When I helped launch the Semantic Technology Conference and later the SemanticUniverse.com website, I also started watching the Semantic Technology Industry.  In the time since that first SemTech Conference in 2005, I have watched the technologies and the surrounding community grow significantly. Along the way, the business of the Semantic Web has also grown up.  Standards have been refined, tools developed, books written, partnerships formed, investments made, and companies have grown. Today, organizations have real-world implementations to show.  The case studies are robust, and are allowing companies to do things in ways they simply could not before.  Often, they are able to do so in less time and at a lower cost than before. There are companies that have built solid in-house, B2B and B2C semantic applications and tools.  There are startups and innovations.  There are creative semantic solutions to traditional data management issues and business concerns.

There is a lot going on in the world of Semantic Web business.  And yet, we have barely begun to scratch the surface.

In September, SemanticUniverse.com and the SemTech Conference were acquired by WebMediaBrands.  For more information about the acquisition, see the initial announcement  and Tony Shaw’s recent blog post .  I am absolutely thrilled about what this merger means for the community.  We will offer the same excellent multimedia content and live events you have come to expect from both organizations.  In coming days, weeks, and months, we will introduce new community tools and resources.  If you are new to the world of Semantic Web, Web 3.0, and Linked Data, we want to welcome you and offer a guiding hand, and we will be working hard to provide the platform for you to connect with other members of the community.

We have big plans. 

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SemTechBiz is Less Than 2 Weeks Away

The Semantic Tech & Business Conference (SemTechBiz) is coming to San Francisco on June 3-7! Join us for case studies, innovative panels, tutorials, and keynotes that will provide you with practical advice, hands-on guidance, and breakthrough approaches to solving business problems with semantic technology. Passes go up $200 at the door. Sign up now and save !

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?

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— DR. JANS AASMAN, ROBERT STANLEY

Semantic Universe editor Tony Shaw recently spoke with Jans Aasman, CEO of Franz Inc., and Robert Stanley, President & CEO of IO Informatics, about the announcement of their new strategic partnership to deliver 'fit for purpose' applications created by an innovative Semantic application framework. Their partnership has already seen success with the Pfizer IDEA pilot, which serves as a real-world example of using a semantic application in the pharma industry. This pilot was used to integrate data for compound purity verification and drug product stability analysis. The IDEA project was originally expected to take four to six months to produce results, but by using the AllegroGraph-Sentient framework, it was completed in only six weeks.

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Peer39: Interview with Amiad Solomon

Founded in 2006 by an innovative group of scientists and engineers, Peer39 was voted by MIT’s Technology Review as one of the Top Ten Web Startups to Watch in 2008.  Semantic Universe editor Tony Shaw recently spoke with Founder and CEO Amiad Solomon about the company’s innovations, the FTC and what we may expect in the future.

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You’ll noitice that Semantic Universe looks different today than it did yesterday.  That’s because we’ve moved to a new publishing template – one of the OpenPublish formats developed by OpenCalais and Phase 2 Technologies.  We’ve done this for two main reasons:

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