Is there a Social Semantic Web?

From September 26 – 27 a Conference on the Social Semantic Web (CSSW) will be held in Leipzig. The conference will end with a panel discussion on the question “Is there a Social Semantic Web?”.

My opinion is: Yes, there is only a social semantic web. The internet as a whole is of course a social system (what else? drop some bombs and the internet becomes senseless…) which starts reflecting about itself. This process we call the social semantic web.

It is like a little kid starting to talk and to find out that language is about abstracting real things like emotions or feelings. This little person also starts to find out that language is not only about connecting some words, no, there are rules how to connect things.

The novel thing about the semantic web is that the first time in humanity we create a space where human beings will create reality together with computers. Since computers have on advantage compared to people that´s helpful indeed: They have a better overview. They “know” what´s going on in the internet from a higher altitude. YOU will always be the one who teaches the machine and if this collective process won´t be manipulated by some people this will be an even more effective symbiosis on the social semantic web than it´s already now on the Web 2.0.

Web 2.0 meets the Semantic Web in September…

September 2007 will start with an exciting event (Triple-I in Graz/Austria) and will end with a top-class conference (Semantic Web Strategies, San Jose, CA) both dealing with questions about the applicability of the semantic web.

Since the global semantic web community is growing fast (many new technologies, start ups and more or less mature systems pop up every week) it is very important to keep track of interesting projects.

I will chair a semantic wiki tutorial (thanks to Sebastian Schaffert who is presenting IkeWiki and Danny Vrandecic who will explain the benefits of his semantic media wiki) and give a talk about “Enterprise n+1” together with Franz Novak and Henry Story from Sun Microsystems in Graz.

After I have made my long way to the Silicon Valley I will give a tutorial on the Semantic Web in general with a strong focus on economic issues. Again, Semantic Wikis play an integral role when explaining the benefits of the Semantic Web, metadata can´t be produced only by some experts. From a technical point of view it´s clear what´s exciting about the semantic web, but in what cases is it really applicable? How can a project roll-out be done? What role plays “semantic education” for the involved employees?

I am also looking forward discussing in a Keynote roundtable about Semantic Web Strategies for organizations. (See also: Interview with Bob DuCharme).

Still both, promoters and critics, have the same opinion: The Semantic Web is (or: would be) an exciting new option to enhance the Web (1.0 and 2.0) and Information Management throughout companies. Promoters are maybe still a bit too optimistic and enthusiastic and critics often are not aware how simple the semantic web can be applied. Maybe they will meet each other this year in September….

Web 2.0 and Austria´s biggest Broadcasting Company

It was an exciting afternoon when three nice guys from the Austrian Broadcasting Company ORF came to our office, talked with us about Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web and made a couple of interviews with us.

On the 1st of September you can see the results if you can receive ORF 1 (and if you´re still watching good old TV…).

Markus Mooslechner from ORF will try to find answers for questions like “…is Web 2.0 already there?”, and I asked him (which you probably can´t see on TV), if Web 2.0 has already arrived at Austria´s biggest Broadcasting Company…

Since there´s no media-stream of “Newton” you might be interested in this video.

Reminder: Call for papers TRIPLE-I

TRIPLE-I
The Innovation Conference for Knowledge Management, New Media Technology and Semantic Technologies

5 – 7 September 2007
Graz, Austria
http://www.triple-i.info

The TRIPLE-I Conference series is a joint venture of the conferences

•   I-KNOW – International Conference on Knowledge Management
•   I-MEDIA – International Conference on New Media Technology
•   I-SEMANTICS – International Conference on Semantic Technology

Regular paper submissions for I-KNOW may include but are not limited to:

– Identifying Relationships between different kinds of Knowledge Entities
– Service-oriented Architectures for Knowledge Management Systems
– Service-based Knowledge Management
– Orchestration of Knowledge Management Services
– Distributed Knowledge Management
– Social Network Analysis
– Knowledge Work Productivity
– Communication and Collaboration in Knowledge Management
– Context and Usage Pattern Identification and Management
– Agile Approaches to Knowledge Management

Regular paper submissions for I-MEDIA may include but are not limited
to:

– Web 2.0 Applications for Content Providers
– Business Models for New Media
– Social Media Platforms
– User-Generated Content
– Cross-Media Content Production and Delivery
– Cross-Media Search and Retrieval
– New Media Services
– Innovative User Interfaces for Media Devices
– The Geospatial Web
– Marketing of Products and Services via New Media

Regular paper submissions for I-SEMANTICS may include but are not limited to:

– Semantic Social Software
– Semantic Wikis and Weblogs
– Semantic Desktop
– Social Tagging and Folksonomies
– Ontology Engineering
– Terminology Management
– Visualisation of Semantic Models
– Interoperability, Integration and Reasoning
– Semantic Web Applications
– Experiences, Studies and Metrices

Deadlines
21 May 2007: Full paper submission (4-8 pages)
18 June 2007:   Notification of acceptance
13 July 2007:  Final version (8 pages)
5-7 September 2007: TRIPLE-I Conference

Web 2.0 helps to relax

Whenever you feel stressed by all that uploading, commenting, blogging, networking etc. in Web 2.0 go to this (german speaking) website: alleinr (beta).

“alleinr” means “alonr” and helps a little bit to relax from all that Web 2.0 – *+**/&%#

New Web 2.0 application: “Vote for my hair cut”

Henry Story has demonstrated that it just has begun: The rather infinite options users have to build Web 2.0 applications. Henry´s meshup of blogging, voting and flickr (without deploying any webservice!) shows that even non-programmers can build their own new apps.

Next step, I guess, is a real-time voting system which can be installed at any hair cutter 2.0… (We could try that out at SL first!)

Semantic Social Web barometer

Posts that contain Semantic Web per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Posts that contain "social Web" per day for the last 30 days.

Get your own chart!

Vilém Flusser`s comments on Web 2.0

The always inspiring Flusser has anticipated Web 2.0 about 15 years ago: His “telematic society” is what we call the blogosphere today.

“Social network dialogues would no longer be dominated by discourses, but would be fully dialogic and supported in their democratic character by a technological infrastructure that is organized itself as network dialogue.” (C. Fuchs: The Internet as a Self-Organizing Socio-Technological System)

Social Semantic Web OR Semantic Social Web

Just the flipside of the same coin: But – I rather focus on the Social Web, cause the web is about connecting people, nothing else. And the Semantic part “only” helps to make communication and connections more efficient and better. So: I prefer to talk about the semantic social web… Nevertheless, the Social Web (aka Web 2.0) is “only” vehicle, making on the surface everything better… but not solving the problem at all.

Whilst helping to connect even more people, producing even more content, Web 2.0 offers no tools except social tagging for organizing all the “new” knowledge. So, let´s think about semantic technologies, how they can help us to make an even better Web 2.0, okay?