[VoCamp Discuss] first take on Vocamp Glasgow

Thu Sep 17 03:44:42 PDT 2009

Well done Paola, and thanks for the summary. Nice to hear that it went well.

Regards,
François

On Thu, Sep 17, 2009 at 10:45 AM, Paola Di Maio <paola.dimaio at gmail.com>wrote:

> 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/72157622393986054/with/3927721793
>
>
> Til next
>
>>
>> Vocampers Glasgow
>>
>>
>>
>
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