Raw

A week or so ago I was up north in Brixen-Bressanone (definitely "a charming town") at the 3rd KRDB school on Trends in the Web of Data. The programme was exceptionally well contrived, IMHO, seriously apposite for what's going on in the Web of Data. In between beers (don't worry, I am sorting that one out) I did the opening session. My initial brief was (I think) "Semantic Web Platforms". Now I could happily have done the obligatory semweb intro and led into material about the Talis Platform (which is still as far as I know the only one I'd consider a true semweb platform, being provided in a Software as a Service manner via HTTP). But Tom was down to talk about Linked Data (slides) and Martin about the GoodRelations ontology (slides), so I assumed that between them most of those bases would be covered.

In many real senses the Semantic Web is already a done deal, so all this conspired to give me chance to look at the notion of a platform in general. Naturally I consider the Web of Data to be the key enabler right now, but when it comes to choices on how to use it and application strategies, there I reckon it's worth looking at analogeous systems. So I refactored my title to "Platforms and the Semantic Web" and basically spent 2 hours rambling about my hobbies...

Slides on slideshare and pdf.

Many thanks to Enrico, Anja et al for the opportunity. I did stay to poke my nose into the SWAP 2010 goings-on, so caught up with quite a few old faces and met a bunch more new ones. Even made it home in one piece.