Archive for the 'BlogTalk' Category

Nova Spivack visits DERI, NUI Galway and talks about Twine: Radar Networks’ semantic social software product in beta

Published
by
Cloud
on 25/3/2008
in BlogTalk, DERI, FOAF, Galway, NUI Galway, SIOC, Semantic Web, Social Networks, Social Software, US and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments

20080325b.png In association with the IT Association of Galway, DERI recently invited Radar Networks‘ Nova Spivack to speak at our research institute in the National University of Ireland, Galway (Nova also gave a keynote talk at BlogTalk 2008 in Cork).

Nova is CEO of one of the companies that is practically applying Semantic Web technologies to social software applications. Radar have a beta product called Twine which is a “knowledge networking” application that allows users to share, organise, and find information with people they trust. People create and join “twines” (community containers) around certain topics of interest, and items (documents, bookmarks, media files, etc., that can be commented on) are posted to these twines through a variety of methods. The seminar room was full of both “DERIzens” and members of Galway’s IT community for Nova’s talk on the Semantic Web and Twine (see his slides here), and after a lengthy question-and-answers session, this was followed by some presentations to Nova of ongoing research work in DERI.

20080325c.png I personally find Twine very interesting, and as well as using it to gather information about SIOC, I intend to use it to gather and publish personal interests that I think will be of interest to the public (once it leaves beta). As well as producing semantic data (just stick “?rdf” onto the end of any twine.com URL), Twine features some cool functionality that elevates it beyond the social bookmarking sites to which it has been compared, including an extensive choice of twineable item types, twined item customisation (”add detail”) and the “e-mail to a twine” feature, all of which I believe are extremely useful. (I have a few Twine invites left for readers of my blog; drop me an e-mail if you need one.)

There is also the community aspects of twines. I forsee that these twines will act as the “social objects” (see presentation by Jyri) that will draw you back to the service, in a much stronger manner than other social bookmarking sites currently do (due to Twine’s more viral nature, its stronger social networking functionality, better commenting, and a more identifiable “home” for these objects). Of course, having more public users will help, but from experience I know that it is a good idea to build on a core group of regular users (in Twine’s case, mainly techies) before increasing the user base too much.

It’s been an exciting few months in terms of announcements relating to commercial Semantic Web applications. As I mentioned recently in an interview with Rob Cawte for the web2.0japan.com blog, this is becoming obvious with the attention being given to startup companies in this space like Powerset, Metaweb (Freebase) and Radar Networks (Twine), and also since many big companies including Reuters (Calais API), Yahoo! (semantically-enhanced search) and Google (Social Graph API) have recently announced what they are doing with semantic data. There has been a lot of talk recently about the social graph (notably from Google’s Brad Fitzpatrick), which looks at how people are connected together (friends, colleagues, neighbours, etc.), and how such connections can be leveraged across websites. On the Semantic Web with vocabularies like FOAF, SIOC, etc., it is not just people who are connected together in some meaningful way, but documents, events, places, hobbies, pictures, you name it! And it is the commercial applications that exploit these connections that are now becoming interesting…

(Edit: Nova Spivack has blogged about his visit.)

BlogTalk 2008 Summary

Published
by
Cloud
on 25/3/2008
in BlogTalk, Cork, General and WebCamp
. 2 Comments

Well, I’ve been on a well-deserved break (in my opinion anyway!) for the past two weeks so it’s time that I caught up with all the stuff I’ve only been tweeting about in the meantime…

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Picture by Paul Downey.

First up, it’s a summary of BlogTalk (and WebCamp). Actually, a lot of people have blogged about the event, including Martha Rotter (who has a great overview), Mark Bernstein (with some valid criticisms regarding the conference’s focus that we need to look at; see also Mark’s vidcast), Salim Ismail, Stephanie Booth (1 , 2; thanks for the videos!), Will Knott, Phil Whitehouse (1, 2), Jure Cuhalev, Jan Schmidt, Donncha O Caoimh, Sven Latham, Ben Ward, and Gabriela Avram (1, 2, 3, 4).

But I’ll add to these voices by saying that I was very pleased with how things went: the atmosphere was quite relaxed (at least, outside the confines of my own head), and the size was probably just right (sometimes you can’t plan these things). Although we had about 110-115 registrants, there were about 80-85 present at any one time, and I think the audience felt comfortable with posing questions to speakers (and to each other) which led to more interactive sessions than there may have been otherwise. The panel discussions also went quite well, and I hope that we will have more of these in future events. As regards next year’s conference, we have had an interesting offer to host the event in Korea. We are also looking at Seville for BlogTalk 2010.

Unfortunately, I incorrectly thought that Intruders.TV would be recording the talks from the event, but some entrepreneuring attendees managed to video some of the talks using a combination of webcams and cameras (see the videos and slides page for those that we’ve managed to gather so far; if you have any more, please let us know; I believe Intruders.TV will have interviews with some of our speakers later). You can also view an assortment of photos via Flickr.

On behalf of the programme chairs for BlogTalk 2008, I would like to thank all of the participants at the conference, our invited speakers, the presenters, our reviewers, the excellent hotel staff, and especially our sponsors (without whom the fees would have significantly increased since they paid for two thirds of our almost €30k budget). Finally, I would like to ask attendees if they would be so kind as to complete our post-conference survey here.

Videos and slides from WebCamp and BlogTalk (continually being updated)

Published
by
Cloud
on 3/3/2008
in BlogTalk and WebCamp
. 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , .

Moved here.

WebCamp SNP and BlogTalk 2008 approacheth…

Published
by
Cloud
on 1/3/2008
in BlogTalk, Blogs, Cork, DERI, Data Portability, FOAF, Internet, Ireland, SIOC, Semantic Web, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Software, Web, Web 2.0, WebCamp and Wikis
. 2 Comments Tags: , , , , , .

I’m in Cork with a posse of eight from DERI, and it’s the night before two co-located events: the WebCamp workshop on social network portability (Sunday) and the BlogTalk conference on social software (Monday, Tuesday). Others that have arrived in Cork this evening include Niall Larkin, Ajit Jaokar, Aral Balkan, Ben Ward, Dan Brickley, Ross Duggan and Stephanie Booth.

I’m really looking forward to the talks, the discussions, the networking, the food, and some positive outcomes from the next three days. And with invited speakers of this quality, I know it’s going to be good.

Unfortunately, I’m missing the Irish Blog Awards for the second year running, but boards.ie’s Managing Director Gerry Shanahan is representing us as a sponsor. At least I hope to meet up with many of the bloggers at tomorrow night’s optional blogger’s dinner at Rossini’s here in Cork (43 people have signed up).

More blog posts about the events will be available via the tags webcampsnp and blogtalk2008. Here are some recent posts:

BlogTalk 2008 t-shirts ready…

Published
by
Cloud
on 27/2/2008
in BlogTalk
. 3 Comments

…and here’s a preview:

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Co-founder of Last.fm to speak at BlogTalk 2008 on 4th March

Published
by
Cloud
on 24/2/2008
in BlogTalk, Cork, Internet, Ireland, Radio, Social Media, Social Software and Web 2.0
. 0 Comments Tags: , , , .

I am happy to announce that Michael Breidenbrücker, co-founder of Lovely Systems and of Last.fm Ltd., will be our fourth keynote speaker at BlogTalk 2008 in Cork (he will speak on Tuesday week).

Michael has been actively involved in interactive digital media since 1999 and is widely recognised for his expertise in the areas of interaction design and product development. Lovely Systems is a web technologies company providing localised video portals serving hundreds of gigabytes of video each day. Their latest service is Zoomer.de, which was launched last week. Last.fm was incorporated in 2002 as an internet radio station and music community website, and the related Audioscrobbler music recommendation system was fully merged into Last.fm in 2005. The company was acquired by CBS Interactive in May 2007. You can read more about Last.fm on their Wikipedia page.

Unfortunately, Rashmi Sinha is now unable to speak at this event. Hopefully Rashmi can present at BlogTalk 2009!

Five days left to register online for BlogTalk 2008!

Published
by
Cloud
on 22/2/2008
in BlogTalk, Blogs, Cork, Data Portability, FOAF, Internet, SIOC, Semantic Web, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Software, Web, Web 2.0, WebCamp and Wikis
. 0 Comments

Please note that online registration for BlogTalk 2008 (and WebCamp Social Network Portability) will close next Wednesday, 26th February 2008.

You can register at Amiando.

There are a few discount codes out there.

(Don’t forget to sign up for the optional blogger’s dinner as well!)

“A funny thing happened on the way to the forum”: Article in Indo about 10 years of boards.ie

Published
by
Cloud
on 15/2/2008
in BlogTalk, Blogs, Boards, Cork, DERI, Games, Internet, Ireland, NUI Galway, SIOC, Semantic Web, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Software and Web
. 1 Comment

20080214a.png Irish Independent > Business > Technology > A funny thing happened on the way to the forum
After 10 years, John Breslin’s online forum on everything from personal relationships to motors and mustard, boards.ie, is still blazing a trail

By Marie Boran
Thursday February 14 2008

Want to know where you can buy the cheapest digital camera, or how to go about claiming rent relief, or maybe if buying cowboy boots would be a fashion disaster?

The world relies on Google but the Irish have boards.ie. On this online bulletin board no question is too trivial or too bizarre and with an average 900,000 visitors to the site every month, there are plenty of answers on offer.

It is hard to believe that a decade ago, on 12 February, 1998, boards.ie founder John Breslin wrote expectantly: “The first of many messages, I hope.”

Read more…

Of course, there are four other people who have made boards.ie possible: Tom Murphy, Dan King, Gerry Shanahan, and Jerry Connolly. Without them and our amazing team of voluntary moderators, I doubt boards.ie would even exist today. Original questions and answers follow.

Continue reading ‘“A funny thing happened on the way to the forum”: Article in Indo about 10 years of boards.ie’

Programme announced for BlogTalk 2008

Published
by
Cloud
on 23/1/2008
in BlogTalk, Blogs, Cork, Internet, Ireland, Semantic Web, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Software, Web, Web 2.0 and WebCamp
. 0 Comments

We recently announced the programme schedule for the 5th International Conference on Social Software (and the co-located workshop on social network portability), to be held in Cork in six weeks time. We have an interesting set of keynote speakers and invited panellists so far (with one keynote to be confirmed).

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Also, the list of accepted presentations at the conference is varied and interesting, with some familiar faces and some new ones shown below. (In all, we accepted six presentations from practitioners, two from developers and six from academics. We’ve interspersed these in the schedule, but grouped by related topics.)

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Finally, I’d like to thank our reviewers, without whose help the selection would have been an impossible task. (The breakdown of our committee was seven academics and 15 non-academics).

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If you are interested in participating, I’d advise booking tickets as soon as possible as we do have an upper limit of 200 attendees. We will have a drinks reception in UCC’s Aula Maxima on the Sunday, followed by an optional blogger’s dinner for those interested. On Monday, the main conference dinner will be held in the Kingsley Hotel.

Keynote speakers lined up for BlogTalk

Published
by
Cloud
on 8/1/2008
in BlogTalk, Blogs, Cork, Internet, Ireland, Semantic Web, Social Media, Social Networks, Social Software, US, Web and Web 2.0
. 4 Comments Tags: , , , , , , .

I’m happy to announce that we have four interesting and varied keynote speakers lined up for the BlogTalk 2008 conference on social software in Cork this March.

  • Nova Spivack - Founder and CEO, Radar Networks
    Nova is the entrepreneur behind the Twine “knowledge networking” application, which allows users to share, organise, and find information with people they trust. He will talk about semantic social software for consumers.
  • Rashmi Sinha - Founder, Uzanto
    Rashmi led the team that produced SlideShare, a popular presentation-sharing service that some have described as “YouTube for PowerPoint”. She will talk about lessons learned from designing social software applications.
  • Salim Ismail - Head of Brickhouse, Yahoo!
    Salim is a successful investor and entrepreneur, with expertise in a variety of early-stage startups and Web 2.0 companies including Confabb and PubSub. He will talk about entrepreneurship and social media.
  • Final speaker has been selected but has yet to be 100% confirmed.

You can see further details and longer biographies of the keynote speakers at 2008.blogtalk.net/invitedspeakers. We will also have two invited panel sessions, the details of which will be announced shortly.