them the
'Cúirt' International Festival of Literature, the Galway Arts
Festival, the Galway Races and the Oyster Festival - are famous
throughout Ireland and beyond. Galwegians can justly claim a
quality of life that is surpassed nowhere in the world.
Being a university city, Galway is a lively energetic place
throughout the year. The National University of Ireland, Galway
, situated close to the heart of Galway,
enjoys an intimate relationship with the city and during the
academic year, 15% of the population of the city are students. A
compact, thriving city, Galway caters to youth like few other
places can. The University's graduates have played a pivotal role
in all areas of the development of Galway, including the arts,
industry and commerce.
The Digital Enterprise Research Institute has a
centre located at NUI Galway and is focused on developing
Semantic Web technology.
See the local organisers
page for further details on accommodation and travel.
Sponsoring Possibilities
------------------------
Are you a company or organisation willing to sponsor this event?
Sponsoring companies will be given the opportunity to present
their software in The demo session and display their logo
prominently on the workshop homepage. Please contact John Breslin
(john.breslin@deri.ie) for further information.