We wrote last week about a new organization, the Semantic Valley Consortium, that is hoping to get more businesses to take advantage of the Semantic Web. Prof. Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli at the University of California at Berkeley, a leading light of the Consortium, tells us a little more about the new organization.

Q: What spurred the creation of the Semantic Valley Consortium — and how did you gain the support of some big name technology players. What do they see as their ROI for participating and is there a requirement to/cost of membership?

A: There are several considerations that spurred the creation of the Semantic Valley concept:
• First and foremost the attractiveness of the Trentino area in terms of scientific excellence in this domain as well as other contiguous domains. Trento has some of the very best research groups world-wide in semantics: for example, the group headed by Professor Fausto Giunchiglia at the University of Trento and the one headed by Bernardo Magnini in FBK (Bruno Kessler Foundation). The Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science in Trento is among the strongest in Europe as witnessed by the decision of the European Community to award the European Technology Institute in Information Technology to a consortium of Universities in Europe that includes Trento. The FBK Foundation has a computer science Department headed by Paolo Traverso that is considered among the best Computer Science institutions in Europe. This excellence provides the intellectual basis for Semantic Valley and will produce the personnel backbone that will be active in realizing the Semantic Valley manifesto.

• Second, the presence of small-medium companies who are active in the area of semantic search and speech understanding. Expert System, a leading provider of semantic software that searches, discovers, classifies and interprets text information, is located in Trento and is among the pillars of this initiative. In addition, the following companies participate to the initiative:

 PerVoice (video tagging, speech recognition and video subtitles)
 Okkam (entity identification)
 U-Hopper (mobile contextual advertising)
 SayService (natural language interface)
 BPE (applied ontologies)
 GPI (semantich search for health service portals)
 Informatica Trentina (public administration services)
 GST (speech recognition)

• Third, the presence of research centers of large established companies in the area of Information Technology such as Microsoft that has opened a center in Povo (Trento) for bioinformatics and Centro Ricerche FIAT in Trento. In addition, IBM is an active participant of the SensoComune (Common Sense) project located in Povo within the CNR (Italian National Science Foundation) laboratory for applied ontology.

• Fourth, the Trentino province has a superb track record in a vibrant research policy involving the relevant financial support of the University, the establishment and financing of FBK in addition to the incentives given to start-ups and established companies who locate their operation in Trento.

• Fifth, Trentino with its beauty, its location that allows reaching quickly the Dolomites and Lake Garda, its cultural offering, [means] Trento is a wonderful place to live for researchers.

Indeed, my experience in Silicon Valley is that these factors are all essential in forming a rich ecosystem that is self sustaining and produces a number of new companies and sustains excellence in research. While the above factors are all essential for the success of the initiative, the structure of the Semantic Valley consortium will also offer shared services, real estate and other economic incentives in exchange of a limited participation fee (of the order of a few thousand dollars) and of rigorous procedures for the assessment of the quality of the output of the Semantic Valley consortium.

Q: As we discussed with J. Brooke Aker of Expert System USA last week on this initiative, SemValley has a good deal of focus on helping semantic web technology gain traction with end users. What end user industries might be among the most appropriate targets, what needs/problems are you positioning to solve for them, and why might it be of more value to them to work with your group than through other approaches (attempting it on their own, working in isolation with a vendor…)

A: The application of semantic technology is pervasive. There is not a single industrial segment that could not leverage this technology. The most obvious applications (semantic search, video tagging, intelligent advertising) are also the ones who are going to benefit first if the technology reaches the level of maturity that will make the power of this approach apparent. Financial institutions are likely to have multiple use of the technology: search of relevant news, finding relevant information about companies and people, organization of internal data, advertising of financial services and offerings.

Q: The manifesto mentions that working with you gives affiliated businesses a competitive advantage and generates unforeseen opportunities–how?

A: The most important competitive advantages have been listed in the response to the first question. In addition to those considerations, I would like to stress the financial support of the province via seed money to start-up, research financing (up to 60% of total expenditures including salaries and infrastructure), the network with potential users of the technology (public administration, health service providers, financial institutions) and with Venture Capital who has a constant presence in the province. Recently, a three day meeting of the ‘European Alliance for Innovation” pointed out that Trentino may very well be the European Candidate to the title of European Silicon Valley because of the intense collaboration among the important players of the innovation ecosystem (industry, University, VC and research center), albeit I do not believe that a complex ecosystem like the Silicon Valley can be replicated elsewhere.

Q: Can you tell us more about how projects done out of here will be funded?

AL There will be different types of projects carried out in the Semantic Valley framework: some will have a dominant advanced research component and will be funded via the European Community strategic projects, others will have a local impact and will enable the formation of new enterprises and will be funded via the Province and the local agencies, others will have an immediate impact on the business of existing companies and will be directly funded by industry as well as the Province thus offering a funding framework that is at the same time differentiated and relevant.

Q: We’ve looked at the manifesto and it sets some high reaching goals, but can you put into more specifics exactly what output you want the project to generate in its first three, six, twelve months?

A: The importance of the project requires a careful planning of the research activities to provide outputs that will be visible and relevant. We believe the first results will be manifest in the first six months (a three month period is too short to see significant outcomes). The most important aspect is to plan for a continued output for many years to come. We will post the results as they become available while we focus on the infrastructure and the interaction among so many different players to make sure that the initiative has very solid foundations.

Q: How will you focus on the North American front with the base in Italy? Or will you aim initially more at European projects?

A: The focus is on the European front at first, albeit the presence of the large Research Centers will guarantee a world-wide impact of the results. We expect that the results generated by the Semantic Valley initiative will enable the participating companies to be competitive in the North American front as well. I would very much welcome the eventual presence of a Semantic Valley outpost in Silicon Valley!

• Don’t forget to propose your startup for our Semantic Web Impact Awards. The deadline is Sept. 15.

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