UMBC ebiquity » iswc

CFP: Semantics for the rest of us Workshop at 8th Int. Semantic Web Conference

Tim Finin — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 06:17:28 +0000

IMPORTANT DATES
Submissions	10 Aug 09
Notification	19 Aug 09
Final copy	2 Sept 09
Workshop	26 Oct 09

Semantics for the Rest of Us: Variants of Semantic Web Languages in the Real World is a workshop that will be held at the on 26 October 2009 in Washington, DC.

The Semantic Web is a broad vision of the future of personal computing, emphasizing the use of sophisticated knowledge representation as the basis for end-user applications’ data modeling and management needs. Key to the pervasive adoption of Semantic Web technologies is a good set of fundamental “building blocks” – the most important of these are representation languages themselves. W3C’s standard languages for the Semantic Web, RDF and OWL, have been around for several years. Instead of strict standards compliance, we see “variants” of these languages emerge in applications, often tailored to a particular application’s needs. These variants are often either subsets of OWL or supersets of RDF, typically with fragments OWL added. Extensions based on rules, such as SWRL and N3 logic, have been developed as well as enhancements to the SPARQL query language and protocol.

This workshop will explore the landscape of RDF, OWL and SPARQL variants, specifically from the standpoint of “real-world semantics”. Are there commonalities in these variants that might suggest new standards or new versions of the existing standards? We hope to identify common requirements of applications consuming Semantic Web data and understand the pros and cons of a strictly formal approach to modeling data versus a “scruffier” approach where semantics are based on application requirements and implementation restrictions.

The workshop will encourage active audience participation and discussion and will include a keynote speaker as well as a panel. Topics of interest include but are not limited to

Real world applications that use (variants of) RDF, OWL, and SPARQL
Use cases for different subsets/supersets of RDF, OWL, and SPARQL
Extensions of SWRL and N3Logic
RIF dialects
How well do the current SW standards meet system requirements ?
Real world “semantic” applications using other structured representations (XML, JSON)
Alternatives to RDF, OWL or SPARQL
Are ad hoc subsets of SW languages leading to problems?
What level of expressive power does the Semantic Web need?
Does the Semantic Web require languages based on formal methods?
How should standard Semantic Web languages be designed?

We seek two kinds of submissions: full papers up to ten pages long and position papers up to five pages long. Format papers according the ISWC 2009 instructions. Accepted papers will be presented at the workshop and be part of the workshop proceedings.

Organizers:

Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ora Lassila, Nokia
Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Videos of Semantic Web talks and tutorials from ISWC 2008 now online

Tim Finin — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 14:45:51 +0000

High quality videos of tutorials and talks from the Seventh International Semantic Web Conference are now available on the excellent VideoLectures.net site. It’s a great opportunity to benefit from the conference if you were not able to attend or, even if you were, to see presentations you were not able to attend.

Videolectures captured the slides for most of the presentations (which are available for downloading) and their site shows both the the speaker’s video and slides in synchronization. Videolectures used three camera crews in parallel so were able to capture almost all of the presentations. Here are some highlights from the ~90 videos to whet your appetite.

Introduction to the Semantic Web: An all-day tutorial featuring ten top researchers covering all aspects of the Semantic Web.
How to Publish Linked Data on the Web: A three-hour tutorial by five researchers explaining how LOD works and how you can exploit it.
Freebase: An Open, Writable Database of the World’s Information: A keynote by MetaWeb CTO John Giannandrea on Freebase.
Semantic Web Challenge & Billion Triple Challenge: The session on the Semantic Web Challenge finalists.
Semantic Wikis: Fusing the two strands of the Semantic Web: Mark Greaves on Semantic Wikis.
Requirements Critic: A Tool for Automatically Analyzing Software Requirements Documents: The winner of the best paper award for the In Use track.
Laconic and Precise Justifications in OWL: Winner of the best paper award for the Research Track.
An OWL 2 Far?: A panel that takes up the question of whether having standard languages based on formal methods with steadily increasing power is the right way to support the Semantic Web.

ISWC 2008 social network

Tim Finin — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 19:17:15 +0000

Attending conferences is very much of a social activity. They provide opportunities to meet and interact with a large group of people that share an interest in a topic. More over, you probably know or at least know of, many of them. One reason to attend conferences is to extend and strengthen your professional social network through these interactions and shared experiences.

We’ve set up a ISWC 2008 social networking site for participants of the Seventh International Semantic Web Conference. Conference attendees can register for free and use the site to connect with other participants, coordinate meeting plans, share comments on events and talks, figure out who is who at the conference, etc.

We are using CrowdVine for this site. Our package allows us to define a calendar where we can list talks and other events, which we’ve only just begun populating. Users can rate, comment on or discuss these calendar items.

If you plan on attending ISWC 2008, please check it out and register.

ISWC 2008 call for participation: register online by Oct 9

Tim Finin — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 22:03:12 +0000

Register online for the 7th Int. Semantic Web Conf. by Oct 9

There is still time to register online for ISWC 2008, the Seventh International Semantic Web Conference, which will be held in Karlsruhe Germany on on 26-30 October 2008. Register online by October 9 to save 100 eu and take advantage of special ISWC hotel offers which are good if made four weeks in advance.

The ISWC program booklet has the complete schedule with further details on the ISWC site. The program includes much for practitioners, researchers, students, and business people, including both experts and those new to the concepts and technology. The days before the start of the main conference include the Doctoral Consortium, 11 half and full-day tutorials, and 13 workshops. The conference features 10 keynote and invited talks, 57 submitted paper presentations, 55 poster presentations, 32 demonstrations, a panel, a series of lightning talks, exhibits of products and services, and social events including guided tours, a reception, a banquet and dancing.

ISWC 2008 tutorial program set

Tim Finin — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:16:27 +0000

The tutorial program for the Seventh International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2008) has been announced. It includes includes two full-day and nine half-day tutorials to be held on October 26 and 27 in Karsruhe.

The list of the tutorials and links to pages with more information is available on the ISWC 2008 tutorials page.

Proposals sought for hosting ISWC 2010

Tim Finin — Sun, 20 Jul 2008 04:23:27 +0000

The Semantic Web Science Association (SWSA) has begun the process of selecting a site for the 9th International Semantic Web Conference to be held in 2010. Since ISWC’08 will be located in Karhsruhe Germany and ISWC’09 in the DC area in the US, locations in Asia and Australia are preferred for 2010.

Interested groups should submit a statement of interest by 9 September 2008 by email to Rudi Studer at studer@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de.

SWSA will invite a short list of candidates to submit a more detailed bid by 15 October and present it at the SWSA meeting in Karlsruhe during ISWC’08.

Int. Semantic Web Conf. workshop details

Tim Finin — Fri, 23 May 2008 13:09:48 +0000

The 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC) has an exciting program of thirteen one-day workshops that will be held on October 26 and 27. The deadlines for submitting papers vary. See the individual workshop pages for detailed information on their scope and structure and for information on submitting papers and participating.

The final scheduling of the workshops, assigning them to the 26th or 27th, has not yet been done.

Social Data on the Web workshop at ISWC 2008

Tim Finin — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:27:23 +0000

This year’s International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2008) will host a workshop on Social Data on the Web. Submitted papers are due by July 25, 2008.

“The 1st Social Data on the Web workshop (SDoW2008) co-located with the 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC2008) aims to bring together researchers, developers and practitioners involved in semantically-enhancing social media websites, as well as academics researching more formal aspect of these interactions between the Semantic Web and Social Media.”

Social media systems is all about information sharing, so its inevitable that it will have strong ties to Semantic Web technologies. Moreover, the ties will go both ways. Social media needs ways to annotate information objects with sharable data and meta data that can be understood by machines. Semantic computing systems focused on sharing data and ontologies can benefit from social computing systems that offer users easy ways to collaboratively develop, publish, comment on and link to their output.

Int. Conf. Semantic Web deadlines this week and next (ISWC 2008)

Tim Finin — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:56:59 +0000

Deadlines for submitting papers, Doctoral Consortium applications and tutorial proposals for the Seventh International Semantic Web Conference are fast approaching. ISWC ‘08 will be held 26-30 October 2008 in Karlsruhe, Germany. Key upcoming dates include:

Research papers: due May 9 (title and abstracts), 16 May (full)
Semantic Web in Use papers: due May 16
Tutorial proposals: May 16
Doctoral Consortium applications: due May 16
Posters & Demo proposals: due July 25
Workshops papers (13 workshops): mid-summer
Semantic Web & Billion Triples challenge: Oct 1
ISWC 2008 CONFERENCE: October 26-30

See the ISWC 2008 site for CFPs and other details. Inquires about specific tracks should be sent to the appropriate chairs. Send general questions and suggestions for panel topics, invited speakers, birds of a feather meetings, etc. to iswc08@gmail.com.

CFP Semantic Web Challenge and Billion Triples tracks

Tim Finin — Fri, 02 May 2008 18:12:31 +0000

The call for the ISWC 2008 Sixth Semantic Web Challenge and Billion Triples tracks is out.

“We invite submissions to the sixth annual Semantic Web Challenge, the premiere event for demonstrating practical progress towards achieving the vision of the Semantic Web. The central idea of the Semantic Web is to extend the current human-readable web by encoding some of the semantics of resources in a machine-processable form. Moving beyond syntax opens the door to more advanced applications and functionality on the Web. Computers will be better able to search, process, integrate and present the content of these resources in a meaningful, intelligent manner.

As the core technological building blocks are now in place, the next challenge is to show off the benefits of semantic technologies by developing integrated, easy to use applications that can provide new levels of Web functionality for end users on the Web or within enterprise settings. Applications submitted should demonstrate clear practical value that goes above and beyond what is possible with conventional web technologies alone.

Unlike in previous years, the Semantic Web Challenge of 2008 will consist of two tracks: the Open Track and the Billion Triples Track. The key difference between the two tracks is that the Billion Triples Track requires the participants to make use of the data set –a billion triples– provided by the organizers. The Open Track has no such restrictions.

As before, the Challenge is open to everyone from academia and industry. The authors of the best applications will be awarded prizes and featured prominently at special sessions during the conference”