[VoCamp Discuss] first take on Vocamp Glasgow

[Pan, Dr Jeff Z.]

Hi Paola,

Thanks again for organising the helpful event. Could you advise where to upload the slides?

Best wishes,

Jeff



> -----Original Message-----
> From: swig-scotland at googlegroups.com
> [mailto:swig-scotland at googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paola Di Maio
> Sent: Thursday, September 17, 2009 9:46 AM
> To: discuss at lists.vocamp.org; swig-scotland at googlegroups.com
> Subject: first take on Vocamp Glasgow
>
> a quick take before I catch a train
> P
>
>
>
>
>
>
>       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.
>
>        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)
>
>       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.
>
>       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.
>
>
>
>       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
>
>       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
>
>       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.
>
>
>       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/721576223939860
> 54/with/3927721793
>
>
> Til next
>
>
>
>       Vocampers Glasgow
>
>
>
>
>
>
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