These are exciting times for semantic web technologies, as they gain inroads into commercial enterprises. Semantic web meetups are springing up in cities across the US and Europe with a lot of exciting topics, demos and discussions. With Marco Neumann's guidance, zAgile has committed the month of April for a very special roadshow covering eight cities across the US beginning with San Francisco and Palo Alto.
So on Tuesday last week, it was the Cambridge Semantic Web meetup (Strata Center, MIT) moderated by Susie Stephens (Eli Lilly) and Kingley Idehen (OpenLink Software). It was exciting for us to have the privilege of being able to share our implementation vision of semantic web with so many influencers in this field but even more so because of the presence in the audience of Tim Berners-Lee. Tim has been driving a lot of interest and thought into this field for over a decade and to see him still actively involved in organizing and attending such gatherings is very exciting.
It is also interesting to observe that while offering diverse representations, each meetup still has a different makeup in terms of representation and interest. The Cambridge meetup was a mix of academic researchers, W3C, sem-tech companies and Pharma. A lot of the focus seemed to be on theoretical aspects of semantic web technologies.
I enjoyed the energy and interest level of the gathering and it was well worth the trip for us. After the session, the group moved on to the bar next door for cocktails and more fun dialogs that continued late into the night.
-Sanjiva
Strata Center, MIT
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