i-Semantics 2009 in Graz (Day 03)

The second day of i-Semantics ended with party and dancing to live music performed by 'Egon 7', and of course with a lot of interesting talks with interesting and nice people :) This morning at breakfast, Jörg really looked as if he had not really had got enough sleep (he continued to party after the official ending somewhere downtown :)

Keynote

Peter Kropsch (Austrian Press Agency): When technologies are drivers, integrated concepts are needed for success,

talking about scenarios of future media convergence, the development of the information technologies and the possibilities opened up by them, esp. about the expectations of APA what to get out of semantic technologies. In general, keynotes without some slides (to get hold of the information structure of this 60 minutes talking) are rather difficult to follow, if the speaker is not able to awake sufficient enthusiasm in the audiences...

The Role of Semantic Technologies in Future Internet Track,

Klaus Tochtermann (Know-Center, TU Graz): The Role of Semantic Technologies in the Future Internet

explained, why the vision of the future internet is not only 'old wine in some new bottles'. Although all the components that consttute the Future Internet (Content, Services, Security, People, etc.) is already around, the main contribution of FI is the integrated view and interaction of thes components.

Marco Pistore (FBK): Highlights of the Future Internet Conference Berlin

In parallel to i-Know/i-Semantics in Berlin the 2nd Future Internet Symposium took place...

Jan Reichelt (Mendeley): Mendeley - A Last.fm for Research?

Mendeley wants to help researchers to manage their resources. Research is inherently social. Mendeley offers a desktop tool, similar to last.fm audioscrobbler that (a) analyzes your search papers and enables full-text search and (2) smart metadata extraction and generation. The mendeley web service offers an online backup of your own research library and enables on-click import from google scholar and other citation services.

Interesting stuff...I have just registered and download my desktop client for Mac OSX...

Paolo Rosso (Universidad Politecnica de Valencia): Geographical Information Retrieval and Toponym Disambiguation

Geographical filtering of information retrieval results by expanding query strings with semantically related geographical information (...like that stuff!).

I-Semantics 2009 in Graz (Day 02)

The first day of i-Semantics ended with a guided tour through the old section of the town (that we already had enjoyed the day before), and a welcoming party located in the Kunsthaus Graz. The Kunsthaus Graz has some extraordinary architecture and reminds me more of some strange submarine lifeform than of a building. Unfortunately we had to leave earlier to prepare our talk for today....

The second day of i-semantics 2009 started in a very conveniant way - again great espresso, fresh fruits, and nice talking.

Linked Data Track

Harald Sack (HPI): How can Software Developers benefit from Linked Data Vocabulary,

Well, the title is misleading somehow. Of course software developers do benefit from the use of linked data, but.....the problem is the feasibility of APIs and automated tools for mapping knowledge representations to object-oriented data structures. I had to deliver the talk (instead of Matthias, who actually was the main contributor, but is STIL on vacations) and I'm afraid that I have overstressed my audience with lots of software engineering details (bad for an introductory first talk of a session on linked data...).

Jörg Waitelonis (HPI): How to augment Video Search with Linked Data,

Jörg introduced yovisto.com and its connection to the Linked Open Data cloud, featuring our 'exploratory search' widget, suggesting additional search results to the user and providing seredipenditios findings.

Atif Latif (Know-Center, TU Graz): The Linked Data Value Chain: A Lightweight Model for Business Engineers

First, Atif stated significant differences between the aims of the scientific community and enterprise level business. He introduced the concept of Linked Data Value Chain, where the most valuable output consists out of an increase of the (code/data) readability for the human engineer, thus also serving the same duty as Matthias work in making semantic web software engineering very, very simple. So.....let's make Semantic web a No-Brainer (finally) ;-)

I had to skip parts of the afternoon sessions (Poster/Short-Paper and Student Sessions) due to interesting talks and reviewing work (deadline today...unfortunately). But I'm looking forward to more interesting contacts, lots of delicious espresso, maybe again some cake and pastries, and then of course the Gala Diner in the evening...

The Gala Diner startet with an interesting performance of Austrian cultural heritage. In particular, we listened to a musical performance of 4 original "Wurzelhorns" (Wurzelhorn is a variation of the well known Alphorn).

i-Semantics 2009 in Graz (Day 01)

Although already having been at the PC of i-Semantics some years ago, this year it's the very first time for me being in Graz. We've already arrived yesterday and spent an beautiful day with sight seeing in the baroque historic section of the town (including the Schlossberg with 260 steps in the midday sun).

The conference is starting right now with greetings by Hermann Maurer (TU Graz) and Klaus Tochtermann (Know-Center, TU Graz). I will report about all upcoming the conference highlights...

Keynote 01,

Paolo Traverso: Towards a future Internet of Services and Content
Pointing out differences between real worl services and software services (duration, accessibility, time contraints, etc.) towards the proposition of a 'Future Internet', where research is focussed on modeling, compositing, and monitoring real world services...

Social Semantic Web Track,

Liana Razmerita: Towards a New Generation of Social Networks: Merging Social Web with Semantic Web

Conclusion: Semantic Web Technologies will enable the development of a new generation of social networking applications...nothing new up to now..

Web 2.0 und Neue Medien Track,

Watraud Wiedermann (APA Defactor): Semantische Suche in Medienarchiven

Demonstration of search application on newspapers, deploying synonym search and search for significant co-occurrences.

Knowledge Visualization Track,

Sven Havemann (TU Graz): Patterns of shape Design

Raising the question 'What's the point on semantic enrichment of images?' One of the problems in computer graphics is that different communities use slightly different vocabularies with inherent ambiguities. Furthermore, there is also a 'semantic gap' in the way that (correct) CG-algorithms often do not deliver the expected result, due to the lack of a proper vocabulary. This leads Haveman to the development of a conceptual reference model (like CIDOC-CRM) for shapes.

Innovative Funktionen für E-Learning Track,

Viktoria Pammer (TU Graz): Intelligente Ad-hoc Erstellung von Lerninhalten mit semantischen Technologien

Presentation of the APOSDLE system that proposes learning material to the learner according to his current skills and needs. Seems to be an Intranet (non web based) system...

...and now on for some espresso and sone 'real Austrian' cake and pastries ;-)

Corporate Semantic Web Track,

Fan Bai (Uni Duisburg/Essen): Exchanging Knowledge in Concise Bounded Descriptions. An Approach to Support Collaborative Ontology Development in an Distributed Environment

Interesting variant of versioning of ontologies (for distributed ontology development). Using simple cvs is not suitable, simply because most ontologies simply consist out of one huge file...

Usage and Case-Studies Track,

Sanja Vranes: Maturity and Applicability Assessment of Semantic Web Technologies

ok...ready for 'Guided Tour from Conference Venue to Welcome Receiption' at Kunsthaus Graz

[see you again tomorrow...]