July 9th, 2009

Semantic Web Gang podcast looks back at the Semantic Technology Conference

Posted by Paul Miller @ 4:48 am

Categories: Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Conference, Semantic Web, Podcasts, Internet, Paul Miller

June’s episode of the regular Semantic Web Gang podcast was recorded on stage at the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose.

Audio and video of the session is now available, with Gang members and conference organiser Tony Shaw engaging in a discussion of the event’s highlights and the underlying trends at work.

May 22nd, 2009

Semantic Web Gang podcast discusses Wolfram Alpha and Google's Rich Snippets

Posted by Paul Miller @ 6:14 am

Categories: Podcasts, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Google Inc., Podcast, Mainstream Media, Semantic Web, Internet, Paul Miller

This month has seen Google announce ‘Rich Snippets‘ and Wolfram Research release Alpha to a flurry of mainstream media coverage; both are of interest to those working on the Semantic Web.

This month’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang takes a look at both stories, and Gang members share their impressions on the news and what it might mean moving forward.

Next month’s Semantic Web Gang will be coming live from the Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose.

April 16th, 2009

The Semantic Web Gang discuss ontologies

Posted by Paul Miller @ 1:42 pm

Categories: Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Ontology, Semantic Web, Strategy, Internet, Management, Paul Miller

Back in October I wrote about the first Vocabulary Camp, or VoCamp. These informal gatherings have gone from strength to strength, and the fourth is currently underway on the Spanish island of Ibiza.

A report from the island by Yahoo’s Peter Mika begins this month’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang podcast, and leads to a wide-ranging discussion of the role that vocabularies and ontologies continue to play within the Semantic Web. The very nature of these ad hoc VoCamps says much, though, about the way in which attitudes have shifted away from expectations that massive all-encompassing ontologies are the best way to help machines to reason about the world around them.

January 19th, 2009

Semantic Web Gang discusses Calais, Linked Data and Google

Posted by Paul Miller @ 5:41 am

Categories: Podcasts, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Google Inc., January, Semantic Web, Podcasts, Internet, Paul Miller

January’s episode of the monthly Semantic Web Gang podcast has just been published. In it Gang members discuss Thomson Reuters’ release of Calais 4.0, and look at the suggestion that Google may be applying a more semantic approach to surfacing some search results.

December 8th, 2008

Semantic Web Gang looks back at 2008; favours both infrastructure and lightweight apps

Posted by Paul Miller @ 5:42 am

Categories: Open Data, Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Companies, Semantic Web Gang, Semantic Web People

Tags: Semantic Web, Podcasts, Internet, Paul Miller

Looking back over 2008, the Semantic Web Gang found much to discuss in their last podcast of the year.

A year that began with a $42million investment in Metaweb continued with Yahoo!’s support for semantic technologies, Microsoft’s purchase of Powerset, and the release of much-hyped Twine. We also saw a plethora of events focussed on Semantic Technologies of all stripes, with a refreshing growth in those targeted toward a business audience supplementing the already rich stream of academic and technical gatherings.

Toward the end of the podcast Gang members consider their personal semantic technology highlights from 2008, and end up pretty evenly split in considering the relative importance of infrastructural underpinnings such as Calais and SearchMonkey on the one hand, and light weight user-facing applications such as Zemanta and Glue on the other.

What were your highlights for the year?

November 4th, 2008

Semantic Web Gang talks to Twine CEO and Chief Architect

Posted by Paul Miller @ 7:23 am

Categories: Commercialisation, Podcasts, Semantic Web Companies, Semantic Web Gang, Semantic Web People

Tags: Radar, Semantic Web, Aerospace & Defense, Internet, Manufacturing, Paul Miller

Following the public launch of Radar Networks’ Twine toward the end of last month, October’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang features a conversation with Radar’s Nova Spivack and Jim Wissner.

The hour long discussion covers some of the ways in which Twine could generate revenue, as well as exploring the role played by semantic technology in the company’s future plans.

September 23rd, 2008

Semantic Web Gang looks at investment opportunities in semantic technology

Posted by Paul Miller @ 9:29 am

Categories: Commercialisation, Investment, Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Companies, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: TechCrunch, Investment Opportunity, Semantic Web, Internet, Paul Miller

Joined this month by Erick Schonfeld from TechCrunch, Chris Morrison from VentureBeat, and Brad Burnham from Union Square Ventures, this latest episode of the regular Semantic Web Gang podcast explores views on the investment opportunities raised by semantic technology.

Union Square was featured in this weekend’s New York Times, and is behind investments in Adaptive Blue and (just last week) Zemanta.

Both TechCrunch and VentureBeat, along with ReadWriteWeb (and, of course, ZDNet!), are at the forefront of sites covering startups and investments in the Semantic Web space. The recent TechCrunch50 event also featured a number of entrants that put semantic technologies to good use; namely DotSpots, Fotonauts, Imindi and Popego.

There is a panel at the European Semantic Technology Conference in Vienna on Friday, at which we’ll be exploring related issues. It’s a conversation I look forward to continuing.

August 17th, 2008

Europe discussing the business of the Semantic Web at ESTC

Posted by Paul Miller @ 8:49 am

Categories: Commercialisation, Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Companies, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Europe, Conference, Semantic Web, Research & Development, Benefits, Internet, Business Operations, Human Resources, Paul Miller

I’ve written before about the importance of events that move us past introspection and academic debate, and bring the real benefits of semantic technologies to a wider business audience. As the Semantic Web Gang discussed recently, North America has had the excellent Semantic Technology Conference for several years, and this year gained Linked Data Planet (now transmogrified to become Web 3.0). For those who couldn’t attend, Eric Franzon offers an organiser’s view of this year’s Semantic Technology Conference in the latest issue of Nodalities Magazine… and looks forward to 2009.

Europe has long been the powerhouse of Semantic Web research, with centres of global excellence such as DERI, Southampton, the Open University’s Knowledge Media Institute, Karlsruhe, and others; research funding from the bottomless coffers of the European Commission; and an early recognition from European companies such as BT, Vodafone and (my employer) Talis that R&D investment would reap dividends in this area.

Europe has been less good, though, at transferring some of this excellence from the lab to the office, with a rather insular community of researchers tending to talk to one another at events such as the annual European Semantic Web Conference rather than turning to the real markets where their innovations might usefully be scaled and monetised.

About to run for the second year, the European Semantic Technology Conference is attempting to change that with an event to be held in Vienna, Austria, from 24-26 September.

Conference chair John Davies (yes, the same John Davis from the previous post…) commented;

“After several years researching and developing the required standards (e.g. XML, RDF and OWL), semantic technology is increasingly finding its way out of research labs and into real world applications. Large vendors such as Yahoo! and Oracle, along with a whole host of VC-funded start-ups including Ontoprise, Hakia, Ontotext, Twine and many more are incorporating semantic technology in the their products and services. In addition, significant end-user organisations such as Thomson-Reuters and Astra-Zeneca are reporting the benefits of deploying the technology in business applications. ESTC aims to make the experience and learning of such organisations available to others, to explain the business benefits and to accelerate the uptake of this important new technology.”

He continued,

“Semantic technology has the potential to completely change the way enterprises work. There is a significant amount of research and development underway in Europe, but more European businesses should seize the opportunity and apply it to solve real life problems. We want the conference to encourage this and play a major role in setting the industry’s agenda for 2009 and beyond.”

The usual suspects will doubtless attend, despite a flurry of ’semantic’ conferences in Europe this year. The trick will be to attract new audiences and carry those conversations out of the echo-chamber and into the mainstream. Having Vienna as a venue will, doubtless, help.

August 15th, 2008

Visualising the Semantic Web with Parallax

Posted by Paul Miller @ 8:00 am

Categories: Commercialisation, Open Data, Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: July, Semantic Web, Internet, Paul Miller

July’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang discussed some of the work being done to ensure that data made addressable by the Semantic Web is actually usable via intelligible interfaces.

Subsequently, David Huynh released a video showing ‘a novel browsing interface‘ designed to sit on top of the growing body of content stored inside the Freebase offering from Semantic Web startup Metaweb.

Worth a look.

July 29th, 2008

Venturing into Semantic Technologies ?

Posted by Paul Miller @ 7:41 am

Categories: Commercialisation, Investment, Podcasts, Semantic Web, Semantic Web Gang

Tags: Infrastructure, Venture Capital, Semantic Web, Investment, Corporate Communications, Financial Accounting, Finance, Financing Startups, Internet, Marketing

One of the most interesting sessions at the consistently engaging Semantic Technology conference in San Jose back in May was the ‘Semantic Venture Panel: Investor Opportunities and Pitfalls.’

Alex Iskold did a good job of capturing the essence of the session for ReadWriteWeb and I recommend a read of his post, which freed me from having to write up the detail of this excellent discussion. We also talked about this event (and Linked Data Planet) in June’s episode of the Semantic Web Gang, and Cambridge University’s Nico Adams did a sterling job of maintaining a video diary throughout the event (although unfortunately he doesn’t appear to have been in the venture capital session).

As Alex notes, the panel comprised Vulcan Capital’s Steve Hall, Intel Capital’s Eghosa Omoigui and Palomar Ventures‘ Amanda Reed. Each brought a different perspective to the conversation, determined by their own experiences and the type and stage of investment most commonly made by their fund.

So why return to a conference held back in May now, at the end of July? A piece by Stacey Higginbotham, syndicated to BusinessWeek from GigaOm this week, reminded me of comments made during the panel, and raised some questions that I thought were interesting enough to share. In VCs Have Their Heads in the Clouds, Higginbotham asserts that;

“the game-changing potential of [Cloud Computing] services has venture firms sitting up and taking notice. Indeed, after spending the past few years pouring money into Facebook applications and me-too social networks, venture firms are starting to invest in infrastructure again, with both hardware and software plays tied to the cloud.”

Whilst recognising (as Talis CEO, Dave Errington, was quick to remind me when discussing this internally) that there is not one received wisdom in the venture market, there remains a clear disconnect between the thrust of Higginbotham’s piece and some of the panel’s messages.

Responding to my question about finding the interesting market opportunities for deploying semantic technologies, for example, Palomar’s Amanda Reed suggested (and I’m paraphrasing, as I try to decipher my handwriting) that;

“lots of companies are filling a space just now that’s essentially about routing around the hole left by the Semantic Web not being here yet.”

And when Alex Iskold (doubtless wearing his AdaptiveBlue hat) asked about the amount of capital required by consumer-facing applications, Amanda was quick to identify the role played by Cloud services such as Amazon’s in lowering those initial costs. Eghosa followed this, illustrating the dramatic cost savings to be found by outsourcing from North America to the talent pools of Eastern Europe (where costs can apparently be 10-15% of those in the Valley).

Each of the panellists, in different ways, appeared to suggest that they were not keen to invest in underlying infrastructure; the ‘context’ to most organisations’ ‘core,’ to paraphrase Geoffrey Moore. Yet they recognised the increased cost of financing companies that had to reinvent wheels and ‘route around’ infrastructural gaps, and welcomed the cost savings of utilising existing Cloud infrastructure built at others’ expense.

There is clearly a disconnect here, despite the points raised in the BusinessWeek piece. I am not, for a moment, suggesting that these investors are ‘wrong’. Rather, I’m wondering if the system itself makes it difficult - or even impossible - to finance underlying infrastructure of this sort by traditional venture-backed means?

So many of the previous utility infrastructures were begun with public funds and Government mandate. Even when telecoms, railways and the like were privatised, favourable contracts, first mover advantage, and inertia gave them ready access to steady funds and existing customers to fund programmes of modernisation and reinvention.

As we move beyond the previous infrastructure of fibre, routers, switches and servers to a new infrastructure of facilitating compute utilities, how do we fund these… and how do we secure sufficiently large markets to make the initial investment defensible whilst ensuring the survival of competition and choice?