[VoCamp Discuss] first take on Vocamp Glasgow

[Paola Di Maio]

a quick take before I catch a train
P

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> Vocamp Glasgow 14-15 was a first to be held in Scotland, also probably also
> the first to be co-faciliatated  by a 'girl' - not that gender matters.
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>  We had a great bunch of people lined up to attend, and although
> a few defaulted (apologies received from Mounia, Harry, Andrew, Maciej), it
> was still an impressive turnout, especially
> considering that people travelled from various parts of the country to
> attend, and Serge came all the way from
> Brussells!
>
> it was the first Vocamp for everybody, except for Keith, who is a vocamp
> veteran having attended most of them in the UK so far. I attended the one in
> Ibiza earlier this year, but have  experience in facilitating unconference
> like events, and participatory  learning workshops etc
>
> We went through a quick round of intros, then decided quickly to subvert
> the order of the in principle agenda, (see the wiki Vocamp page for more
> details and links to materials)
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> Norman and Stuart showed the tools they are working on, Jeff and Ed shared
> their tutorials and demos, then one by one everybody had the chance to share
> their perspective, put up some slides, say a few words.
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> Jenny showed her work in the direction of socio-tecnical web, web of
> people, and was pointed to the 'pragmatic web'  research group
>
> Peter works for the UK Government and is very well clued in, knows a lot of
> SW tools and techniques, and is trying to promote the Semantic Community of
> Practice, check out the links on the wiki. He says he would like this
> community to be a vehicle for more knowledge dissemination, please link your
> how to's questions and answers there if you have any
>
> Gordon comes from a strong metadata background, and works intensively in
> the librarianship community
> A mong other things  is doing some cool work on Vocabulary Framework
> Initiative,  and he has promised to keep some
> tickets aside especially for vocampers and semwebbers to the next meeting
> to be held at the British Library. Gordon faces a huge vocabulary mapping
> task, they are looking at RDF and ontologies as a way out. Their perspective
> is really valuable and important as whatever solution they find to crack
> their problem, is going to be largely applicable to any other sector.
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> Martin is working on  assistive technologies and interfaces for people who
> have trouble communicating - , and recently meshed up an API for lastfm,
> he is thinking of how to use vocabularies and possibly RDF to advance the
> capabilities of his code
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> Serge shared his vision of location context aware semantic services with
> everyone, a vision where the web can help users locate not just information
> but also physical things in the real world (wouldnt it be nice). He talked
> about the role of location based services in relation to SW
>
> The next day a smaller group gathered around a table, dealing with issues
> as they came up
> Peter mentioned an interest in developing a Pattern Language, and was
> pointed to the ontology pattern wiki organised by Eva, Aldo, Valentina of
> which some of us already heard of.
>
>  Norm and Stuart put up more stuff, and more importantly,John Kerneay  a
> new friend and newcomer to the SW had the chance of presenting his problem
> (his company is making a transition to enterprise architecture) and he was
> amazed to find out how much new stuff there is to learn about. All remaining
> participants sat around him as he presented his slides and had the chance to
> perform live surgery, we all threw a tuppence at his problem space and I
> think he left feeling that there is a communty of people not far from him
> that he can go back to to develop his understanding of sw stuff
>
> I finally had the chance to confront my domain range ghosts, just to find
> out that despite me attending a few rdf/owl workshops before, nobody had
> told me what i have discovered today: there are two kind of  triples (
> subject predicate object )
>
> class:relation:class  but also
> class:attribute:value  (is this right?)
>
> I showed the diagram we are working on at EIIF xg, and got valuable
> feedback, as well as an idea of the work ahead and the problems that we may
> come across and address in the future
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> It was good to see people who have been around relatively a long time to
> meet face to face for the first time, it was great to meet government
> techies who know a lot about the SW (are there more? where do they hide?),
> great to have people come from other information and industry domains,
> students, programmers, gathering around a table to share the semantic web
> dog food.
>
> Okay we did not produce any new vocabulary, but we chewed a lot of
> vocabulary talk, and tried to do so in relation to the bigger picture, the
> real world perspective.
>
> And we left with the intent of meeting up again, and again, maybe even
> simply at the wifi cafe down the road
> to hack a vocabulary anytime is needed, and follow up with more targeted
> Vocamps, maybe we can have another one in Edinburgh too at some point not
> too far away.
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>
> Thanks a lot everybody, especially those who travelled from outside town,
> and to the sponsors : University of Strathclyde Information Directorate for
> giving us space (uhm, the wifi access did not work as expected, but most of
> us managed to get online
> eventually) and Talis for providing needed nourishment
>
>
Some photos  (I was recently burgled and all my equipment is gone, could not
take any photos myself)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/55579041@N00/sets/72157622393986054/with/3927721793


Til next

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> Vocampers Glasgow
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