Please join us for Part 1 of a 3 part Webinar titled Discover the Semantic Web.

Date : Thursday, February 12, 2009
Times: 10:00 a.m.EST/ 7amPST OR 2:00 p.m. EST / 11am PST
Duration: 60 minutes

This webinar will focus on how organizations consume, digest, and share news and information. What we are seeing in the corporate space is that the Semantic Web is no longer 'ahead of its time' and therefore it has the potential to rapidly change how your organization manages, delivers, consumes, shares and produces content.

During Part I of this series you can learn how Semantic Web Technologies enable you to:

* Re-use valuable information to save costs in today's budget-cutting environment
* Facilitate easier collaboration and sharing of critical information across your business
* Increase search relevancy and surface the most valuable information needed to remain competitive

Christine Connors and myself will be conducting this free webinar and we welcome everyone who is interested in the subject to join us.

Who are we?

Christine Connors is the global director, semantic technology solutions for the Enterprise Media Group at Dow Jones and Company. In this position, she manages a worldwide team that is responsible for the development of taxonomies and metadata that are used to add value to Dow Jones news and financial information products, and a US-based team of software developers who support the Synaptica® software application. She also supports Dow Jones consulting practices, based in the Americas, Europe and Asia, which deliver end-to-end information access solutions based on taxonomy, metadata and semantic technologies.
You can learn more about Christine Connors or you can read some of her other blog posts on Synaptica Central .

I am the business development manager responsible for Dow Jones Taxonomy Services and Synaptica here at Dow Jones. I work with both small and large companies to deploy information strategies, including helping customers develop and manage their controlled vocabularies- from developing strategies and sharing best practices to doing custom taxonomy development.

More about me here or you can read some of my other blog posts on Synaptica Central or on my personal blog .

[note:this post was originally posted on my personal blog ]

Very similar to the possible benefits of the Semantic Web in what i like to call the research 'finding' environment in corporate enterprises and perhaps one of the most illustrative examples of the value of the Semantic Web i have seen in a while, this post titled Semantic Web in Education by Jason Ohler a professor of Educational Technology and Distance Learning at the University of Alaska paints a illustrative picture of some of the values end-users/consumers can derive from the Semantic Web. Flip it from an education research environment that Olhler is addressing to an enterprise finding environment and you have an interesting use case for why enterprises should look closely at the promise of the semantic web.

"One vision of a well-developed semantic web includes a search feature that would return a multimedia report rather than a list of hits. The report would draw from many sources, including websites, articles from scientific repositories, chapters in textbooks, blog dialogue, speeches posted on YouTube, information stored on cell phones, gaming scenarios played out in virtual realities-anything appropriate that is accessible by the rules of Web 3.0. The report would consist of short sections that coalesce around knowledge areas that emerged naturally from your research, with keywords identified and listed conveniently off to one side as links.

The information in the report would be compared, contrasted, and collated in a basic way, presenting points of agreement and disagreement, and perhaps associating these with political positions or contrasting research. Because the web knows something about you, it also alerts you to local lectures on related topics, books you might want to read, TV programs available through your cable service, blog discussions you might find relevant, and even local groups you can contact that are also focused on this issue. Unlike a standard report, what you receive changes as the available information changes, and you might have wiki-like access to add to or edit it. And because you told your agent that this topic is a high priority, your cell phone will beep when a significant development occurs. After all, the semantic web will be highly inclusive, providing a common language for many kinds of media and technologies, including cell phones. The net result, ideally, is that you spend less time searching and sifting and more time absorbing, thinking, and participating."

Starting in February, Christine Connors and I will be conducting a three part Webinar titled 'Discover the Semantic Web' that will address some of these enterprise specific opportunities to leverage the Semantic Web.

Image|Flickr|AlexBarros

fumsi is a digital and print publication that provides resources and tools for people who "find, use, manage & share information" . They are part of the FreePint family of resources for professionals in the Information Management field. If you watch or subscribe to the Synaptica Central RSS feeds (right menu) you probably saw the recent pointer to the rich write-ups by James Kelway also published on fumsi on Creating User Centred Taxonomies. Jame's personal Blog User Pathways is also another must read blog if you want to learn about information management from a information architecture, interaction design, and user experience perspective which i believe is extremely important to do in today's user driven information experiences.

This Sunday morning's reading lead me to catching up on my multiple feeds and one that caught my attention was this article in fumsi by Silver Oliver who has a background in Library Science and is currently an Information Architect at the BBC titled How the Semantic Web Will Change Information Management: Three Predictions

Prediction number 1: a move from the pull to the push search paradigm, or more ‘context-aware’ applications

Today's information consumption, still starts mostly with information seeking and retrieval- processes that in today's fast moving, overloaded information companies and cost saving conscience enterprises are simply not sustainable in order to be competitive. If you happened to be a defrag this year and listened to my presentation on Pulling the Threads on User Data you heard me speaking about the need for context aware applications and standards to make data portable- ultimately leading to one of Silver's first predications that "The Semantic Web could assist in this area, by publishing data in a way that smart applications can take advantage of and so improve smart context aware recommendations. The right thing, at the right place and at the right time".

Prediction number 2: the battle of the identifiers or the age of pointing at things

Recently here on Synaptica Central, Christine Connors- Director of Semantic Technologies at Dow Jones, published a post that touched on this subject titled "Taxonomies are a Commodity " in which she ended her post with the following:
"I actually like the fact that taxonomies have become commoditized. Why? Competition drives improvement - in quality, in focus, in security and in usability. These are areas that the semantic web community needs to focus on - in my experience, security and usability need attention NOW. Good fences make good neighbors, and when we've got good fences, we can make more links and learn to trust. Icing on the cake!"

Prediction number 3: the changing role of the information professional

Silver ends this prediction with the following statement: "The skills of information professionals will be essential in populating and managing the Web of data and, to make this happen, we must make the shift from thinking repository-scale to thinking Web-scale."
Back in January 2008, i wrote a post over on my personal blog titled " Sexy Hot Trends for 2008 and Beyond- Librarians" where i highlighted some of the opportunities I saw for people with library science degrees (and no you don't need to be female and wear purple tights!- i just love that Super Librarian image!). So i obviously agree with Silver's prediction- the skill sets and experiences that information professionals can bring to the Semantic Web can be huge and I certainly hope that the Semantic Web community continues to cross-populate even more with the InfoPro communities- here at Dow Jones we are committed to doing our part to make sure that happens. Working with our InfoPro Alliance Group (headed by Anne Caputo the new SLA president ) we are looking to provide some Webinars in the new year to address Semantic Web issues that need to be addressed in Enterprise- by Information Professionals as well as other parts of the organization- so watch this space for more info as we finalize those sessions!

Image|Flickr|Leo Reynolds

Super Librarian Image above is from from the NJ State Library which includes the great Super Librarian Comic Book . You can also buy Super Librarian gear if you are so inclined.

The Synaptica team is in Denver this week doing strategic planning, or as I say, scheming ! ;) There are a great number of really interesting problems in information management, and it's fun and rewarding to brainstorm ways of solving them. We're not the only ones scheming and it's great to see the market itself growing.

David Provost this week published a Global Review of the Industry and Leading Vendors in the Semantic Web space titled On The Cusp: A Global Review of the Semantic Web Industry in which Synaptica from Dow Jones and Dow Jones Client Solutions were highlighted. Dow Jones is in a unique position as a software vendor, consulting services provider and deployer of semantic solutions, which made for a great conversation - I highly recommend you read the report. (Not just because I was involved!)

Paul Miller has posted on his ZDNet blog a review of the report New report places Semantic Web ‘On the Cusp’ of something big. Paul adds some great commentary to his summary of the report, should you not be able to get through David's entire document at once.

Happy Reading!

Synaptica and Dow Jones Taxonomy Services Video Collection: Summary: Here you will find videos that have been either produced by Dow Jones or feature a Dow Jones employee or customer discussing the topic of the development, management and governance of controlled vocabularies. This includes customer case studies, conference presentations and panel discussions and product demonstrations.

November 2008 Synaptica: SharePoint Integration In November we announced our new SharePoint Integration . This video takes you through a short demo of the SharePoint Integration: http://blip.tv/file/1475940

September 2008 Synaptica Case Study: Proquest: Finding a Common Language: Bringing Complex and Disparate Vocabularies Paula R McCoy, Manager, Taxonomy Development, ProQuest Daniela Barbosa, Synaptica Business Development Manager, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones & Company This case study addresses the challenges ProQuest faced in managing multilingual controlled vocabularies using multiple Word documents and authority files maintained in an Oracle database. Speakers describe how implementing a thesaurus management tool helped ProQuest simplify and standardize its business semantic management to create a common language and connect disparate information assets as well as handling large and varied vocabularies and authority files, linking new and existing editorial systems and enabling hierarchical views, and automating thesaurus management tasks.This session was sponsored by Dow Jones Synaptica. http://blip.tv/file/1306890

September 2008 Centralized Taxonomy Management for Enterprise Information Systems Daniela Barbosa, Synaptica Business Development Manager, Dow Jones Client Solutions, Dow Jones & Company Paula R McCoy, Manager, Taxonomy Development, ProQuest Now that you have built your taxonomies, you need to manage and maintain them in a centralized environment that can be leveraged by all of your enterprise applications including search tools, portals, and CMS/DMS systems. This session will review some best practices in centralized taxonomy management and go through the implementation of a thesaurus management tool at ProQuest, which enabled them to create a common language to connect disparate information assets using large and varied vocabularies and authority files linked to new and existing editorial systems. This session was sponsored by Dow Jones Synaptica. http://blip.tv/file/1307166

March 2008: iKMS: Marti Heyman on ROI Analysis for Taxonomy Programs Video by: Patrick Lambe www.greenchameleon.com In this talk for the Information and Knowledge Management Society of Singapore (www.ikms.org) on 13 March 2008, Marti Heyman Director of Taxonomy Services at Dow Jones, discusses the problems associated with ROI for taxonomy programs, and the key steps in ROI analysis. In this first part she discusses the issues around ROI. This session was sponsored by Dow Jones Synaptica. Part 1 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/917758/ Part 2 of 3 : http://blip.tv/file/917962/ Part 3 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/917979/

March 2008: iKMS: Christine Connors on User Driven Taxonomies Video by: Patrick Lambe www.greenchameleon.com In this talk for the Information and Knowledge Management Society of Singapore (www.ikms.org) on March 13 2008 Christine Connors Director of Semantic Technologies at Dow Jones and Business Champion of Synaptica, explains the rationale for a hybrid approach to taxonomy development, harnessing user inputs and activity as well as the traditional controlled approach, giving examples from her pioneering work at Raytheon. This talk was sponsored by Dow Jones Synaptica. In the first part, Christine gives a general rationale for a more user driven approach. Part 1 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/917603/ Part 2 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/917629/ Part 3 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/917691/

November 2007: Synaptica Case Study Abbott: From Taxonomy to Ontology: Laying the GroundWork for the Semantic Web Presented by Jennifer Borrell, Associate Information Scientist at Abbott Laboratories Jennifer takes us through how Abbott Laboratories uses Synaptica to build and maintain their Ontologies. Presents a high level overview of how Abbott views ontologies and how they are laying the Groundwork to Improve User Productivity. Sponsored by Dow Jones Client Solutions. http://blip.tv/file/482545

August 2007: Using Tools to Manage Taxonomies Video by: Patrick Lambe www.greenchameleon.com Dave Clarke, CEO of Synaptica  (Synaptica/Synapse co-founder) In this video Dave Clarke describes how tools can be used to manage taxonomies, for an iKMS evening talk on 30 August 2007. In part one Dave describes how you can use tools to manage the collaboration required in building and maintaining taxonomies. In part two Dave describes how you can use tools to support the taxonomy creation process and in part three Dave describes how taxonomy tools can link different enterprise applications, including legacy taxonomies. Part 1 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/375135/ Part 2 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/375156/ Part 3 of 3: http://blip.tv/file/375196/