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News and Media Organizations were well represented at the Semantic Technology and Business Conference in San Francisco this year.  Among the organizations presenting were the New York Times, the Associated Press (AP), the British Broadcasting Co. (BBC), Hearst Media Co., Agence France Press (AFP), and Getty Images.

It was interesting to note that, outside of the New York Times, which has been publishing a very detailed index since 1912, many news organizations presenting at the conference did not make the extensive classification of content a priority until the last decade or so.  It makes sense that, in a newspaper publishing environment, creating a detailed and involved index that guides every reader directly to a specific subject mentioned in the paper must not have seemed as critical as it does now– it’s not as though the reader was likely to keep the newspaper for future reference material– so the work of indexing news content by subject as a reference was left for the most part for librarians to do well after an article was published.

In the early days of the internet, categorization of content (where it existed) was limited to simple taxonomies or to free tagging.  News organizations made rudimentary attempts to identify subjects covered by content, but  did not provide much information  about relationships between these subjects.   Search functions matched the words in the search to the words in the content of the article or feature.   Most websites still organize their content this way.

The drawbacks of this approach to online publishing is that it doesn’t make the most of the content “assets” publishers possess.    Digital content has the potential to be either permanent or ephemeral– it can exist and be accessed by a viewer for as long as the publisher chooses to keep it, and many news organizations are beginning to realize the value of giving their material a longer shelf life by presenting it in different contexts.   If you have just read an article about, say, Hillary Clinton, you would might be interested in a related story about the State Department, or perhaps her daughter Chelsea, or her husband Bill….   But how would any content management system be able to serve up a related story if no one had bothered to indicate somewhere what the story is about and how these people and/or concepts are related to one another?

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The Library of Congress is “more than just a library,” said Campbell, pointing out that the LoC has “the Congressional Research Service, the Copyright Office of the U.S., and the Law Library in addition to the National Collection.” With over 146 Million items in 470 languages, represented in both analog and digital content, and with newly gathered material regularly being added from around the world, there is undeniably a lot of content to manage.

In her keynote address, Ms. Campbell spoke about how the Library of Congress is leveraging linked data technologies in three key areas:

1. Managing existing collections
2. Maintaining the LoC’s role as a leader in the distribution of canonical information
3. Fulfilling the mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to a more digital collection

The keynote in its entirety, is presented below.

To read more about one specific linked data initiative at the Library of Congress, check out this recent series about the Recollections Project.

For more great keynotes, case studies, and insight into how Semantic Web can make a difference in business, consider attending SemTechBiz UK, SemTechBiz DC, or the Semantic Media Summit in NYC.

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Here is the full presentation by Kalyanpur. (Slides were not made available to the general public):

Following this presentation, our own Jennifer Zaino caught up with Kalyanpur for this interview.

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This was one of the realities put forward by Dennis Wisnosky, CTO and Chief Architect, Business Mission Area, U.S. Department of Defense, during his Keynote at the 2011 Semantic Technology Conference San Francisco. Mr. Wisnosky was speaking about how the US DoD leverages Semantic Technology across systems to meet the goal of having an “executable, integrated, consumable, solution architecture.” In particular, he spoke about using the Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard by OMG for their Business Process Modeling efforts, in conjunction with systems built on RDF, OWL, and SPARQL.
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“Essentially everything is in the same format and linked underneath so that it is semantically interoperable,” said Niemann, formerly senior enterprise architect at the EPA and now director and senior data scientist at Semanticommunity.net, in a presentation at SemTech.

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“I truly believe that semantics can be a game changer in just about any B2C model.” – Bill Guinn, Amdocs

Amdocs, a company focused on innovating in the space of Customer Experience Systems, is a $3 Billion company that provides customer care, revenue management, and operational support for large telecommunications companies. To do this requires heavy duty transaction processing systems, with Amdocs processing a few billion transactions per day, resulting in petabytes of information. In his keynote, Mr. Guinn addressed how Amdocs leveraged Semantic Technology to “improve revenue, reduce cost, and improve customer satisfaction.”

The full keynote is presented in the video below. continued…

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PANELISTS:
Ronald M. Kaplan, Powerset division of bing
Christian F. Hempelmann, RiverGlass, Inc.
Riza Berkan, hakia

Semantic Search technology in the Semantic Web community is often understood as retrieval of knowledge from tagged data such as RDF sources, which require substantial formatting and markup to realize. Understanding unstructured query and document text and conducting searches according to their meaning is another approach, exemplified by linguistically rooted semantic matching, ontological knowledge-based semantic interpretation, and statistically based semantic similarity search.

This panel will look at different ways to tackle semantic search as a problem of text understanding. Powerset division of bing’s natural-language processing engine does deep syntactical analysis to determine the meaning of a query or a sentence. Hakia relies on a language-independent ontology model and an ontology-based English lexicon to translate text into a representation of its meaning. RiverGlass has developed an ontological semantic approach to search and text analytics, emphasizing the in-context, linguistic meaning of textual content in order to return truly relevant results in response to information requests. TextWise’s Semantic Signature matching looks for similarities between a query and text at the topic level.

Semantic Search Beyond RDF from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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The current generation of Semantic Web languages is well suited to link data and to define domain concepts and relationships. However, real-world applications that operate on those linked data models typically need higher expressivity than what is provided by OWL and RDF Schema alone. SPIN is an open-source framework that supports the use of SPARQL to define business rules and constraint checks on Semantic Web models with object-oriented modeling techniques. This simple yet powerful mechanism makes it possible to define self-describing domain models that can then be used by generic software components such as user interface renderers, schema mappers and workflow engines. Instead of hard-coding behavior in languages like Java, SPIN makes it possible to declaratively define complex business rules and processes. SPIN can also be used to define new higher-level modeling languages with built-in semantics.

This talk:

• Sets the stage with a quick review of SPARQL (incl. CONSTRUCT keyword)
• Introduces SPIN as a mechanism to attach SPARQL queries to class definitions
• Shows how to define new SPARQL functions and reusable query templates with SPIN
• Demonstrates the use of SPIN for tasks ranging from unit conversion to computer games
• Shows how the ideas of SPIN give rise to a new software development paradigm around self-describing linked data models

SPIN: An object-oriented framework for business rules using SPARQL from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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MODERATOR:
Steve Bastasini, Cerebra

PANELISTS:
Eghosa Omoigui, Intel Capital
Peter Rip, Crosslink Capital
Michael S. Dunn, Hearst Interactive Media
Shawn Carolan, Menlo Ventures

After a period of caution about the viability of semantic technologies, investors seem more willing to fund semantic start-ups right now. And even with the economy in distress, semantics is managing to create excitement amongst the VCs. Semantic search has been hot for a couple of years – the possibility of finding the next Google being just too enticing – but the focus seems now to be shifting to enterprise and consumer apps where as Jim Hendler famously said "a little semantics goes a long way." Money is going into enterprise software, such as business intelligence tools, and innovative consumer apps based around social networks, smarter information filtering and productivity enhancement.

So what do the VCs want to see in the business plans for semantic start-ups now? Are there still plenty of good opportunities out there for entrepreneurs or have the best ideas already claimed their share of available capital?

Panel: Venture Capital Outlook from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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PANELISTS:
Keith DeWeese, Tribune Company-Tribune Interactive
Evan Sandhaus, New York Times Company
Paul Berry, HuffingtonPost.com
Jim Stanley, CBS Interactive – Technology & News
Michael S. Dunn, Hearst Interactive Media

This discussion features representatives from major media companies who are seriously investigating or presently using semantic technologies in their sites. The conversation will focus on the business and operational benefits of using semantic technologies in publishing and media sites.

Publishers Panel from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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PANELISTS:
Brooke Aker, Expert System USA
Amiad Solomon, Peer39
Amit Kumar, Dapper
Greg Stuart, gregstuart.com

This moderated panel discusses "semantic advertising" in the market today, with representatives from:

* An ad network using semantic technology (Peer39)
* a company using semantic technology to dynamically generate advertising content (Dapper)
* A company using semantic technology to dynamically feed ad content on a mobile platform (Expert System)
* an expert in advertising and former CEO of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (Greg Stuart)

The focus of this session is to give business people and technologists an understanding of how semantic technology is being used in online advertising today. This is a broad survey of the different ideas labeled as "semantic advertising" — presented by the people leading those initiatives — both to see what they have in common and how they’re different.

Panel: Semantic Advertising from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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PANELISTS:
Greg Boutin, GrowthRoute Ventures
Leigh Dodds, Talis
Alex Iskold, AdaptiveBlue
Peter Mika, Yahoo! Research
Mills Davis, Project10x

Every month, the Semantic Web Gang podcast brings together a team of researchers, practitioners and managers to share their views on topical developments in the semantic technology space. In a departure from the regular telephone conversation, June’s Gang finds host Paul Miller together on stage with Gang regulars Greg Boutin, Mills Davis, Leigh Dodds, Alex Iskold and Peter Mika and special guest Tony Shaw (Semantic Universe). We take a typical Gang look back over the Semantic Technology Conference, discussing our impressions and listening to those of our audience. Watch this video to see the Gang in action, to hear their opinions, and comment below to contribute your own views.

The Semantic Web Gang looks back at SemTech 2009 from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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PANELISTS:
Jamie Taylor, Metaweb Technologies, Inc.
Leigh Dodds, Talis
James Leigh, James Leigh Services, Inc.
Kingsley Idehen, OpenLink Software, Inc.

The "data commons" is a cornerstone of the semantic web vision. The Linked and Open Data movements are progressing beyond the early adopter phase and preparing to cross the chasm. Enough experience now exists to reflect on how this data set is being used, how useful it is, and where we can take it from here. Beyond the basics, the panel will discuss issues such as quality of service, stability, and longevity. They’ll also explore the evolution of the semantic web with a particular emphasis on modes of data use, reuse and aggregation.

Panel: Linked Open Data from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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KEYNOTE: Semantics at The New York Times from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

At the end of the Keynote, Evan and Rob made a significant announcement regarding The New York Times and their contribution to the Linked Open Data movement.

View this Announcement:

New York Times Announcement at SemTech 2009 from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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Siri is a virtual personal assistant for the mobile Internet. Although just in its infancy, Siri can help with some common tasks that human assistants do, such as booking a restaurant, getting tickets to a show, and inviting a friend. We will describe the technology underlying Siri and how it fits in the larger ecosystem of services and data providers. And we will offer a vision of where assistants like Siri are going.

KEYNOTE: The Game Changer: Siri, a Virtual Personal Assistant from Semantic Universe on Vimeo.

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