Synaptica is mentioned in a couple of spots in Jeffery Pollock's "Semantic Web for Dummies" (2009). We are excited to see this and congratulate Mr. Pollock on a great overview of the Semantic Web. Pick up your copy today here!

Over 1,300 people registered for Part 1 of the Semantic Web Webinar Series: Discover the Semantic Web and both Christine Connors and myself were delighted with the attendance and the feedback we received!

Like Christine explained during our introduction, as attendee registrations were coming through we regularly reviewed the list, wanting to make sure that we were writing for our actual audience. What we found were strong numbers in three types of business role in particular – and happily for us, the three categories we most wanted to engage as part of this series as described below.

To further validate the attendees and get a feeling for where our enterprise customers are, during the webinar the first poll that we conducted was a simple one to record where attendees were in regards to their experience with semantic web. The following results are the aggregate of the two sessions:

When you think about Semantic Web, what is the first thought that pops into your head?
61.2 % > I am new to the Semantic Web and Interested in Learning More
26.4% > I am currently knowledgeable on the Semantic Web and would like to expand this knowledge
12.4% > I am currently involved in Semantics-related project in my company

Being that part one of the series was titled DIscover, the target level of expertise was perfect!

Looking through the final list of registered attendees, I took their titles and made the following Wordle to provide a visualization of the titles of the attendees. The word 'Manager' certainly appeared a lot (many times with additional information like "Manager of Information Center") as well as Director hence the larger presence of those terms, but here is what it looks like:

The three categories we most wanted to engage as part of this series were the following categories and the majority of the attendees could be bucketed into them:

Library and Information Science Professionals
We had a good number of folks joining with library and information science backgrounds. Christine and I share that background, and Dow Jones is a great supporter of info pros . We believe that Librarians have a critical role to play in the future of the semantic web. The ability to provide access to comprehensive, annotated, carefully curated data in the highly collaborative environment that is the web has never been more vital. We can’t think of a profession more suited to the task. Nor can we think of anyone in our semweb social network who doesn’t love librarians!

Information Architects
Next had information architects – user experience designers, interaction designers, taxonomists – Big IA, Little IA – however you choose to define them people who are passionate about delivering easy to use interfaces between humans and information. And the bottom line? WE NEED YOU! The semantic web presents a new paradigm for data and tools. We need creative, practical people to think about new patterns for interacting with data on the web.

Business Champions
Finally, we had the business champions – executives, analysts, program managers. You may have heard that the semantic web is a solution in search of a problem. And as we will be covering in this Series of webinars, the semantic web is a potential solution for existing problems. We’ve seen this shift before: we didn’t need email – we had fax machines to move documents quickly while maintaining a paper trail. But we are willing to bet that you wouldn’t like it if they took away your inbox (well, permanently anyway!). Business Champions are doing their organizations a disservice if they simply dismiss a semantic solution. As we discussed in the webinar, put in in the mix of options to consider; occasionally it won’t yet work, sometimes it will be a stretch, but often it will be a perfect fit.

Missed Part 1: Discover? The Slide deck is embedded below and the recorded Webinar is also available on demand .

What's next?

We are preparing for Part II [registration info coming soon]-

Send us your requirements! Your use cases! Your challenges! We’re ready and waiting!

All Posts related to this 3 part series are available under the Semantic Web Webinar Series Topic of Interest.

A very interesting Flickr image came across my desktop this morning. It's a cool visual posted by Steve Jurvetson showing many of the different parts of the semantic web. I missed it the first time around, but the tiny copyright statement at the bottom of the original size indicates Tim Berners-Lee as the IP holder. Should be especially interesting to Tolkien fans!

If you're interested in learning more about the semantic web, this is an interesting place to start - especially if you are a visual thinker. Do some searching on the topics mapped out here - Vannevar Bush, Logic (First and Second order logic), protocols and markup languages, RDF, OWL, GRDDL - whatever strikes your fancy. Let me know what you think!

Map to the Semantic Web on Flickr

This post is one day late since yesterday was Valentines Day- but nonetheless an entertaining one that i had to share because not only is it clever, i think it also has a lot of truths in it that outline some of the current challenges that the Semantic Web community is working with. Via Scott Brinker's "Chief Marketing Technologist Blog, Top 10 reasons the semantic web is a lot like love":

10. It means different things to different people.

9. Those in it can bore everyone else to death talking about it.

8. Cynics insist there's no such thing.

7. It's straightforward in theory, messy in practice.

6. A few misinterpreted words can really screw things up.

5. You can invest a lot and not get any return.

4. Some people claim it, but don't really have it.

3. Some people have it, but don't want to disclose it.

2. The more people involved, the more complicated it gets.

1. When it works, beautiful relationships are established.

Looks like Brinker will be giving a talk on semantic marketing and moderating a roundtable on semantic advertising at the 2009 Semantic Technology Conference, on June 14-18 in San Jose- so we look forward to meeting him there!

As promised during the webinar, the correct link for the museum! You can search and browse a portion of the collection held in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney, Australia. Browse around! Search, read, zoom - add tags! This is a site at which to have fun, learn new things, spark new thoughts.

The team at the museum have made great use of readily available technologies and user generated content to augment the records and formal taxonomies that existed at the museum. Sites such as Flickr, tools such as OpenSearch, and licensing and use models from Creative Commons are combined to provide access to the data by as wide a variety of users as possible - users who become potential visitors; potential patrons. The design and interaction models are simple and elegant; the search and browse mechanisms are powerful; the images and image manipulation tools allow you to see great detail and experience the pieces wonderfully from afar.

If you are so inclined, I highly recommend you read through the "About" tab, and follow the links from there to the papers and blogs about how they've built the site. It's an interesting read, and a great way to be inspired - yet again - by those serving in institutions that preserve and promote our global heritage.

View of Low Waterfall Over Rocks, Powerhouse Museum Collection, The Commons on Flickr