SweoIG/Meetings/2007-11-21 Conference Call

Call Details

• Date of Call: Wednesday November 21, 2007
• Time of Call: 10:00am EDT (Boston Time)
• Dial-In #: +1.617.761.6200 (Cambridge, MA)
• Dial-In #: +33.4.89.06.34.99 (Nice, France)
• Dial-In #: +44.117.370.6152 (Bristol, UK)
• Participant Access Code: 7936 ("SWEO")
• IRC Channel: irc.w3.org port 6665 channel #SWEO (see W3C IRC page for details, or see Web IRC)
• Duration: ~1 hour
• Convener: Susie Stephens
• Scribe: Susie Stephens

Agenda

• Business Presentation - David
• Library of Images
• Pictogram Progress - Benjamin
• Semantic Technologies Conference - Karen
• Webinar - Karen
• Enterprise Survey - Karen
• Preferred Document Collection - Danny
• Update on InfoGathering Task - Leo
• URI Document - Leo
• FAQ Updates - Ivan
• Use Case Progress - Ivan
• Progress on SemWeb flyer - Dunja / Paula
• Update on the Community Projects - Kjetil
• AOB

Minutes

• <Susie> Attendees: Kjetil, David, Bengee, Martin, Susie
• <Susie> Regrets: Ivan, Danny, Lee, Kingsley, Paula, Dunja, Pasquale
• <MartinD> zakim, who is here?
• <Zakim> On the phone I see Susie, +1.781.254.aaaa, Kjetil (muted), bengee, MartinD
• <Zakim> On IRC I see JacekK, Zakim, Susie, bengee, MartinD, LeeF, Kjetil
• <Susie> David talks about creating a business presentation.
• <Susie> David: has been focused on the business side of the semantic web for a while.
• <Susie> David: has had less of a technical focus.
• <Susie> David: one of the few business people who has really dug down into the technology
• <Susie> David: consistent issue is communicating to people who lack the technical background, or who are intrested in the business results.
• <Susie> David: business isn't interested in how technology works
• <Susie> David: business wants to know if they put money in, how much money will they get out.
• <Susie> David: what problems does it solve, and why is it better than how we are approaching things now
• <Susie> David: limited benefit if we talk about ontologies, RDF or URIs
• <Susie> David: they are interested in business results
• <Susie> David: very interested in others thoughts
• <Susie> Susie: even scientists have very limited interest in the details
• <Susie> David: some people have taken the time to learn about the semantic web
• <Susie> David: but they have trouble explaining why it's good to VPs
• <Susie> David: if we get this nailed down we'll see adoption and benefits
• <Susie> Susie: even if senior managers buy in, techies can be reluctant to use it as it's unknown and maked it harder to achieve goals
• <Susie> David: varying levels of maturity
• <Susie> David: if we take the most mature components then what can we achieve?
• <Susie> David: people want to minimize personal career risk
• <Susie> David: can start by describing what's solid now
• <Susie> David: we can then push out to the less mature areas
• <Susie> Bengee: this makes a lot of sense
• <Susie> Bengee: it needs to be frictionless to developers
• <MartinD> q+
• Zakim sees MartinD on the speaker queue
• <Susie> Bengee: this is because there are other technology that people can use
• <Kjetil> q+
• Zakim sees MartinD, Kjetil on the speaker queue
• <Susie> Bengee: semantic web and then there's rdf
• <Susie> David: can use rdf now to save time
• <Susie> David: we can set aside some of the complexity for now
• <Susie> David: especially if using rdf we can show value
• <Kjetil> q-
• Zakim sees MartinD on the speaker queue
• <Susie> Martin: would it be intresting to annotate the use cases?
• <Susie> Martin: because they are practical and describe real implementations
• <MartinD> ack MartinD
• Zakim sees no one on the speaker queue
• <bengee> e.g. RDF+SPARQL enables web programming without the hassle of database table adjustments when the model evolves and complex table join juggling during querying
• <Susie> Susie: look at case studies to see where companies perceive the most value to be in
• <Susie> David: some are answering scientific questions with scientific results
• <Susie> David: but they don't highlight why this approach is better, e.g. faster to builder, use, different results
• <Susie> Susie: is the semantic web mature enough to be able to show roi?
• <Susie> David: can we compare new and old approaches?
• <Kjetil> q+
• Zakim sees Kjetil on the speaker queue
• <Susie> David: hard because many of the Semantic Web tools are new
• <Susie> David: it's also hard to point to scientific results because the drug pipeline takes so long
• <Susie> David: other new technologies are able to show roi, so not giving up yet
• <Susie> Kjetil: it's important to be able to answer questions relating to roi, and how it differentiate with things that have been tried and fails
• <Kjetil> Hi JacekK!
• <Susie> Jacek gives an introduction
• <Susie> Jacek works at DERI Innsbruck, which will soon be known as Semantic Technologies Institute
• <Susie> Jack: has a focus on semantic web services
• <Susie> Jacek: will just be watching to start with
• <Susie> Jacek: hopes SWEO will be re-chartered
• <Susie> David does an introduction
• <Susie> David: started work on semantic web in 2003 while at Sloan
• <Susie> David: wrote a business case related to the semantic web
• <Susie> David: basic read for semantic web gurus, but was written for business people
• <Susie> David: business folks have struggled with it as it's too techie
• <Susie> David: started own company in 2005 related to Similie and D-space
• <Susie> David: identified a business pattern and articulated how these techologies can address the business pattern in a way that isn't being done now
• <Susie> David: some people rely on data for their job - acquire, manipulate, share, annotate
• <Susie> David: he ask people in life sciences if they had a problem that he knows that they have, and then gets in to show a demo
• <Susie> David: now works at Metatomix
• <Susie> Bengee: Susie mailed comm team asking whether or how to proceed with other logo work
• <Susie> Bengee: been working on pictograms for different technologies, e.g. OWL, GRDDL, RDFa, SPARQL
• <Susie> Bengee: got a somewhat non-commital response from comm
• <Susie> Bengee: would like to see the cube become more adopted first
• <Susie> Bengee: would like to integrate pictograms with the cube
• <Susie> Bengee: don't want to spend a lot of time on it if it doesn't result in any outcome from us directly
• <Susie> Bengee: the OWL group has created their own logo
• <bengee> Susie: comm team is rather short wrt to resources atm, but we may be able to push our things
• <Susie> Bengee: could make sense to do a SPARQL logo on the cube, but don't think putting the OWL logo on the cube would make sense
• <Susie> Bengee: do need to develop pictograms in a more open and collaborative way
• <Susie> Bengee: could do this work in the SWIG
• <Susie> Susie: we'll ask Ivan!
• <Susie> Susie: Pfizer case study ready to be posted onto the web site
• <Susie> Susie: Semantic Web brochures are being mailed to MIT for later distribution
• <Susie> Kjetil: no updates on community projects
• <Susie> David: what is the status of SWEO being re-chartered?
• <Susie> Susie: current SWEO finishes at the end of January 2008
• <Susie> Susie: it's likely to be re-chartered, but that isn't certain as yet.