The preliminary program for the upcoming Semantic Technology & Business Conference (June, 2-5, 2013 in San Francisco) was announced yesterday. Today, we are pleased to add that the second annual “Top Semantic Start-Up Competition” is open for submissions! The contest will take place at the conference venue, the Hilton Union Square in San Francisco, on Monday, June 3, 2013. Start-ups who wish to compete should visit http://semtechbizsf2013.semanticweb.com/start-up-comp.cfm for further details.

“It is a very exciting time for start-ups in the Semantic Technology sector. With organizations like Gartner taking note of the importance of these technologies, and companies of all sizes wanting to glean insight from increasingly available data sources, investors and customers are paying attention. Last year, the judges had a difficult time deciding which company would win the prize. This year, we expect that decision will be even harder,” said contest moderator, our own Eric Franzon.

There will be two phases to the contest. In phase one, companies enter a profile of their start-up in an online form (keep reading for details), and ten finalist companies will be selected to present their pitches in person at the Semantic Technology & Business Conference. In phase 2, those ten companies will each deliver a pitch in front of a panel of judges with experience in entrepreneurship and investment. A single company will be selected as the winner. Prizes will be awarded at the completion of each phase.

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Guidewire Labs, co-founded by The DEMO conference executive producer Chris Shipley, plays matchmaker between startups and enterprises with its Fusion platform. Behind Fusion stand features such as natural language processing of companies’ submitted business and product essay descriptions and ontological trees that pair discrete industry-standard descriptions with discovered terms.

“We like to think of ourselves as a matchmaking service like eHarmony, but only for business opportunities,” says Stephen Pieraldi, Guidewire Labs COO. “Companies want to be matched but it’s very hard to do that, unlike with people where you have basic filters. But no one has taken a profile object called company and identified it in the way we have.”

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We are pleased to announce the start-ups that have been selected to participate in the 2012 SemTechBiz “Top Semantic Start-Up” competition. These companies will give demonstrations/pitches before a panel of expert judges at the Semantic Technology and Business Conference June 3-7.

Judges

Our panel of judges includes (Left to Right): Phil Aucutt, CEO, TeamPatent; Mike Dunn, CTO, Hearst Interactive; James Hendler, Professor, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; Mark Johnson, CEO, Zite; Chris Shipley, CEO, Guidewire Group (former Executive Director, DEMO Conference)

The Envelope Please!

The companies, presentations, and speakers for the start-up competition are…

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SemanticWeb.com and parent company WebMediaBrands recently announced a contest to earn the title of  “Top Semantic Technology Start-Up.” Today, we have two exciting announcements to make about the contest.

Deadline Extension

We have had several requests to extend the deadline, and are announcing today that we will now accept applications for the contest until April 30, 2012. We also learned of some applicants who encountered technical problems when trying to submit in the early days of the contest. We have fixed the code that caused these problems, and encourage all who experienced difficulties to try again.

Judges

We are also pleased to announce the panel of judges that will be at SemTechBiz evaluating the companies. It’s a great group, and we’re looking forward to a lively afternoon!

Left to Right, they are: Read more