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Recordings and Slides from Semantic Technologies JumpStart 2008 - (No cost)
Download a 4-part webinar series on semantic technologies.
Call 1: What are Semantic Technologies and How are they Different?
Call 2: Practical Semantic Applications
Call 3: A Brief Survey of Semantic Technology Standards and Approaches
Call 4: Industry Direction and Approaches for Developing Your Roadmap
Call 1: What are Semantic Technologies and How are they Different?
Presenters: Sherman Monroe, CEO, Monrai Technologies and Philip Pridmore-Brown, VP Marketing and Product Services, Thetus Corporation
In this session we’ll define semantic technologies and the semantic web and discuss the history of transitioning from older models of information management to new ways of integrating data, leveraging the diversity of web resources and deriving greater value from internal and external data.
Are Semantic Technologies truly different? Or is this just another example of vendor hype? What are the short-term applications that will allow organizations to explore this space and realize a return on investment?
We’ll hear from experts in the field about these topics and others in this overview session.
Towards a High Resolution Web
Presented by Sherman Monroe
The web initiated a revolution in information sharing by removing file access barriers between PCs. While people have enjoyed the breath of growing knowledge contained in the internet, computers cannot as readily interpret or make use of. This presentation addresses some of the remaining barriers to information sharing imposed by the web from the perspective of the machine. We’ll discuss the trend toward a richer description of our world of people, places, things and events, and the relationships between them.
Topics include:
- Shortcomings of early web technologies
- The role and importance of next generation semantic approaches
- The practical effects of semantic technologies on your organization
- Areas to start for taking your organization to the next generation of web technology
Semantic Technology and the Importance of Conceptual Models
Presented by Philip Pridmore-Brown
The ability of semantic technology to describe complex systems and apply computing power to analyze them goes far beyond traditional approaches to knowledge management. Semantic technology provides standards (OWL, RDF, etc.) and structure that allow information to be described in a way that captures what it is, what it means and what it's related to—all in a machine-readable form.
At the heart of semantic technology are conceptual models that have the ability to help evaluate information to determine where it fits and how it should be treated. As more systems become interconnected both in the enterprise and across the Web and as new composite applications and services emerge, having consistent models to evaluate information fit becomes critical to accurate analysis.
In this session, we will discuss how semantic models differ from traditional metadata and taxonomy approaches. We'll also explore the fundamentals of semantic models, including the importance of concepts and relationships in defining a model's structure, the incorporation of rules to determine where concepts reside and what they mean, and the ability of models to incorporate change and allow for prediction.
Call 2: Practical Semantic Applications
Presenters: Dave McComb, President, Semantic Arts, Inc., Paul Wlodarczyk and Amber Swope
What problems can semantic technologies solve? In our second call of the series, we’ll explore examples of real world problems that can be addressed through semantic tools and approaches. We’ll avoid too much abstraction and theory and focus on areas of immediate concern to most businesses today: improved customer service, speed to market, new product development, cost reduction, customer acquisition, research and discovery, etc.
In many cases, semantic approaches are solving the same basic problems as traditional approaches to information technology. The goal of any application is to speed information flow and decision-making. However, new approaches allow for faster evolution of capabilities in response to changes in user needs and marketplace drivers.
This session will illustrate several applications where semantic approaches provide these kinds of tangible benefits.
Implementing Semantic Search
Presented by Paul Wlodarczyk and Amber Swope
Semantic search helps business people find answers to pressing questions by wading through oceans of information to find nuggets of meaningful information. In this presentation we’ll discuss how semantic search and content analysis technologies are starting to appear in the marketplace today. We’ll provide a recap of what semantic search is and what the key benefits are, then we’ll answer the following questions:
• Is semantic search a feature, an application, or enterprise system?
• How can I add semantic search to my existing work processes?
• Will I need to replace my existing content technologies?
• What will I need to do to prepare my content for semantic search?
• Is semantic search just for documents or can I search my data too?
• Can I use semantic search to find information on the internet and other public data sources?
• Are there standards to consider?
This conference call is for implementers and decision makers of all technical levels including those new to semantic technologies. We will introduce technical concepts in terms everyone can understand.
Resolving Systems Integration Problems with Semantic Technology
Presented by Dave McComb
Semantic technology can be utilized to solve many systems integration problems. In this presentation, we will discuss:
• Why metadata based integration doesn’t work.
• How an Enterprise Ontology can provide the promised “loose coupling” of an SOA.
• How to implement a semantically based referent management service.
Call 3: A Brief Survey of Semantic Technology Standards and Approaches
Presenters: Bob DuCharme, Solutions Architect, Innodata Isogen and Kendall Clark, Partner, Clark & Parsia
In our third call, we’ll explore some of the nuts and bolts of formats and standards that organizations are developing and adopting to the ‘semantic approach’. Some of these have been around for many years in such fields as publishing, government, life sciences and financial services. Others are fairly new and less widespread. In any case, standards are the backbone of integration and interoperability and as the old saw goes, ‘the nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from’. Where should you be investing time and energy? What approaches have fallen out of favor? What does the future look like for things like OWL, RDF, SKOS and all the various flavors of XML mark up?
In the standards world, there is no one size that fits all, and there is a tremendous amount of variability among implementations of even seemingly the “same” standards. We’ll briefly review various classes of metadata representations and discuss how organizations are navigating the alphabet soup of standards.
Standards and Technology for Storing Content and Metadata
Presented by Bob DuCharme
In this presentation, we'll talk about standards and technology for storing XML content, non-XML content, and the metadata associated with that content. In a production system, what's the relationship between the content and metadata? How flexible can the metadata structure be? What role can standards play in the metadata?
As we review the standards and technology landscape, we'll cover issues such as:
- Document storage vs. XML storage
- Content standards with built-in metadata slots vs. independent metadata standards
- Standards for metadata structure vs. standards for metadata values
- Standards for defining you own metadata structures and metadata values
Introduction to OWL and Ontologies for Metadata Management
Presented by Kendall Clark
In this presentation, following the discussion of XML technology for metadata, we will consider related Semantic Web technologies, focusing primarily on RDF and OWL. We will talk about the business case for automated reasoning and inference technology for applications like decision support, analysis, etc. We will focus on the role W3C standards play in these technologies, and cover issues like:
- What transition or complementary strategies allow one to include RDF
& OWL with XML projects?
- What use is an RDF Schema or OWL ontology to a taxonomy or
taxonomy-based effort?
- How can you use RDFS and OWL to define more expressive,
taxonomy-like structures?
- What ROI can you expect from this additional effort?
Call 4: Industry Direction and Approaches for Developing Your Roadmap
Presenters: Keith Hawker, Metatomix and Uche Ogbuji, Zepheira
Our final call in the series will look at the future or semantic technologies and what capabilities are on the horizon. Where does the industry expect to be in 3- 5 years? Though advances in technology adoption are notoriously difficult to predict, there are certain drivers that will almost assure some uptake of these approaches.
In that context, it is important for your organization to begin the planning process and explore opportunities to build out certain capabilities. We will outline approaches for finding opportunities in your organization for pilot projects and exploring the benefits of semantic technologies. We’ll discuss what appropriate applications look like, organizational and industry drivers, cost benefit analysis, and ways of mitigating risks for these kinds of initiatives.
This session is a must for business and technology leaders who want to ensure their organizations do not get caught short as competitors inevitably adopt these approaches to managing information.
The Final Mile Challenge: Putting Semantic Technology to Work in the Enterprise
Presented by Keith Hawker
Business Managers are frustrated that the data they require to help them make critical decisions is often scattered across many different systems and difficult to get to and understand.
Semantic Technology holds the promise of being able to address this problem by giving clear meaning to data, but is the effort worth the trouble?
This presentation, titled “The Final Mile Challenge”, explains that combining it with rules processing gives an unequivocal yes to this question. Data can be brought together from many different sources and understood in a single conceptual model, allowing rules to assess what is known and take action based on these facts. Through the use of case studies from Financial Services, Integrated Justice, Life Sciences and Manufacturing, the following key points will be made:
• Case studies will show that Semantic Technology does deliver on its promise
• Semantic Technology provides the key that unlocks the ability to bring data together
• In conjunction with a rules engine, new event-driven business applications can be developed that deliver huge productivity gains
Semantic Technology can bring the right information to the right person understood in context to help them make critical decisions.
An Enterprise Roadmap for Semantic Technology
Presented by Uche Ogbuji
Industry experts have been awakening recently to the exceptional power of the Web to integrate information systems, and how it should be applied within the enterprise. You've heard of Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise Mashups and the like. These are generally shallow attempts to translate Web concepts to traditional IT. It is important not to miss the key ingredient for successfully harnessing the power of Web architecture--semantic technology. We all know the power of the Web comes with chaos--wide-ranging workflow conventions, mallware and more. Semantic technology adapts traditional business analysis and enterprise architecture to temper the chaos without losing the power.
This session connects the prevailing industry trend towards Semantic technology to the characteristics of enterprises, giving you tools for assessing your organization's readiness, and determining the best launch points. It's a practical guide using specific case studies to help you get started using semantic technology to finally reconcile information technology with business imperatives, and to save costs and avoid failures in architecture and integration projects.
Sherman Monroe
Philip Pridmore-Brown
Thetus Corporation
Paul Wlodarczyk
Amber Swope
Dave McComb
Semantic Arts, Inc.
Bob DuCharme
Innodata Isogen
Kendall Clark
Clark & Parsia
Keith Hawker
Metatomix
Uche Ogbuji
Monrai Technologies
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