Businesses Were Recruiting At New York Semantic Web MeetUp

By Bernard Lunn on March 28, 2010 12:29 PM

The New York Semantic Web MeetUp on Thursday was well-attended, with 123 people.That was a lot more than 30 the previous month. But what really jumped out at me was the number of people who were there with a mission to recruit. That shows a healthy ecosystem developing around the semantic web.

The three speakers were good and represented what we call the “big tent” definition of the semantic web, covering everything from LinkedData, Open Data, Semantic Tech, NLP, NoSQL etc. No religious wars here!

For more on this event and what it tells us about the evolution of the semantic web, read on.

123 People Introduce Themselves

Marco Neumann has been guiding this MeetUp for many years. He still keeps to the small meeting ethos, even though at 123 the meeting is moving beyond that. Every attendee gives a brief “hello, my name is xyz and this is what I do and what I am interested in”. I heard at least 4 who made it clear that their mission was to recruit and at the end you could see some handshakes and exchanging of cards.

The normal New York industries were represented: publishing, financial services, advertising and pharma.

One reason this MeetUp worked in bringing in new people was that the speakers represented what at SemanticWeb.com we call the “big tent” definition of Semantic Web that includes LinkedData, Open Data, Semantic Tech, NLP, NoSQL etc. No religious wars here!

User Interfaces for the Semantic Web

The “headline act” was “User Interfaces for the Semantic Web” by Duane Degler of Design For Context.

NYSemWeb MeetUp 3.png

This was billed as a:

“tangible guided tour of interesting semantic web applications and user interfaces. What is being adopted from current Internet – and Rich Internet – apps and sites? What new design concepts might be possible now or in the future? What pitfalls are we discovering as linked data meets the interface?”

This was perfectly timed. We have seen too many semantic web sites that just throw up all the data in ways that make you go “wow, lots of cool data” but nobody actually uses it. As Duane put it (I am paraphrasing), “just because you can create a network diagram from the data does not mean that you necessarily should do that.”