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<title>Semantic Web Advanced Development for Europe
(SWAD-Europe)</title>
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<div id="leftcontent" valign="top">
<div align="center" valign="top">
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe">
<img alt="SWAD-Europe"
src="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/images/swade100.gif"
height="75" border="0" /></a>
<a href="http://www.cordis.lu/ist/">
<img src="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/images/istlogo-thumb.gif"
alt="EU IST logo" height="75" border="0" /></a>
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<div id="mainMenu">
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<li class="nonexpandingmenubar">
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/" id="introMenu"
name="introMenu">Introduction</a>
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<li class="menubar">
<a id="demosMenuActuator" class="actuator" accesskey="d"
name="demosMenuActuator">Demonstrators</a>
<ul id="demosMenu" class="menu">
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-blog.html">
Semantic Blogging</a>
</li>
<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-portal.html">
Semantic Portals</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-thes.html">
Thesaurus Browser</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/sem-large.html">
Scale Demonstrator</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/gs.html">Getting
Started</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/tools/">Tools</a>
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<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/digital-libraries.html">
Digital Libraries</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/business-integration.html">
Business Integration</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/images.html">
Image Description</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/community/">
Community Building</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/history.html">
Project History</a>
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<li>
<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/future.html">
Future Directions</a>
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Life Science</a>
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Librarian</a>
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Coder</a>
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Business Integration</a>
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Heritage</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/intro.html">
Reports</a>
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Presentations</a>
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<a href="http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/contact.html"
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<div id="rightcontent">
<h1>Themes: Future Directions</h1>
<h2>What difference did SWAD-Europe make?</h2>
<p>As always with such projects, some areas proved more rewarding
than others, and the emphasis of the project evolved in response to
successes and opportunities. A significant achievement of the
project has been in the area of outreach and community-building.
The SKOS work [SKOS] has helped to re-engage the digital library /
thesaurus community. The ten workshops held as part of the project
have attracted diverse participants from multiple countries and
specialities, and from the research, Open Source and business
communities. Other successful work in the project has included
software development, in particular the leading opensource C
implementation of RDF in Redland/Raptor; and well-crafted and
appealing demonstrators in the areas of Semantic Blogging and
Semantic Portals, showing that Semantic Web applications can be
simple, practical and easy. The pragmatic 'walk before we run'
focus of the project was appreciated both by Semantic Web sceptics
and by enthusiasts. Project members have also made substantial
contributions to the editing and chairing of the RDF Core
standards, and later, helped to establish 'Semantic Web phase two'
groups at W3C: the Data Access working group and the Semantic Web
Best Practices and Deployment working group.</p>
<p>The overarching aim of the project was to provide, through all
appropriate means, a body of answers to questions that had
previously gone unanswered, and to foster grassroots communities
within which such concerns are addressed. Amongst its many themes,
SWAD-Europe provided detailed answers to developer questions about
RDF query and storage (analysis of scalability issues; query
languages; APIs), and human-oriented classification (SKOS for
thesauri, bookmark sharing etc.; semantic blogging). The project's
final workshop was on the theme of FOAF, Social Networking and the
Semantic Web, and illustrated some of the strengths of the project,
combining presentations from academic, commercial and opensource
perspectives with active collaborative work on tools and
applications.</p>
<p>One lesson from the project is that it is both important and
rewarding to provide an environment where members of the larger
community that surrounds W3C can interact and collaboratively
explore the practical issues around Web technology. The formal work
of the W3C is based on small, highly focussed Working Groups where
individuals commit a lot of time to creating new Web standards.
SWAD-Europe's primary contribution was to help create a supportive
background environment for such work, by allowing a much larger
number of geographically-dispersed individuals to participate
(through email, IRC, workshops and the Web) in the Semantic Web
initiative. The project was, in the Semantic Web scene, unique in
its emphasis of the practical and Web aspects of "Semantic Web" for
a Web developer audience. The support that SWAD-Europe provided to
the RDF and Semantic Web Interest Group was an important
exploratory step towards a model for wider participation in Web
standardisation work, showing that W3C's successful Working
Group-led approach can be complimented by a broader participation
model which allows individual researchers and implementors to make
real contributions to the deployment of existing standards and to
the creation of new ones. The challenge for the future is to work
towards a Web in which all European research efforts contribute to
the communities which underpin the evolution of Web standards.</p>
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