The winner of the Semantic Web Challenge at November’s International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) was EventMedia Live, a web-based environment that exploits real-time connections to event and media sources to deliver rich content describing events that are associated with media, and interlinked with the Linked Data cloud.

This week, it will begin a one-year effort under a European Commission-funded project to align its work with the Nokia Maps database of places, so that mobile users of the app can quickly get pictures of these venues that were taken by users with EventMedia’s help.

A project of EURECOM, a consortium combining seven European universities and nine international industrial partners, EventMedia Live has its origins in the “mismatch between those sites specializing in announcing upcoming events and those other sites where users share photos, videos and document those events,” explains Raphaël Troncy, assistant professor at the EURECOM: School of Engineering & Research Center, Multimedia Communications, and one of the project’s leaders.

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You don’t have to read very far into your iPad news app to learn the latest about government dysfunctionality, debt, and defaults, whether in the U.S. or abroad. It’s all a little overwhelming, and can’t help but have an impact on how so many nations’ citizens view their present circumstances and their futures, too.

Amid so many negatives, perhaps we can take some inspiration from the fact that this month will see the Open Government Data Camp 2011 being held in Warsaw, Poland. Think about that for a minute: A country that not all that long ago was controlled by an iron fist and blocked from the free world by the Iron Curtain is the host site for the Open Knowledge Foundation event — an undertaking that is very much focused on making government data more transparent and interoperable and transformative for the societies whose governing bodies adopt open data principles and values.

Maybe thinking about things in that light will help anyone discouraged by current events to hope still for a brighter future. Among the presenters at the event discussing how open data can be essential to realizing transformation is Bernadette Hyland, co-chair W3C Government Linked Data Working Group and CEO of 3 Round Stones. Hyland also will be co-conducting a half-day Government Linked Data Workshop during the course of the camp. Hyland’s speech, a report on the progress of the W3C Government Linked Data Working Group, will hone in on why it’s important to share government information and the benefits to be attained from doing so, including transforming how governments serve their citizens in the 21st Century. (The W3C Government Linked Data Working Group is chartered to produce standards and document best practices for the publication of governmental data.)

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