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<h1>Themes: Community Building</h1>
<p>The <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/plan/workplan.html">SWAD-Europe
workplan</a> describes the structure of the overall project. This
page provides the current state of the Semantic Web community
building work which principally falls under the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/plan/workpackages/live/esw-wp-7.html">
workpackage 3</a>. This area of the SWAD-Europe project encompasses
several different strands, and includes ten developer workshops
held by the project; online presence and scheduled IRC discussions;
tshirt and postcard distribution. The work has been focussed around
the Semantic Web Interest Group at W3C, which is chaired by Dan
Brickley, also the Director of SWAD-Europe.</p>
<p>The aim of this section of SWAD-Europe has been:</p>
<ul>
<li>To disseminate information about the project, its objectives,
the approaches and results</li>
<li>To facilitate collaboration and information exchange between
relevant Semantic Web communities</li>
<li>To promote, where applicable, the use of tools resulting
technologies and applications resulting from the project amongst
the target groups: content creators, the academic and research
community, developers and industry.</li>
<li>To create two-way communication channels with stakeholders,
academic communities and industry for disseminating the project
deliverables and conclusions within the wider Semantic Web
context.</li>
<li>To ensure that the products of the project live on in a
commercial context, in the research community and in the Open
Source community</li>
</ul>
<p>Our target groups are:</p>
<ul>
<li>Internet, Web and Open Source developer communities</li>
<li>Academic and Research Community</li>
<li>Content and Tool Producers</li>
<li>Industry and Commerce</li>
</ul>
<p>More detailed discussion of SWAD-Europe's dissemination aims and
target groups may be found in the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dissemination_use_plan/">Dissemination
and use plan</a> and in the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dissemination_plan_2/">Reassessment
of target audiences (additional requested deliverable)</a>.</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>
<h2>Talks</h2>
<p>See the <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/showcase/presentations.html">SWAD-Europe
talks page</a>.</p>
<h2>Workshops</h2>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/initial_workshop_report/">
Dublin Core and RDF</a> Florence, Italy, 16-17 October 2002
(D3.4)</h4>
<p>This workshop was divided into two parts. The first was a short
general introduction to the project, its goals and methodology. The
second part consisted of a specific technical developers workshop,
focusing on the issues of combining free text searching and
metadata-based discovery. The major outcome was gathering, and
where possible answering, frequently asked questions about best
practices for using RDF.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_1/">EARL
/ Image Annotation</a> Bristol, UK, 24-26 June 2002 (D3.6)</h4>
<p>This workshop brought together developers and users who were in
many cases working simultaneously on two areas: the EARL vocabulary
for recording evaluations of conformance; and annotation of images.
The workshop was co-hosted by the W3C's Evaluation and Repair Tools
Working Group, who are developing EARL, and held in Bristol over
the three days 24, 25 and 26 June 2002. The first two days were
devoted to the topic of EARL, and the final day to the topic of
image annotation. Participants were mostly from Europe, with some
participation from Australia and remote participation from the
USA.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_2/">Semantic
Web Calendaring</a> Bristol, UK, 9 Octiber 2004 (D3.7)</h4>
<p>The aims of this workshops were firstly and principally to
present arguments and usecases why an RDF version of the standard
would be more useful than the iCalendar format (which is presented
in a text based format called 'mime-directory' (RFC 2425)). Many
usecases were presented, all focusing on the need to combine
event-based information with other sorts of information - for
example about people, documents and places. A second aim was to
consider how we might decide on a single format for RDF calendaring
information. An interesting proposal was put forward by Dan
Connolly: to take the RDF calendar vocabularies people were
actually using and use them to create a schema. This work has
contiuned through the last two years. Thirdly, the workshop aimed
to bring together developers, and enable them to demonstrate
applications that they had been using or creating. Software
presentations included demonstrations of Apple's iCal, Mozilla
Calendar, Retsina Calendar Agent, and demonstrations of calendar
tools in Javascript, Perl, Python and Java.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_3/">Geographic
Information Management</a> Virtual workshop, 16, 30 April, 28 May
2003 (D3.9)</h4>
<p>The third SWAD-Europe workshop was held as a series of virtual
sessions, discussing the use of geographic information in the
Semantic Web. It brought together developers from a variety of
organisations and from the United States and Japan as well as
Denmark, France, Italy, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom
including individuals who would not have been able to participate
in a more traditional physical workshop. It led to a number of
development projects, brought existing developers in contact, and
led to the creation or use of ongoing fora (a Wiki page and a
mailing list) for discussion of the topic.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_4/">Semantic
Web Storage and Retrieval</a> Amsterdam, Netherlands, 15-16
November 2004 (D3.11)</h4>
<p>This workshop aimed to discuss:</p>
<ul>
<li>Implementation techniques and problems met</li>
<li>Storage models and database schemas</li>
<li>Aggregation and tracking provenance</li>
<li>Using RDBMSes for semantic web storage</li>
<li>Discussion of useful test data and queries for
comparisons.</li>
<li>Implementing RDF datatypes, entailment (from RDF
Semantics)</li>
</ul>
<p>The workshop participants were mostly technical developers and
researchers from a variety of organisations mostly in industry and
education from Greece, UK, Slovenija, The Netherlands and Italy in
Europe and from the United States. Most of the participants had
practical experience in building and deploying semantic web
software and applications. The developers of the two main RDF Java
APIs were present, along with the authors of significant APIs in
perl, C, python and prolog (all of these were primarily created in
Europe). The two main themes of the workshop were storing semantic
web data and retrieving it and the agenda was structured to cover
different aspects of both of those items. Other important topics
also emerged such as query languages and network access, both
related to retrieval and issues with implementing OWL and RDF
Schema.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_5/Overview.html">
Image Description and Annotation</a> Madrid, Spain, 7-8 June 2004
(D3.12)</h4>
<p>The image annotation workshop had the following outcomes:</p>
<ul>
<li>A survey of some existing annotation systems based on Semantic
Web technology, with particular reference to the state of
development since the early SWAD-E workshop on this topic held in
Bristol, June 2002.</li>
<li>Development of existing image annotation work to cover
multimedia</li>
<li>Further development of tools for image annotation.</li>
<li>Ongoing discussion of uses for annotated images, and of
techniques and tools</li>
<li>Recognition of some important areas for future work</li>
<li>Creation of a new W3C-hosted mailing list to discuss this
particular topic.</li>
</ul>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4>Introduction to the Semantic Web (<a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_6/Overview.es.html">
Spanish</a>, <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_6/Overview.en.html">
English</a>) Marid, Spain, 13 June 2004 (D3.13)</h4>
<p>This workshop brought together Spanish speakers interested in
developing Semantic Web technologies. It was held entirely in
Spanish. The workshop was hosted by LaRed.es, with additional
support from Barrapunto.com. Attendees came from all over Spain,
from the four target communities (open-source and commercial
developers, academia and the government sector). In addition the
discussion was noted live on IRC, so further participation from
Spain and Argentina was made possible. The workshop had the
following outcomes:</p>
<ul>
<li>Development of a tutorial for the cwm RDF parser in
Spanish</li>
<li>Introducing a range of Spanish developers to the Semantic
Web</li>
<li>Demonstrating some work that has been done in Spanish</li>
<li>Inspiring a further workshop on the same topic in South
America</li>
<li>Motivating the use of the Spanish language developers list
Web-Semantica-Ayuda</li>
</ul>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_7/Overview.html">
Metadata in a multilingual world</a> Copenhagen, Denmark, 15-16
July 2004 (D3.14)</h4>
<p>This workshop brought together developers and users working on
the multilingual application of metadata and the semantic web. It
discussed the problems and issues invovled in making the Web truly
world wide, and the impact of this and the development of a more
semantically rich web on each other. Some tools were presented,
some areas of success, and many areas requiring significant further
work were identified. Work on glossary tools was directly advanced
in preparation for and as a result of this workshop. The workshop
was jointly organised with CEN-ISSS MMI-DC ensuring rapid flow of
information to other relevant European organisations.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4>Semantic Web in Latin America (<a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_8/Overview.es.html">
Spanish</a>, <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_8/Overview.en.html">
English</a>), Buenos Aires, Argentina 21-22 August 2004 (additional
deliverable)</h4>
<p>This workshop brought together Spanish speakers (the great
majority from Latin America, but also from Spain, and the USA)
interested in developing Semantic Web technologies. It was held
entirely in Spanish. The workshop was hosted by the Departamento de
Diseo de Sistemas of the Universidad Argentina John F. Kennedy (in
Spanish), in Buenos Aires. Attendees came from the four target
communities with about half being from academia, and the rest
divided between open-source and commercial developers and the
government sector). In addition the discussion was noted live on
IRC, so further participation of a more global character was made
possible.</p>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/dev_workshop_report_9/">Geospatial
information</a>, Budapest, 4-5 October 2004 (additional
deliverable)</h4>
<p><i>Last updated:</i></p>
<h4><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/reports/final_workshop_report/">Final
workshop: Friend of a Friend, Social Networking and the Semantic
Web</a>, Galway, 1-2 September 2004 (D3.16)</h4>
<p>Social networking is a recent topic gaining much interest and
publicity. Social networking sites are community sites where users
can maintain an online network of friends or associates for social
or business purposes: whether looking for a job, reconnecting with
old friends, moving to a new area, or dating. Most of these sites
are based on a centralised architecture: all users' descriptions
are stored in one big database. There is, however, growing user and
business interest in portability between such sites, and for
sophisticated "single sign-on" mechanisms that reduce the need for
data re-entry, while allowing users to manifest different aspects
of themselves in different contexts. FOAF-based import/export
allows such sites to address user demand for control of "their"
data; however, many deployment, privacy, authentication and
engineering issues have not yet been fully explored. To what extent
do mechanisms such as FOAF change the environment they attempt to
describe? How can the visibility of personal data be restricted to
certain audiences? How can businesses make money when their
customers can migrate to new services with increased ease. This
workshop on FOAF, social networking and the Semantic Web provides a
first chance to discuss the unusual combination of perspectives -
academic and scientific, engineering, social, legal and business -
drawn together by these trends. The workshop aims to bring together
for the first time researchers interested in the effects, analysis
and application of social networks on the (Semantic) Web as well as
practitioners building applications and infrastructure. The
workshop will also try to give a snapshot of current developments,
as well as setting a roadmap for the future of both FOAF and social
networking - especially in the context of the Semantic Web.</p>
<p><a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/events/foaf-galway/">main
site</a>, <a href=
"http://www.w3.org/2001/sw/Europe/events/foaf-galway/papers/">Papers</a>,
<a href="http://rdfweb.org/topic/FoafGalway">wiki pages</a>.</p>
<p><i>Last updated: 2004-09-30</i></p>
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