CSSW 2007 - Conf. on Social Semantic Web in Leipzig - Aftermath

Back again -- this time in Jena -- I have a few minutes left to draw some resume about the last to days at CSSW 2007.

But first, I have to continue, where I left the day before. The final event yesterday (before the conference diner) was a panel discussion on the topic 'Is there a Social Semantic Web?' with Kingsley Idehen, Marc Fleischmann, KJlaus-Peter Fähnrich, Matthias Bärwolf, and myself. First at all, we did not provide any valid answer to the overall question. In the end, we were discussing, why the Semantic Web does not get the right attention, about (working) business models in Social Web and Social Semantic Web, and about incentives for participation (as well as on open source and open data)....

Finally, I really enjoyed this conference (esp. if you consider my bad experiences with the two conferences last week). O.k., maybe this was because the conference's topic was closer to my core interests compared to e-Learning (DeLFI) or XML (XML-Tage Berlin). There were also much more interesting people to meet, esp. I'm looking forward to meet again a collegue at Potsdam (Universität Potsdam, not HPI). I think, the basic question (as mentioned before) 'Is there a Social Semantic Web?' can be answered with YES. Why?...simply because many Social Semantic Web applications have been resented in the last two days, ranging from Semantic Wikis (where semantic data is authored in a collaborative way), over social networking applications that make use of implicit (semantic) data (and vice versa). I also guess that the topic will become even more important in the very next years. One major point (or objection) was the question about a (working) business model and the incentives being necessary to convince people to participate. It's rather difficult to predict the people's attitude and behaviour. Of course, maybe it's just 'ease of use'. Wikipedia is successful, because everybody can participate with only small effort (he/she must only be able to speak the Wiki-Language). Given that most people have some extraverted tendencies, given the user community of an aplication is of sufficient size, social reputation is an important incentive fr participation. But first, you need to have a sufficient large user community to attract users. Thus, it's similar to the chicken-and-egg problem....
Nevertheless, I hope this tpoic will also be present at this year's IWLS in Korea....

ESWC 2007 - 4th European Semantic Web Conference - Aftermath

While the original conference ended yesterday evening after the conference dinner, ESWC continues for another two days with workshops, phD-forum, etc. Unfortunately, I had to leave Innsbruck this morning, because there are lectures I have to give. The interesting workshops (at least for me) are taking place on Thursday. Thus, wednesday would have been 'spare time'. From my point of view, if organising two days of workshops, they would have been better splitted to one day before and one day after the conference.
Anyway, ESWC with only two days of presentations is rather short. To draw some resume, it was.....let's say it was a nice conference. Two out of four invited talks were interesting (best one about monadic 2nd order logic and data extraction tool lixto by Georg Gottlob), another one was rather bizzare (just remember brains(!) and buzzwords). Some of the full paper presentations were rather weak (I was wondering why they got accepted) and some of the poster presentations or demos on the other hand were rather interesting (and would have served even better as full presentations).

Innsbruck congess center was rather agreable (stable wlan support, acceptable coffee and lunch...I really appreciated the Austrian sweets). On the last day -- due to a lack in coffee support -- the sessions got a little bit out of sync and thus, it was difficult to switch in between the presentations (as you can read in day 02). Innsbruck is an interesting city with a rather nice historic center (at least as far as I could see...with masses of asian/american tourists). Surrounded by huge mountains, one gets a strange feeling of being closed away from the rest of the world. But, let's get back to the conference dinner. The food was excellent (I really appreciated the 'frozen Kaiserschmarrn' and now I know that Tyroleans are also very proud of 'dumplings' of any kind...). I tried the red wine (Zweigelt Classic 2006 from Rotweingut Iby, Horitschon), but it was more or less 'unsignificant' (a little bit like cherry, accentuation on acids....absolutely no comparison to the St. Magdalener I had the week before at Bertagnolli's at home in Weimar). In the end of the confeence dinner, the new conference location for eswc 2008 was presented: Tenerife on the Canary Islands (Spain)!! I've never been there for a conference, but I'm looking forward to it. Next, the 'show part' was on the schedule. People said that there was some 'ballet dancing' to expect.....so I was curious to see some - let's say maybe typical Tyrolean dance. Don't ask....the dancer to come maybe was Tyrolean.....but it was belly dancing with Arabian/Turkish music. Dont get me wrong. I am the last one not to like belly dancing :) ... But, really I expected something more typical for the region... Afterwards the conference party started (including music and dancing).

All in all, it was a nice conference (but of course there's always something to improve). Although, this time there was no 'mind blowing' paper/presentation, meeting friends (old and new ones), exchanging news and planning new projects are the things that a conference is all about. Therefore, I'm looking forward to eswc 2008 in Teneriffe.

BTW, you may find a lot of pictures from ESWC 2007 here at flickr.

Other folks blogging about ESWC 2007:

• Kasei's Life on Mars


• Semantic Web & Web 2.0