Conmergence

St. Joseph Medical Center (Houston) and MedConcierge to Demonstrate Telemedicine Solutions at FTTH Council Conference

Top Houston Hospital Selects MedConcierge to Offer Telemedicine to Corporations and Master Planned Communities

September 8, 2009 (Sarasota, FL & Houston, TX) - St. Joseph Medical Center, the largest, Level 3 trauma hospital in downtown Houston, has selected MedConcierge to provide its advanced telemedicine solution to leading communities and corporations. Both parties will demonstrate the user experience and benefits of telemedicine during the upcoming 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo taking place at the George R. Brown Convention Center in Houston, September 27th through October 1st.

"We are very excited to demonstrate the MedConcierge at St. Joseph Medical Center service to local community developers and corporate executives at the upcoming Fiber to the Home Conference," states St. Joseph chief executive officer Phillip D. Robinson, "Telemedicine will clearly be at the center of healthcare delivery moving forward and leveraging the technological advantages of the MedConcierge service over fiber-optic communications will help us extend patient services, generate additional revenue and save costs."

"St. Joseph is a leader in the Houston area, and we are thrilled to play a role in helping them deliver health and wellness services to residents of FTTH communities in and around the Houston metropolitan area," says MedConcierge director Rob Scheschareg. "Telemedicine offers competitive and financial benefits in a cost-effective fashion that is critical in today's market environment. We look forward to meeting service providers and developers at the FTTH Conference & Expo who want to take advantage of the billions being spent by consumers and the government in the next 30 months on home-based telemedicine."

Substantial news coverage, increasing consumer interest and adoption, and the allocation of billions of dollars in Federal stimulus funds specifically for broadband and healthcare information technology have placed telemedicine at the forefront of applications that benefit from fiber to the home networks.

"Fiber to the home provides benefits to consumers and employers that truly improve the quality of life. From our own industry research to that of our members and market followers, it is becoming increasingly evident that consumers want the benefits of improved healthcare services and access to doctors that services like MedConcierge and healthcare providers like St. Joseph can provide," states Joe Savage, president of the FTTH Council. "Telemedicine is a prime example of the type of applications that will be on display at our upcoming conference demonstrating the power of fiber".

To showcase the user experience, benefits and implementation of telemedicine services, MedConcierge and St. Joseph Medical Center will be hosting a number of activities at the upcoming 2009 FTTH Conference & Expo.  These include:

Corporate VIP Demonstration & Reception, Tuesday, September 29th.  For more information call the Corporate Health Connection at St. Joseph Medical Center at (713) 756-8600. 

MedConcierge Booth in the Fiber Zone, located on the show floor during exhibit hours. 

Phillip D. Robinson, CEO, St. Joseph Medical Center will be discussing telemedicine over FTTH networks as part of the Closing Keynote presentation Wednesday, September 30th at 2:00 pm.

For information about these events, visit the conference website at http://www.ftthconference.com.

About St. Joseph Medical Center

St. Joseph Medical Center, downtown Houston's only general acute care hospital, partners with Houston physicians to provide comprehensive health care to all.  As Houston's first hospital, St. Joseph Medical Center provides services for outpatients as well as inpatients, with a full continuum of care in surgery, cancer care, emergency care, Women's services, cardiovascular services, wound care, rehab, sports medicine, Corporate Health Connection and more. For more information on St. Joseph Medical Center, please visit http://www.sjmctx.com or call 713.757.1000.

About MedConcierge, LLC

MedConcierge is the leading provider of telemedicine solutions for community developers and operators, broadband service providers, healthcare providers, and municipalities, that deliver personal, concierge healthcare services to consumers at home, at work and while traveling. Utilizing our award-winning, patent-pending technology, MedConcierge provides unparalleled private and secure access to certified doctors, specialists and content. MedConcierge offerings range from real-time, live videoconference consultations, on demand, 24/7 with leading doctors, specialists, psychiatrists and wellness experts, to educational content, health status monitoring and dynamic electronic medical records - all accessible from the comfort, privacy and convenience of homes and facilities. For more information, visit http://www.medconcierge.com.

NFI Research Results RE: Social Networking - Business Leaders Are Not Confident

<ed.note>While legacy newspapers struggle to find a way to monetize their next incarnation (hint: it's aggregating and/or researching data which can be gained nowhere else than from their subscribing readership -- imagine think tank-portal-citizen journalism-distributed computing a la SETI@home crunching results), Chuck Martin has been surveying business leaders finding unique real-time insight. My general impression - how many cutting edge leaders are ready for the global digital enterprise enabled collaborative results-only work environment? - um, not so many. An indicator in specific follows: "Business leaders are not confident that their department or organization has an effective plan or strategy to deal with social networking."</ed.note>

August 24, 2009 -- Social Networking for Business Summary (survey results below):

No matter the title or the size of the company, the majority of business leaders have a low confidence level that their department and/or organization has a plan/strategy on how to effectively use social networking for business.

Sixty-six percent or senior executives and managers said they have a low level of confidence and 12 percent have a high level of confidence. Twenty-three percent were neutral. More managers than top executives have a low confidence level in their business' dealing with a social networking strategy, with 74 percent of managers having a low confidence level compared to 59 percent of executives. 

By company size, more of those in large businesses have a low confidence level (73%) that their organization has a plan on how to effectively use social networking compared to those in small businesses (64%). 

More of those in small businesses (14%) have a high level of confidence in their organization's approach vs. those in large businesses (8%). 

Of the businesspeople who use social networking, 77 percent use LinkedIn, 31 percent use Facebook, 25 percent use Blogs and 18 percent use Twitter. 

An earlier study about social networking conducted by NFI Research showed similar results. Thanks to all who participated in the survey.  

Detailed Results follow: 

When it comes to using social networking for business, what is your confidence level that your department and/or organization has a plan/strategy on how to effectively use it? 

Extremely High	02.8%
Somewhat High	09.0%
Neutral	22.8%
Somewhat Low	32.4%
Extremely Low	33.1%

Of those who use social networking, Which of the following services do you use for BUSINESS purposes? (check all that apply) 

LinkedIn	77.3%
Facebook	30.9%
Blogs	24.5%
Twitter	18.2%
Wiki	18.2%
Plaxo	13.6%
MSN Windows Live Spaces	02.7%
MySpace	00.9%
Other	13.6%

Select responses from NFI Research members: 

- With the exception of LinkedIn, the vast majority of business executives I encounter have little or nothing to do, from a business perspective, with social networking sites.
 
- Social networking is a key strategy for our organization.

 - We currently block and have policies against using social networks for business purposes. 

Thank you for your input! If you have colleagues (other senior executives or managers) who you think would benefit from participating in our surveys, you may invite them to join.

Just have them go to the following link to sign up for free. http://nfiresearch.com/index.php?option=com_artforms&formid=1&Itemid=59 

Follow me on Twitter @chuckmartin1 

Best regards,
Chuck Martin Chairman and CEO
NFI Research
chuck@nfiresearch.com

Don't Skate To The Puck, Skate To Where Jeff Pulver Is - RE: HD Voice

<ed.note>I've learned about a decade ago if you want to know where the world is going to be 5 years from now in terms of technology that affects the average citizen you watch Andy Abramson, Ken Rutkowski and Jeff Pulver. Jeff watches and creates all things telephony and he recently sent this missive out re: HD Voice. My advice: if you have traditionally poopooed eHealth, telehealth, and ROWE in healthcare -- your game is about to change; your boat is about to be refloated; your canary is about to molt; your scotch is about to hop -- well, you get what I mean, or literally -- you HEAR what I am SAYING.</ed.note>

Putting the Cable Industry on notice. HD Voice is happening.

I had an interesting time at the CableLabs Summer Conference at Keystone Resort, Colorado. When I first arrived I had a chance to catch up with the teams from both AudioCodes and IP Gallery and a few of the familiar faces I have gotten to know over the years involved in the communications industry.

Looking around the reception on Monday afternoon, it was clear to me that the telecom recession was over, with the room packed with vendors and about 1,000 people from around the world who made the trek to Colorado for the CableLabs Summer Conference.

This was a closed conference with the majority of the sessions only open to the members of Cablelabs.

If there was one session at the CableLabs Summer Conference that a Cable company’s Chief Strategy Officer should have been at, it was the HD Voice session which I greatly appreciate being invited to be a part of. I say this because after listening to Orange’s Vivek Badrinath, Executive Vice President, Networks, Carriers, and Platforms, it is clear to me that consumer HD Communications is a reality, it IS happening and it is going to happen faster than anyone may have otherwise expected.

Vivek was welcomed warmly and embraced by the CableLabs delegates. During his talk I was thinking of the Twilight Zone Episode “To Serve Man” where (according to Wikipedia) a race of aliens known as the Kanamits lands on Earth and promises to be nothing but helpful to the cause of humanity. Initially wary of the intentions of such a highly advanced race, even the most skeptical humans are convinced when their code-breakers begin to translate one of the Kanamit's books, with the seemingly innocuous title, "To Serve Man."

Sharing their advanced technology, the aliens quickly solve all of Earth's greatest woes, eradicating hunger, disease, and the need for warfare. Soon, humans are volunteering for trips to the Kanamits' home planet, which is supposedly a paradise.

All is not well, however, when a code-breaker discovers the Kanamits' true intentions: Their book, "To Serve Man", is a cookbook, and all their gifts were simply to make humanity complacent.” (if you haven’t seen this episode - you can watch it here).

Given the fact that France Telecom / Orange already has over 500,000 customers who have subscribed for their HD Voice offerings and that their numbers are going to continue to grow as Orange rolls out their HD Communication offers across Europe, I couldn't help but make the connection between Vivek and the leader of the Kanamit's.

If I were involved with a cable company, I would have categorized his talk as an early wake-up call and understand the worldwide Cable industry was put on notice to be on the lookout for other incumbent operators who have both a broadband offering and wireless offering to follow in the footsteps of France Telecom / Orange and use HD Communications as a platform to retain and grow their customer base.

Now is NOT the time for the Cable industry to continue to take a “wait and see” approach with HD Communications but rather now is the time to commit to residential trials for HD Voice consumer if the cable industry wants to protect what has become their multi-billion dollar monthly cash cow known as “digital voice services.”

Over the next few years, the growth of consumers who subscribe for HD Communications offered by both wireless and broadband service providers will help lift the communications industry.

“Fear, Greed and Disruption” remain my three favorite words and I am enjoying this moment in time in the history of communications. I remain a big fan of France Telecom for continuing to lead and innovate with HD Communications.

Friends who would like to learn more about HD Communications are invited to attend the next HD Communications Summit taking place on September 15th in New York City.

http://pulverblog.pulver.com/archives/009008.html

The HD Communications Summit Agenda (Update #1)

On September 15th 2009 at New World Stages in New York City, I am producing HDComms, the HD Communications Summit. HDComms will bring together the emerging worldwide HD Communications ecosystem and we will explore the state of "HD Communications" and where things are headed. If you have a vested interested in the future of communications, please consider joining us in New York City next month.

HD Communications Summit Agenda
(as of August 18, 2009)

- Welcome - Daniel Berninger, Executive Director, HDConnect
- Jeff Pulver - CEO, pulver.com - "Accelerating the Conversion to HD"

Step 1 - The HD Technology Roadmap

- Nimrod Borovsky, VP Marketing, Enterprise Business Group, AudioCodes
- Martyn Humphries, VP/GM, VoIP Line of Business, Broadcom
- Jan Linden, VP Engineering, Global IP Solutions

Case Study: Lessons Learned from SD to HDTV
Robert Graves, Chairman, ATSC Forum

HD Innovations Panel: Moderator - Slava Borlin, VP Products, SpiritDSP
- Mike Eastman, VP Sales, WYDEVoice
- Alan Percy, Director Business Development, AudioCodes
- A. Ryan Heidari, Director Technical and Product Marketing, Qualcomm

Step 2 - Triggering End User Demand

Jeff Rodman, co-founder, CTO Voice Division, Polycom
Rick Krupka, VP Business Communication Services, Uniden

HD in Action Panel: Moderator - Daniel Petrie, CEO, SIPEz
- Joyce Kim, VP Marketing, Global IP Solutions
- Chalan Aras, VP of Product Marketing, Polycom
- Dave Frankel, CEO, ZipDX

Step 3 - Toward a Fully Functioning HD Ecosystem

- Josh Bottum, Director Business Development, Cisco
- Mike Rude, VP Business Development, DSPGroup

The HD Value Chain Panel Moderator - Michael Stanford, WireEvolution
- Michael Jablon, VP Digital Phone Strategy, Time Warner
- Tony Stankus, Product Manager Emerging Technologies,Gigaset Communications USA
- Mike Storella, Director Business Development, snom

HD Carrier Interconnection Panel:
Moderator - Daniel Berninger, Executive Director, HDConnect
- Eli Katz, founder and CEO, XConnect
- John Butz, Director New Product Development, Neutral Tandem
- Alan Bugos, VP Advanced Technology and Engineering, iBasis (invited)

Step 4 - The Path to HD Mass Market Adoption

- Rod Keller, CEO, Gigaset Communications USA
- Alla Reznick, Dir Product Management, Global Advanced Services, Verizon

Mobile VoIP Panel: 
Moderator - Brough Turner, Chief Strategy Officer, Dialogic
- Tobias Kemper, VP Social Media and Communication, Nimbuzz
- Diego Besprosvan, CTO, MailVision
- Mahesh Makhijani, Director Technical Marketing, Qualcomm

Perspectives on HD Tipping Points Panel
Moderator - Doug Mohney, Editor in Chief, HDConnectNow
- Anatoli Levine, Director Product Management, RADVISION and President, IMTC
- Richard Buchanan, Chief Marketing Officer, Ooma
- Jake MacLeod, VP and CTO, Bechtel Communications(invited)

Networking Reception

Interested in the future of communications? Register TODAY for next month's HD Communication Summit.

Ontolog Forum Series Transcript: Semantic Wikis: The Wiki Way to the Semantic Web Session 6: The Future of Semantic Wiki: Trends, Challenges and Outlook

PeterYim: Welcome to the SemanticWiki mini-series Session-6 - Thu 5-Mar-2009

* Mini-series Title: Semantic Wikis: The Wiki Way to the Semantic Web
* Session-6 Topic: The Future of Semantic Wiki: Trends, Challenges and Outlook
* Session Chair: Prof. Dr. RudiStuder (FZI & Institut AIFB, Universitt Karlsruhe) & Dr. MarkGreaves (Vulcan)
* Panelists:
 o Chairs of previous sessions in this mini-series to summarize the outcome from their sessions, and to make their short statements on today's topic (5 min. each)
 + Dr. SebastianSchaffert, Mr. HaroldSolbrig, Mr. MaxVoelkel, Mr. MarkusKroetzsch, Mr. MikeDean, Mr. PeterYim, Dr. LiDing & Dr. JieBao
 o Speakers from previous sessions of this mini-series to each deliver short statements regarding the future of semantic wikis as they each see it (2 min. each)
 + Mr. ChristophLange, Mr. DanielHansch, Professor DanielSchwabe, Mr. HaroldSolbrig, Mr. JoelNatividad, Professor KeiCheung, Mr. MarkusKroetzsch, Mr. MikeDean, Professor Dr. PeterDolog, Mr. PeterYim, Dr. SebastianSchaffert, Mr. TobiasKuhn & Mr. YaronKoren

PeterYim: See details on the session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_03_05

PeterYim: .

anonymous morphed into Daniel Schwabe

anonymous morphed into Daniel Schwabe

Daniel Schwabe: Hi Peter, just checking. I thought the conference would start at 3 (my time), but I just noticed it got pushed back 30m

anonymous morphed into Rudi Studer

Rudi Studer1 morphed into Markus Kroetzsch

anonymous morphed into Son Doan

Rudi Studer: We are having problems dialing in. The German telecon service says that the conference ID is not valid

Peter Dolog: hi all

Markus Kroetzsch: We are now using the UK line to dial in.

anonymous morphed into Yaron Koren

Markus Kroetzsch: Hi Yaron.

Yaron Koren: What's up, Markus.

Markus Kroetzsch: We are still waiting for Peter to dial in ...

Daniel (ontoprise): Hi everybody!

PeterYim: Sorry guys ... I am slightly delayed ... I will be over in a couple of minutes

PeterYim: slides just posted ... please refresh session page

Please change your name from 'anonymous' using the Settings button

anonymous morphed into EdDodds

Lars Ludwig: Hello there

Yaron Koren: Looking through the presentations, it looks like Markus and Max's is an old one.

anonymous morphed into Jesse Wang

Yaron Koren: From the 3rd session.

Sebastian Schaffert: Hi, I dialled in via the German line just fine

Markus Kroetzsch sees two people with their hands up. You can put them down agfain with the hand button at the bottom right, I think.

Markus Kroetzsch: We will try that too, back in a minnute.

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, I could if I had not loggen in again

Sebastian Schaffert: -n+d

Markus Kroetzsch: ok, we are back via the German line

anonymous1 morphed into Christoph Lange

Christoph Lange: hi, sorry for coming a bit late...

Markus Kroetzsch: Hi, we are just starting

anonymous morphed into Tim FInin

anonymous morphed into Mike Lang

Sebastian Schaffert morphed into SebastianSchaffert

SebastianSchaffert morphed into Sebastian Schaffert

anonymous3 morphed into DanielRedmon

Markus Kroetzsch morphed into Markus Krötzsch

Daniel Schwabe: Bullets for those w/o slides should are at http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?SemanticWiki/Future

anonymous morphed into JieBao

EdDodds: Thanks to the conveners!!!

anonymous1 morphed into John Pacheco

anonymous2 morphed into Bobbin Teegarden

anonymous morphed into Christoph Lange

Sebastian Schaffert: there is also the 4th SemWiki workshop at ESWC2009

Yaron Koren: I submitted a talk for the SemTech conference, but they never responded, which I guess means that they rejected me.

Yaron Koren:

Markus Krötzsch: You should inquire anyway.

Sebastian Schaffert: ero-training is the goal of every software developer, or should be

Yaron Koren: I did, actually, about a month ago - they didn't respond to that either.

Markus Krötzsch thinks they filter "Yaron" in email headers

Yaron Koren: I knew it!

Yaron Koren: ...or "forms".

EdDodds: Is there a knowledge engineer job posting resource, either on Ontolog or else place?

Tim FInin: we'll continue to need knowledge engineers just as we programmers and database specialists

Sebastian Schaffert: but hard to convince companies that they need one, at least that's my experience

Sebastian Schaffert: thanks Rudi

Markus Krötzsch: There will also be another SMW user meeting, maybe Daniel (ontoprise) can say something on that.

Daniel (ontoprise): Peter, would you be so kind and show my updated slide later? (v1.1)

Mark Greaves: Tim: I agree that we will need KEs in many cases; the question is the degree to which semantic wikis can socialize some of the lower-end schema design applications.

Daniel Schwabe: I don't believe there will be a single "user interface" that is universally "good" for all

Markus Krötzsch: Right, see item 2

Daniel Schwabe: therefore, we really need environments that make it easy to create customized interfaces

Lars Ludwig: we need one environment to customize, maybe

Daniel Schwabe: perhaps some communities may reach a consensus on some interface model that suits them

Markus Krötzsch: Wrongs slide!

Markus Krötzsch notes that slide numbers are not equal to topic numbers

Daniel Schwabe: Why access only from other wiki *systems*, and not from any data source?

Markus Krötzsch: Didn't he say this?

Daniel Schwabe: I heard Rudi say "accessing data from other wiki systems"...

Mark Greaves: DanielS: I agree about the multiple UIs; we don't expect a single best interface to a RDBMS, so why should we expect a single best interface to semantic data? Your M-V-C work is quite cool in this regard.

PeterYim: @DanielHansch: I've got your updated slide online

Markus Krötzsch: ok, we can check on the recording, I was more focussed on the slide

Daniel Schwabe: MarkG - ok, but the actual challenge of good UI design remains

Yaron Koren: No, he talked about other data sources before, including desktop-only data.

Daniel Schwabe: ok, my mistake...

Markus Krötzsch: The slides are here: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/SemanticWiki/SWiki-06_Future-of-SemanticWiki_20090305/SemanticWiki-Future--RudiStuder_20090305.pdf

Yaron Koren: That was early on in the talk.

Daniel Schwabe: yes, there is the URL to all the slides earlier in the transcript

Daniel Schwabe: I think this definition is missing collectively produced content. To me this is one of the defining notions of "wiki"

Yaron Koren: Sure.

Sebastian Schaffert: we had a definition of "Wiki Philosophy" in the first session

Sebastian Schaffert: it included "everyone can edit"

EdDodds: Anyone using twitter here? What hash tags do you use for Ontolog Forum related tweets?

Mark Greaves: DanielS: I think there is enough diversity between SMW+, Knoodl, AceWiki, IkeWiki, SWiM, and the other semantic wikis that our community is not well served by drawing bright inclusion lines or debating terminological scope, even around a fundamental property like collaboration. The marketplace is redefining our term anyway. I'd rather see us be inclusive about the term "semantic wiki", leave it hazily defined, and let our various pieces of software speak for themselves.

Sebastian Schaffert:

Sebastian Schaffert: research has to be fun;.)

Markus Krötzsch: +1 to Mark

Yaron Koren: I would think a definition of semantic wikis that doesn't include collaboration is not a definition at all.

Daniel Schwabe: +1 to Yaron - and that's true for Wikis, not just Semantic Wikis...

Mark Greaves: YaronK: I use a semantic wiki in a noncollaborative way for my own personal information management, for example.

Markus Krötzsch: Actually, my hoempage is a semantic wiki, but I am the only editor

Sebastian Schaffert: BTW, first KiWi open source prerelease: http://www.schaffert.eu/2009/02/27/first-kiwi-open-source-release/ (sorry for advertisement, couldn't resist)

Daniel Schwabe: MarkG - I agree with the overall approach to the problem; I also don't believe in very strong categorizations that serve no purpose.

Yaron Koren: Yes, I'm aware of single-user wikis, but the tools are in place for collaboration.

Markus Krötzsch: Sure

Sebastian Schaffert: not necessarily

Daniel Schwabe: The issue is that if you really take away the collaboration infrastructure, the problem becomes much simpler.

Sebastian Schaffert: it always becomes simpler without cocurrency

Daniel Schwabe: exactly

Sebastian Schaffert: but still, wikis are not about collaboration primarily, they are about creating web content quickly

StephenDavies: (what slide are we on now?)

Mark Greaves: "Database" doesn't have a very tight definition, nor does "word processor" or other common classes of software -- they more have a family resemblence and hazy boundaries. No one has an issue with this. So I'd hope this approach is part of our semantic wiki community as well.

Daniel Schwabe: Hmmm, then wysywig HTML editors would be wiki tools!

StephenDavies: (ah, okay)

Sebastian Schaffert: there is tiddlywiki

Sebastian Schaffert: http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

Yaron Koren: Slide 11 - interestingly, it's about "what is a wiki".

Sebastian Schaffert: a kind of wysiwyg editor if you like

Sebastian Schaffert: but a wysiwyg editor does not create a website, it just creates HTML

Lars Ludwig: take a CMS

Daniel Schwabe: Ok, some CMSs or tools do that - create the page, publish right away. One of the really enabling factors in wikis is easy *linking* (not so much formatting, imho)

Tim FInin: FB and youtube don't seem to be wikis to me.

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, linking is crucial

Sebastian Schaffert: and then there is versioning

Yaron Koren: You can't edit other people's contributions in FB, YouTube, etc.; that's the issue.

Sebastian Schaffert: and (you can debate that) everyone can edit

Daniel Schwabe: So that's why some of the social software sites/tools mentioned in slide 11 would not really count as wikis (from the easy linking pov). And, of course, editing other people's contents, sure.

Tim FInin: more like forums, then

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, but there are nowadays many corporate wiki installations where *not* everyone can edit

Sebastian Schaffert: but still they are wikis

Tim FInin: bossWiki

Daniel Schwabe: it's ok if you have some editorial control on who is allowed to publish...

Daniel Schwabe: functionally speaking, it's still collaborative content AND linking

Harold Solbrig: I think the history component is an important aspect as well.

Sebastian Schaffert: I often summarise the wiki characteristics as follows:

Sebastian Schaffert: - On a wiki, anyone can edit

Sebastian Schaffert: - Wikis are easy to use (buzzword!)

Sebastian Schaffert: - Wiki content is linkable

Sebastian Schaffert: - Wikis support versioning

Sebastian Schaffert: - Wikis support all media (that one is an extension of the old idea of web page)

Sebastian Schaffert: http://www.kiwi-project.eu/index.php/kiwi-vision/21-wiki-philosophy

Lars Ludwig: hm, I could think of a virtual wiki integrating personal statements without direct editing

Christoph Lange: I wouldn't call the feature "versioning" -- IIRC it was originally called "easy undo" = it's easier to undo a mistake than to mess up sth. (and versioning is one solution for that)

Sebastian Schaffert: true

Daniel Schwabe: my definition - easy content and linking; collaborative creation. Versioning is really just a way to overcome lack of concurrency control - leave to the users to undo inconsistent updates, simplifies implementation.

Sebastian Schaffert: @Lars: Twitter?

Sebastian Schaffert: Daniel: versioning is much more important

Sebastian Schaffert: it is about taking away fears

Sebastian Schaffert: the fear of breaking things

Lars Ludwig: why not integrating twitter messages into a wiki

Yaron Koren:

Daniel (ontoprise): The "rule knowledge in SMW"-prototype is online: http://ruledemo.ontoprise.com/index.php?title=Main_Page

Daniel Schwabe: ok, but I consider that as part of "collaborative content creation" support

Sebastian Schaffert: if I know that I can undo my changes in a Wiki, I feel much more easy to actually contribute

Sebastian Schaffert: @Lars: yes, of course (KiWi)

Yaron Koren: I was smiling at the "breaking things", BTW.

EdDodds: Isolated components will be available to link with electronic medical records and financial reporting increasingly done in extensible business reporting language (xbrl) as well. Anyone looking at the medical banking implications of this yet?

Harold Solbrig: The versioning isn't just being able to undo - it carries the evolution of how the idea was formed. Interestingly, discussions should probably be linear - time flows down the page, but core pages need history.

Markus Krötzsch: The "Ask The Wiki" demo is still found at http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Special:ATWSpecialSearch (URL not on my slides)

anonymous1 morphed into John McClure

Peter Dolog: just some thoghts based on above discussion. I think we probably need some kind of a metaphor for semantic wiki. Looking at what the other wrote: Sebastian - quickly update content -> I think this is historically wiki; Daniel: collaborative editing of content was probably added after when CSCW peaple entered, knowledge evolution goes towards semantics a bit (versioning vs. evolution? probably a discussion point too)

EdDodds: >>Lars Ludwig: why not integrating twitter messages into a wiki - Indeed, saw this a.m. http://www.kmworld.com/Articles/News/Breaking-News/Wikis-get-social-52891.aspx on a product (eTouch announces SamePage Version 4.1) that "functionally" attempts this, although not actually with twitter or identi.ca/laconi.ca

Daniel Schwabe: @PeterD - No, collaboration was there since the beginning in Ward Cunninghams first wiki

Peter Dolog: OK, I am not excluding it. I think we just probably miss some kind of methaphor we could all ground too.

Markus Krötzsch: A core aspect of Ward's Wiki was simplicity -- hardly any markup.

Harold Solbrig: As was the original HTML

Lars Ludwig: EdDodds: next step: integrate 'semantic' messages

Peter Dolog: ok, so what would be an equivalent simplicity to semantic wiki

Markus Krötzsch: As Ward said himself, Wikipedia and others have moved away from this part a lot, but I think he is okay with this

Peter Dolog: simplicity in editing beyond content - knowledge?

Daniel Schwabe: I translated these into "easy content creation and linking"

Daniel Schwabe: So I really don't care what is the underlying representation - if I have a tool that makes it very easy to create content, that's fine.

Markus Krötzsch: Ward's wiki was not just "easy" (to use), its whole data model was extremely simple. There was hardly any structure in the data it contained. Mostly links.

LiDing: the notion of easy is hard to say

Daniel Schwabe: Hence, with wysiwyg HTML enable wiki content to be HTML, so long as people don't have to edit the source...

LiDing: even editing with wiki require training

Harold Solbrig: Interesting now that I think about it. HTML 1.0 was more semantic than syntax. The XML community argues that it "got off track" with the images and formatting information rather than the semantics of the message itself. XML, on the other hand, made it *too* easy for everyone to say whatever they said their own way. RDF & OWL etc. are attempts to agree on semantics, but WIKI, in a way, is a return to the original HTML principles.

Mark Greaves: LiD: very well said, "the notion of easy is hard to say"

LiDing: furthermore, editing in English is not that easy

Daniel Schwabe: Besides content itself with the simple markup, the real winner was the simple linking mechanism - reference by name

Markus Krötzsch: but maybe maintaining a basic data model with as little strucutre as possible is not actually our goal these days ...

Daniel Schwabe: at that time, this was the difficult part to achieve in a simple way

Harold Solbrig: Agreed - especially the link to a yet to be created page.

Markus Krötzsch: indeed

John McClure: Core & definitional to wikis -- which seems not to have received alot of attention -- are '''namespaces'''. I believe that public understanding of wikis needs to evolve, not be a revolution with too many concepts. Thus, I suggest that the concept of namespaces -- as a form of strong typing -- is the next crucial atom of info to be communicated.

Daniel Schwabe: @Markus - sure, I would not focus so much on a "data model"

Daniel Schwabe: @johnM - interesting point...

EdDodds: @Lars Ludwig: next step: integrate 'semantic' messages >> yes, I wonder if the open ontology registry (Ontolog Project) might be utilized to connect with tagging a la delicious, folksonomies, twit hash tags, etc. to help give context to these semantic messages...

Peter Dolog: @DanielS: so our ultimate goal is then, what is now difficult on the content in the wikis which semantics can make it simple

Markus Krötzsch: @Daniel: I mean the basic structural model of the wiki content. In spite of all freedom that users should have, technically there must be some basic "model".

Daniel Schwabe: that's part of it. Then there is the "consuming the information" part. No good to be easy to create if it is hard to consume! which leads us to customizable interfaces

Markus Krötzsch: s /Daniel/DanielS/

John McClure: I suggest that IF ontologies are calibrated with (inter)wiki namespaces, THEN ontology metadata can be reasoned, leading to interoperability

Daniel Schwabe: @MarkusK - sure

Markus Krötzsch: we see it!

Yaron Koren: SMW mostly uses categories and not namespaces.

Markus Krötzsch: Well, it uses both but for very different things.

Harold Solbrig: We had to splice namespaces in...

Lars Ludwig: document annotation is no solution

Harold Solbrig: e.g. RDF_type or WINE_cabernet

Markus Krötzsch: @PeterYim: my lightning slide is not linked online -- did you get it?

John McClure: Yaron, yes I agree, but that doesnt distress me. The essential point is that SMW needs to develop an ontology that describes NSs.

Yaron Koren: Markus - a minority of people use namespaces for data. Like Harold.

Markus Krötzsch: Oh, I would not encourage this, from a technical viewpoint

Yaron Koren: Talk to Harold. And John.

John McClure: because...?

Yaron Koren: John - I don't see why usage of namespaces is that important to you.

John McClure: Because it is a '''container'''. Because it's already in MW. Because it is not new

Yaron Koren: You could say the same for categories.

Harold Solbrig: Two different notions of namespace. One is the Mediawiki ns (Category, Template, Property, and talk analogs) and the second is ontology namespace (URI)

Markus Krötzsch: Ah, that is indeed different

Jesse Wang: Yaron: I believe one reason people use namespaces is to avoid name conflict: say, two pages: NS1:MembersList vs NS2:MembersList.

Daniel Schwabe: I already hit *2 on mine

John McClure: Harold, agreed. What is the difference my friend?

Markus Krötzsch: @Harold: Of course, namespaces in ontologies often have no semantic significance. They are specific to some serializations, but not part of the ontological content.

Sebastian Schaffert: and they don't say anything about the ontology

Sebastian Schaffert: they are about the URIs and not suitable for grouping ontologies

Markus Krötzsch: (opening a file in an ontology editor and saving it again may sometimes change the namespaces that are used)

Markus Krötzsch: The notion of "URI" does not involve namespaces either.

Markus Krötzsch: They only come in in XML and some other file formats.

Daniel Schwabe: I guess what is meant is some facility to help "distributed vocabulary management"

LiDing: isn't wiki a place forcing people to converge?

Markus Krötzsch: @DanielS: Yes, the problem is that semantic technology standards are pretty poor on this task.

Daniel Schwabe: @MarkusK - sure, I was just trying to give my interpretation of the remark on using NSs

Markus Krötzsch: yes, and I think it is a valid remark, just hard to implement properly using standards

Daniel Schwabe: @LiDing - yes, but converge != merge

John McClure: What is meant is a hook to define context, the 'frame' through which a particular wiki, or namespace within a wiki, is constructed. Where else to define such context *in the existing framework*?

LiDing: @daniel, right we do forced-converge or merged by mapping

John McClure: Frankly I am most concerned with making swikis palatable as possible
- Start with existing concepts, like namespaces (aka context) and pages (aka resources)

Daniel Schwabe: @LiDing - I believe merged by mapping is more acceptable, hence the use of NSs to help that

John McClure: we can all agree semantically what the 'talk' ns is for. Why stop there?
Am suggesting some additional ''foundational namespaces'' in addition to the
fourteen (14) standard ns's.

Tim FInin morphed into Tim Finin

Daniel Schwabe: Shameless plug - partial answer to point 2 (interface between dbpedia and semantic wiki) - Explorator: http://www.tecweb.inf.puc-rio.br/explorator. First step, exploring data; second step, create/add/edit content (coming)

Yaron Koren: @KeiCheung - well, some might say that a semantic Wikipedia might replace DBPedia entirely.

John McClure: e.g., put one's formal ontology in a 'term' ns, controlled by KEs
Leave folksonomies in the 'category' ns -- potential terms adoptable by KEs

Daniel Schwabe: @yaronK - sorry, I really don't believe that. They serve entirely different purposes. I could see Semantic Wikipedia being based on top of dbpedia...

Sebastian Schaffert: @Yaron: which would make sense, why are they separate in the first place ...

Sebastian Schaffert: well, at the moment, DBPedia is based on Wikipedia

Daniel Schwabe: @YaronK (perhaps that's what you meant?)

Sebastian Schaffert: adding the DBPedia-way of querying data to Wikipedia would make sense

Yaron Koren: No, I'm talking about adding SMW (for instance  ) to Wikipedia.

Yaron Koren: Wikipedia could then be queried directly.

Sebastian Schaffert: same result, isn't it (or even better)

Sebastian Schaffert: that's what I meant

Daniel Schwabe: @sebastian - one of the advantages of dbpedia is having a sparql endpoint. It enables powerful interfaces such as the Explorator I mentioned above

Markus Krötzsch hears echo

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, but Wikipedia could offer the SPARQL endpoint

Daniel Schwabe: In addition, you could always have the (Semantic) Media Wiki interface, as you said

Sebastian Schaffert: instead of having it separate

Sebastian Schaffert: I disagree with Mike - OWL must prove that it is useful or otherwise we dump it

Sebastian Schaffert: (my challenge ...  )

Christoph Lange: one more thought about namespaces: I think they are needed if links should remain easy to author. LinkByName actually requires one flat namespace, wich is not practical for structuring knowledge, but full URIs are hard to author

Daniel Schwabe: +1 to ChristophL

Sebastian Schaffert: @Christoph: link lookup can be done differently

Harold Solbrig: @Markus (wrt namespaces) - indeed, namespaces have no semantic significance, which is why they work out ok as a part of the name itself. The key, however, is disambiguation - especially when you are referencing outside resources that have not coordinated their names. The classic example is the NCI has a class called "Agent", which includes drugs and other delivery mechanisms. NCI_Agent is needed...

Sebastian Schaffert: I'll maybe discuss with you separately how we now do it in KiWi

Markus Krötzsch: I agree with Sebastian, but I don't think OWL is just useful if it is useful in wikis; actually, we would have very advanced swikis indeed if they are able to leverage a technology as powerful as OWL. Maybe we are not there yet.

KeiCheung: Yaron, my chat room page was blocked by other windows so I didn't see your comment. wikipedia started with free text, so it's not a natural fit to semantic web even dbpedia addresses some of the issues. If we start right using semantic mediawiki (instead of mediawiki), we might be able to create a better dbpedia (neurodbpedia in my case).

Yaron Koren: Well, as far as I know DBPedia just uses Wikipedia's infobox data, which could be relatively straightforwardly semantic-ized.

Sebastian Schaffert: ... or create a flop because people are reluctant to use it

Sebastian Schaffert: if it is too complex

Sebastian Schaffert: difficult act of balancing

Markus Krötzsch: @Harold: yes, I agree; I am not sure how well this is supported by current tools, though

Harold Solbrig: @Markus I disagree. OWL, while it may not appear directly, is an important component when defining the intended meaning of the semantic components. With OWL, RDF, ... we have "Category" and "Property". That said, OWL should be under the covers.

Daniel Schwabe: I think we can build special purpose interfaces to create, edit and navigate data for which we KNOW the (meta) schema.

Sebastian Schaffert: people absolutely don't care about semantics

Sebastian Schaffert: they have to be added in a natural way

Sebastian Schaffert: forms are one way

Markus Krötzsch: in addition, people absolutely don't care about wikis

Sebastian Schaffert: tagging might be one

Sebastian Schaffert: exactly

Yaron Koren:

Yaron Koren: So what are we doing here?

KeiCheung: faviki?

Daniel Schwabe: @MarkusK, unless you are saying this "tongue in cheek", people DO care about wikis...

Harold Solbrig: @Markus: We had to roll our own for the time being. Not only do we have the namespace issue, but, one way or another, we have to know that "Wine" and "Wein" map to the same core resource, so we need a notion of identity.

KeiCheung: owl:sameAs?

Sebastian Schaffert: @Yaron: we care about positioning semantic wikis as a tool that people really like to use without noticing that they are using a wiki or semantics

Harold Solbrig: I want to get to the same page in the end.

Sebastian Schaffert: @Harold: this becomes very difficult

Sebastian Schaffert: think of "Snow"

Markus Krötzsch: @Yaron: That is why I think we should step back and consider the goal we have. We gather valuable experience in supporting structured and unstructured content, for trained and untrained users, in groups or alone -- we can define "CMS" or at least contribute significantly to its future definition.

EdDodds: Folks don't care about "semantics" but they do care about "context" -- they just don't realize they can be the same thing

Sebastian Schaffert: in Bavaria, we have about 5-10 notions of snow, in Iceland they have about 15

Daniel Schwabe: Good user interface are crucial to ANY interactive application...

Sebastian Schaffert: and in Saudi Arabia they probably have only 1

Sebastian Schaffert: +1 to Daniel

Sebastian Schaffert: user centred design

Daniel Schwabe: @SebastianS (Ha, in Brazil we have may .5 notion of snow, none real! :-Q)

Markus Krötzsch: @DanielS: The people from the street care about the label "wiki" as they care about "Web 2.0", but the cateogrization as one or the other type of CMS is not essential to them as long as it works

Daniel Schwabe: @MarkusK - ah, ok

Harold Solbrig: @Sebastian: What we've done is created a 3 part identifier (NS_designation(code)). NS is namespace ID, designation is language specific and possibly changeable name and code is immutable. Note that links don't just come from other wiki pages (!). If we don't find NS_designation(code), we look up NS(Code). If found, we build a redirect page.

EdDodds: A simple case is job matching a la hr-xml. HR still refuses to use "context" to match "job description" with "resume" -- job seekers, however, do wish they would

Markus Krötzsch: @Harold: I think I understand what kind of problems you would encounter there. You want to work on syntax, when all SemWeb standards work on semantics (i.e. letting you identify the entities you model, but not the names that you use for them).

Markus Krötzsch wonders how many parallel side chats one can have while still being an attentive listener ...

EdDodds: Another case is the White House Forum on Health Reform Event on now http://www.whitehouse.gov/live2/ where about of the jawing is about differing definitions and cross talk

EdDodds: alot of

John McClure: Special purpose interfaces (@Daniel) could be bound each to a namespace.
People 'get' that pretty easily, and understand that

Sebastian Schaffert: @Harold: but how does it solve the problem of owl:sameAs redirecting to the same page?

John McClure: place:White House is SURELY different than article:White House and talk:White House

Sebastian Schaffert: concepts are slightly different in different cultures

Daniel Schwabe: @JohnM - sure, that's one of the primitive mechanisms we use in HDEWiki (and more general in HyperDE tool)

John McClure: each requiring a wholly different set of tools to make the goal (completing content) faster, better, cheaper

Daniel Schwabe: @JohnM - there is a builtin notion of "context", and a way to customize the interface depending on the context.

Joel Natividad: Following up on my point about word processors - has anybody looked into using the new document formats - Open XML and ODF in particular as a jumping point

Joel Natividad: for capturing semantically annotated data when creating documents

Joel Natividad: ODF has a metadata Technical Comittee

smishra morphed into Sunil Mishra

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, we even have an open bug tracker issue on this

Sebastian Schaffert: still open

Daniel Schwabe: @YaronK, can you post the URL to the website you mentioned?

Yaron Koren: Sure - http://opencongress.org/wiki

anonymous1: How is the UI problem related to the non-specific spirit of the wiki paradigm? For instance, from my experience working within the biomedical domain I have see that tools such as WIKI-Proteins do not facilitate any specific tool for the kind of information they are meant to support. How could having more specific UIs help solving the UI problem?

Bobbin Teegarden: Has anyone tried to move the wiki ui from words and bullets to an interactive graph (with GIS overlay) more like Gelernter's Mirror World?

Sebastian Schaffert: because specific is always better for the user than generic

Markus Krötzsch: anonymous1, you can use "Settings" at the top panel to get a name.

Daniel Schwabe: @anonymous1 - that's precisely the point I was making in my earlier interventions!

Lars Ludwig: name space? -- I call it mind space

Harold Solbrig: @Sebastian: Even with owl:sameAs, we still have to get folks from whatever historical or language specific hyperlink they've got to the SMW page that defines the category or property. The advantage of the identifier approach is we don't have to carry a history of all names that have been used.

Markus Krötzsch: oops, I misinterpreted the text field next to the hand button

Sebastian Schaffert: response:

Sebastian Schaffert: namespaces are not for semantics

Daniel Schwabe: @YaronK - is there some sort of schema underlying the "structured" portion of this website? Is there a way to access the "raw" underlying data?

Sebastian Schaffert: @Harold: that's fine - my concern is only that it is not so easy to use the same concept in multiple languages

Sebastian Schaffert: we had this in IkeWiki

Yaron Koren: @DanielS - not really, no.

Sebastian Schaffert: but didn't to it in KiWi after a long discussion

Sebastian Schaffert: did the conference break? I was kicked out

Sebastian Schaffert: and cannot log in again

Markus Krötzsch: we are still on

anonymous1: I suppose that also has to do with being able to define atomic components of a wiki page, the page is the atomic unit of the wiki.

PeterYim: @Sebastian ... was that for voice or for the chat room?

Harold Solbrig: @Sebastion: agreed that it isn't. There are attempts and claims to be able to do this, however, in Medical "ontologies" such as Gene Ontology and SNOMED-CT. Also, what of Dublin Core and good ol' RDF?

Sebastian Schaffert: @peter: voice, but back again

PeterYim: glad you are able to get back in .. sorry for the mishap

Sebastian Schaffert: @anonymous1: not necessarily, we also discussed heavily in the community how to annotate parts of pages

Sebastian Schaffert: take the Wikipedia page about the computer mouse

Sebastian Schaffert: it would be useful to annotate each section differently, because it is about many historical mice

Joel Natividad: @Tim: Great stuff! Would love to see what your team put together.

Joel Natividad: @Tim: Great stuff! Would love to check out the work that your team did

anonymous1: can u track changes over anything else but pages?

Sebastian Schaffert: @anonymous1: yes, in KiWi we implemented versioning and transactions for metadata

Sebastian Schaffert: not 100% solved, but mostly

Joel Natividad: Actually, I'm currently working on embedding semantic metadata in the SVG XML files that SRF-Ploticus produces.

anonymous1: is there any literature on that?

John McClure: Markus' concern is that an ns organization conflicts with
one's ability to 'categorize' things in multiple ways.
There are several responses to this. First, don't overlook the
impace of REDIRECTS. Second, consider closely whether the structure
of the ontology is ill-fitting wrt the implemented namespaces.

Christoph Lange: @anonymous1: the page can remain the atomic unit, but then we need good refactoring workflows in case a page grows more complex (and subconcepts emerge within a page)

Sebastian Schaffert: on the versioning? we are working on an article

Sebastian Schaffert: should be finished next week

Yaron Koren: Sorry, what was the question? I couldn't hear it.

Markus Krötzsch: @John: My point is: categories already do that, are well known, and have suppor by advnaced UIs even for searching. So why try to use MW namespaces?

Sebastian Schaffert: @John: never forget the user

Sebastian Schaffert: who would find this useful? I would find it awkward

Markus Krötzsch: @John: I agree that it could be conceived, even though it would not play well with the technical use of namespaces now (e.g. namespaces cannot be added from the wiki but only server-side)

Daniel Schwabe: @anonymous1 - there is a whole series of work on model-based interface specification. If you want to get a flavor of what's possible, some is exemplified in our HDEWiki demo: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/SemanticWiki/SWiki-02_Technology-1_20081120/HDEWiki--DanielSchwabe_20081120.html

John McClure: I don't believe there is any ontology for defining a category.
(Unless you wanna raise Topic Maps v Ontology debate)

Sebastian Schaffert: SKOS

Markus Krötzsch: well, I think we are talking of different things here

Joel Natividad: In my ideal world, users will work on their documents using familiar interfaces and then the knowledge is published on Semantic Wiki

Sebastian Schaffert: +1 to Joel

Sebastian Schaffert: intuitiveness means known patterns of use

John McClure: yep, skos.
Further, mw searching does understand ns's and categories.
Certainly I acknowledge that there's a break with categories in some sense.
But this is called 'emerging ke' right

anonymous1: Hi Christoph, how could the re-factoring be done?

Joel Natividad: and other users can further annotate on Wiki, and if it can be done, the annotations are round-tripped down to the document

Daniel Schwabe: +1 to Joel too

Joel Natividad:

Guoqian Jiang: @Markus, We are using RDF output from SMW for processing proposals generated from LexWiki

Peter Dolog: @Joel: And this is exactly also a big challenge for us as researchers

Peter Dolog: i.e. how to make it simpler to make

Jesse Wang: We are doing something at Vulcan.

Peter Dolog: because program we can always

Jesse Wang: Mark is talking on that.

Peter Dolog: but how everybody can do that?

Christoph Lange: @anonymous1: in Wikipedia it is done manually. Whenever a subsection (e.g. history of Italy) grows too large, somebody first puts a warning there (this should be rolled out to an article of its own), then somebody else does that, and replaces the former section by a short summary, and fixes links on other pages pointing to the subtopic

Markus Krötzsch: we are also working on solutions for inter-wiki data exchange and integration -- I would like to collect input on what people need

Christoph Lange: @anonymous1: Now assume semantic structures on pages (e.g. saying this paragraph is a subconcept of type T), then a semantic wiki could assist with that

Tim Finin: gotta go. Thanks for all the fish

John McClure: @Sebastian - Users find it useful that [[place:White House]] involves its own set of tools

Markus Krötzsch: we plan to release software for exchanging data between wikis (instead of copying it from one wiki to the other by duplicating pages); use cases could affect our desing choices

Guoqian Jiang: @Markus, we are really interested in the future plan for RDF/OWL backend of SMW

Markus Krötzsch: well, feel free to write an email

Markus Krötzsch: (I think the session stops rather soon)

Guoqian Jiang: @Markus, yes, talk to you later by email

Sebastian Schaffert: @John: how about the page about the place which is called "White House" involving their own tools instead of placing it on the link?

Markus Krötzsch: ok, just bear with me being slow processing mails; quite some of them these days ...

Guoqian Jiang: OK, I see.

Daniel Schwabe: @MarkusK - why not use LOD as the underlying basis to share content between wikis?

anonymous1: @ Joel: having a semantic structure supporting the generation of documents could make it possible to produce scientific papers, for instance, fully annotated. This could deliver an OLD environment over the paper. I think that when supporting the generation of documents the annotation should happen naturally and without any effort, the document being generated should be immerse in the web by means of relationships over those data types contained in the paper.

Markus Krötzsch thanks Mark and Rudi for chairing this session, and Peter for setting this up

Joel Natividad: plaudits to the all the conveners, Peter in particular!

Sebastian Schaffert: @Daniel: done by KiWi and planned for extension

John McClure: Users find it useful that [[place:*]] is in effect, a geo database
That [[:White House]] is an article ABOUT something (like the [[place:White House]]
that [[place_talk:White House]] is an article ABOUT [[place:White House]], etc etc
Of course, you can see metastatements abound

anonymous1: Thanks everybody

Sebastian Schaffert: yes, thanks!

Guoqian Jiang: Thanks all

Peter Dolog: thanks everybody

Daniel Schwabe: @SebastianS - great, will take a closer look!

Daniel Schwabe: Thanks all!

Christoph Lange thanks the organizers and all participants

Joel Natividad: any news about 2nd User Group Meeting of SMW?

Daniel Schwabe: Bye all, thanks for the interesting exchange!

Markus Krötzsch: bye

Peter Dolog: bye to all

Sebastian Schaffert: @Daniel: essentially, if you access the KiWi system with a client that sends "Accepts: application/rdf" it redirects to http://showcase.kiwi-project.eu/KiWi/linkeddata.seam?http://showcase.kiwi-project.eu/KiWi/content/FrontPage

PeterYim: Great session ... Mark, Rudi and everyone! Thank you all for a most wonderful mini-series!

Sebastian Schaffert: or something similar

Yaron Koren: @Joel - I guess there's no news.

Joel Natividad:

Yaron Koren: The plan was to have one in Germany in May or so...

Sebastian Schaffert: @Daniel: the key is to use URIs that are "local" to the server domain

Sebastian Schaffert: which can be problematic if you want at the same time use ontologies

Yaron Koren: We could have one instead in the U.S., if there's interest.

Joel Natividad: Count me in, perhaps we can time it with SemTech

Yaron Koren: Yeah... although I'm not going to that one.

Yaron Koren: Is anyone from SMW presenting there, do you know?

Sebastian Schaffert: Markus apparently tried to submit a presentation

Yaron Koren: That was me. Unless Markus did too.

Joel Natividad: I also submitted one but the passed on it as well

Yaron Koren: Oh. Maybe it's a trend.

Joel Natividad: like Markus said

Joel Natividad: mail filters

Yaron Koren: So, are you still planning to go?

Joel Natividad: I am. Particularly since Mark said they were planning to host some SMW sessions

Yaron Koren: Hm.

Yaron Koren: Well, I guess that's where the 2nd SMW user meeting will be, then.

Joel Natividad: Great! Maybe we should continue the planning on semediawiki-user mailing list

Yaron Koren: Sure, feel free to send an email. I still don't think I'm going.

Joel Natividad: k. bye all!

PeterYim: bye everyone! a big THANK YOU to all, once again!

anonymous1: bye everyone

Venture Nashville: Bart Gordon announces Sci-Tech priorities

I replied at the DNJ link saying (after seeing the Venture Nashville blog post):

One thing we need to consider is making a Results-Only Work Environment (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROWE ; http://www.culturerx.com ; http://caliandjody.com/blog ) the DEFAULT work condition in both schools and businesses. One should have to make a business case for being required to "drive into work". With so much employment moving toward knowledge work, the costs of not promoting telecommuting (Net-Working) have not been studied by area CEOs and they would be astounded how much money they are wasting on real estate, etc.; costs which were necessary in 1980 -- but not today. That is not to say that their competitors are also wasting these resources unnecessarily -- think about why cloud computing and virtualization have been in the IT press lately. ROWEs are not a panacea -- but definitely an option that very rarely shows up on the C-Suite table.

What think ye?

Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination, Robert Compton on C-SPAN

<ed.note>Note: 1) China and India DO NOT emphasize junior high and high school athletics (because the chances that that will bring one out of poverty are amazingly low). 2) When a child shows an aptitude for a subject the parents hire a tutor (FWIW: South Korea sometimes hires from the States and Skylake Incuvest, a South Korean investment fund specializing in the technology sector, thinks there's money to be made here). Wouldn't it be weird if the US (the parents thereof) ACTUALLY valued STEM education (instead of just the politically correct rhetorizing about it)? Think of the boon a combined fiber and distributed clean energy generation smart grid build out model could be for rural economies and what a platform for virtual tutoring that eco friendly grid could be? BTW: I admin Project Net-Work Group on Linkedin.com -- invite here if you're about more than lip service.</ed.note>

Text from C-SPAN, links mine: Robert Compton talked about his documentary Two Million Minutes: A Global Examination (Youtube Trailer here), which compares and contrasts the education experiences of six students; two from each of the countries of India, China, and the United States. Video clips were shown as he talked about the statistics on the amount of time spent in the classroom, the influence of the students' parents on their decisions to pursue a certain career, and the degree to which those choices impact their free time during their high school years. Two million minutes is roughly four years, the amount of time high school students have to prepare for higher education and their careers. Mr. Compton talked about the importance of education to competing in the new global economy and that people in other countries took it much more seriously. He said that although many middle and high schools were using his video, schools of education had rejected any need to learn about the educational systems in competing countries.

Venture capitalist Robert Compton's travels to India in 2005 and 2006 laid the groundwork for his decisions to author a blog, publish a book called Blogging Through India, and produce the documentary.

Reply to Susanna Dodgson RE: Broadband Build Out in Nigeria

over at http://vcafrica.ning.com/

Her post:

This is all great, but the hurdles are still huge. I went to a Corporate Council on Africa Health Forum in November and was listening to a talk by a South African CEO of a pharmaceutical company. He said something astounding: he refuses ever to pay a bribe anywhere. This is the first time I have heard this said and it is exciting.

What has this to do with highspeed internet in Nigeria? Everything. This is a country with daily power outages (and the power company employees demand bribes to provide even sporadic power, at least that was what I saw in BAV studios where I work in Surulere); a country when even canned tomatoes has to be imported (and Nigerian food has tomatoes in everything). Given that back-drop, is high-speed internet somehow avoiding all payment of bribes, avoiding corruption? I desperately want the answer to be yes. http://mjota.org.

My reply:

Technologically, of course, the answer is easy. WiMax and solar energy vendors should team up to build out the grid. One could avoid the ground by using blimps, drones, etc. RE: Bribes seen as a fee-for-service where there is no other meaningful industry exists, well, that's a catch-22. Broadband could bring knowledge work (if global employers would learn to pay for something other than butts-in-seats, i.e. driving into a plant in order to post on a wiki or write software {see Results-Only Work Environments at your local search engine}). Bribes purely for sloth, well, that's a theological problem, which, ironically, broadband could help (at least in delivering seminary curricula). The one anti-corruption benefit of broadband is the enabling wiki-eske ability to create "walls of shame" near real-time -- both of the ones perpetrating the corruption -- and of the law enforcement officials for not prosecuting them (in those cases where the actors aren't the same people). XBRL was just mandated yesterday in the US for firms over 5 billion -- so getting to underlying data is at least theoretically going to be easier. Wish I had more optimistic answers.

SEC To Require XBRL from Big Firms by Mid 09

Story here. Told ya! Were you listening?

Announcements: IMS Interop; Semantic Wiki

Hi Semantic Wiki people,

today we invite people to present a Lightning Talk on any topic around Semantic MediaWiki in our upcoming third sessions in the Semantic Wiki Mini series,an online event with regularly 30+ participants + much used audio recordings.

We invite presentations both from developers and users. The audience is rather diverse, ranging from high-profile experts to novice users.

Details of the last session can be found here.

In case you would like to present something in the next session devoted completely to Semantic MediaWiki and the universe of extensions around it,please send me a short mail with your title, abstract (ca. 1-3 sentences).Slides will be due begin of next week (Tuesday).
If you have any other suggestion or comment regarding the Mini Series, please feel free to tell us.

Please forward this call to interested parties.

Kind Regards,

Max Völkel
voelkel@fzi.de | http://Xam.de

# # # #

Hello All,

As you may be aware, the IMS/NGN Forum has scheduled its sixth plugfest during the week of January 12, 2009 at the Interoperability Lab at the University of New Hampshire.

We are looking for additional UE equipment for our IMS interoperability testing for voice, video and multimedia.

If you'd like to participate or make recommendations on obtaining the UE,  please feel free to post back to the list or to myself directly (Email: techchair@imsforum.org)   UE providing at least a subset of the following features/support would be of most interest for this coming event:

* Support of AKA v1/v2 MILENAGE
* Support of IPsec (with IK/CK from the AKA)
* Support of TLS (optional, if IPsec is used)
* Support for subscription to reg event package
* Support for network deregistration
* Support for presence
* Support of SIP based message (MESSAGE method)
* Support for PRACK

We appreciate your help and support.

Best regards,
Manuel Vexler
Chair Technical Working Group, IMS/NGN Forum
http://www.imsforum.org

The Financial Interoperability Summit – May 12-13 2008 Presentations

Professor William McCarthy gives this pointer in his Ontolog Forum talk:

http://nsfaccountingontology.wik.is/Workshop

Sponsored by the National Science Foundation (Frank Olken)

Looked at formal issues associated with accounting and financial interoperability at both the reporting level and the transaction level

Three main exemplars:
XBRL-FR and XBRL-GL
REA 
SDMX