triple|scape

Linked Data Planet ended on Wednesday, and I’m just now getting around to writing it up. So, here goes:

In all, I thought the conference was a big success. Lots of heavy hitters in the LOD and Semantic Web movement were there, including Tim Berners-Lee (W3C), Kingsley Idehen (Open Link), Ian Davis (Talis), Andy Seaborne (HP Labs) and Richard Cyganiak (DERI). The talks were great and it really got me pumped up to see all these really smart people promoting the technologies.

I didn’t win Bob DuCharme’s contest for best submission, but hey, I got second and my question was put up for discussion. I got about the response that I expected: “it depends”.

I wanted to introduce myself a little more to some of the other attendees, but being a reclusive hacker-type, I failed miserably. I especially wanted to chat with Kingsley and at least meet TimBL, but never seemed to get around to it.

I did however have a nice conversation with Andy Seaborne. I wanted to know about how he was converting SPARQL to SQL in Jena’s SDB. He very nicely pulled me aside and gave me the rundown and showed me how I could view the SQL that SDB produces using sdbprint. Wow. His SQL is miles better than mine and he’s a really, really nice guy. Thanks Andy!

I think my favorite sessions were:

• Applying Semantic Web Technologies to Enterprise Solutions by Dean Allemang and Irene Polikoff of TopQuadrant
• Integrating Relational Data Into the Semantic Web by Dr. Ashok Malhotra and Jim Melton of Oracle
• How to Publish Linked Data on the Web by Tom Health of Talis

The panels were also great. The Challenges and Opportunities panel had a bit of controversy I think after Geoff Brown of m2mi declared the semantic web was dead. Gasp! Hushed silence. “Did he just say what I thought he said?”. He claimed no one would do a $50m deal in the semantic space. I guess if that’s your measurement of success, then maybe he’s right. I guess “fuck-you” money is in the tens of millions for him. For most of us though, I think it’s probably in the low millions. Time will tell I suppose.

I brough my boss along to the show and he’s totally guzzling the LOD/SemWeb Kool-Aide now. Yea! So, we already have lots product ideas that seem to be perfect fits for this technology. So I hope that means it’ll be triples for me for the through the rest of the year at least.

Anyway, great conference. I’m going to get some stuff together and see if I can’t present at the Fall conference in California. Perhaps I’ll LOD-ify TerminalSquad and finally get some community involvement with that. I’ve got lots of data…it’s just tucked away in my own little silo. High time to let it out!