Courtesy: Flickr/ clbean

IT leaders keeping an eye on Gartner’s top tech trends list know that early in March semantic technologies made the cut (see our original story here, and our follow-up with one of the authors of the Gartner report here). The big question for many enterprise IT pros, though, is what should they be doing with that knowledge – how can they start leveraging semantic technology to their own organizations’ benefit?

Help is on the way. Three experts in semantic web technologies and Linked Data weigh in with their advice on heading down that road:

Read more

Dave McComb of Semantic Arts recently commented on Gartner’s nod to Semantic Technology. McComb writes, “Gartner has, finally, nominated Semantic Technology as one of their Top Technology Trends. We’ve seen this movie before. We know how it ends. Indeed it was Gartner themselves who named the plot trajectory: the ‘hype cycle.’ It’s worth a pause to reflect on why the hype cycle exists. The hype cycle suggests that a new technology follows a development growth path as predictable as egg to caterpillar to chrysalis to butterfly. In the hype cycle, the stages are [pictured above].” Read more

Dave Mccomb of Semantic Arts recently discussed how inspiration plays a part in designing ontologies. He writes, “It seems that there are three ways that ontologies are or can be related to applications. They are: (1) Inspiration. (2) Transformation. (3) Extension. To put this conversation in context, let’s go back to the ‘tic tac toe’ board [above]. What it is attempting to convey is that there are levels of abstraction and differences in perspective that we should consider when we are modeling. An application is in the lower middle cell. Data models are in the middle square. Ontologies could be anywhere. An ontology is a formal way of representing a model. And so we could have an ontology that describes an application, an ontology of a logical model, even ontologies of data or meta meta data.” Read more

Anthony Myers of CMS Wire reports, “Core ideas about a more structured Internet, vis a vis the semantic Web, are quickly approaching mainstream consciousness. When Wikipedia, the sixth most popular Web site in the world, debuts its Wikidata platform later this year, it will be a major step in this direction. ’Wikidata is going to blow everything else out of the water,’ Joe Devon of Startup Devs said during the closing panel of the 2012 Semantic Technology & Business Conference. Devon is also on the advisory board, but Dave McComb, who co-founded the SemTech Conference, also asserted his belief in how huge Wikidata is going to be.” Read more

This year’s Semantic Technology & Business Conference in San Francisco (#SemTechBiz) will feature some of the best and brightest minds in the world of semantic web technology. The conference — which will run June 3-7 at the Hilton San Francisco in Union Square — will start off strong with a welcome session presented by Tony Shaw, SemTechBiz co-chair and CEO of Dataversity, and Dave McComb, President of Semantic Arts, Inc.

Read more

NOTE: This podcast will be of most interest to attendees of SemTech 2011, as the bulk of it consists of panelists’ insights and recommendations about upcoming sessions. That said, there was a discussion that arose that non-attendees may find of interest. The panel was asked to comment on the recent announcement from Google, Microsoft, and Bing about schema.org. This commentary is available as a separate file below (click “Play the Schema.org discussion”).

On Sunday, June 5, a group of Semantic thought leaders from around the globe met with their host and colleague, Paul Miller at SemTech 2011 in San Francisco, for a special face-to-face presentation of the Semantic Link, a monthly podcast covering the world of Semantic Technologies. Joining them this month was special guest Dave McComb, President of Semantic Arts, and SemTech Conference Co-Chair.
Read more

As SemTech 2011 kicks off, we will be LiveBlogging from Dave McComb’s opening session.  Stay tuned as we kick off this great week here at 4:00pm PST on Sunday, June 5.

Be sure to come back to SemanticWeb.com throughout the week for more coverage of SemTech San Francisco.

A new article out of AI³ discusses the need for ontology-based approaches in software engineering. According to the article, “In the U.S. alone, about 2 million people work as programmers or related. It goes without saying that software is a very big deal. No matter what the metrics, it is expensive to develop and maintain software. This is also true for open source, which has its own costs of ownership. Designing software faster with fewer mistakes and more re-use and robustness have clearly been emphases in computer science and the discipline of programming from its inception.” Read more

A little over a month ago, Dave McComb and I announced that we had sold the Semantic Technology Conference, as well as the SemanticUniverse.com web site, to WebMediaBrands. Lots of people sent congratulatory messages, which was gratifying and much appreciated. Thank you again to all of you who have wished us well.

Of course people also ask questions like:

• Did you do well out of the deal?
• Why did you sell?
• What’s going to happen with the show in future?

Read more