The EU-funded lighthouse project LOD2 is entering its critical phase. Many core developments will be more or less finalized in 2013. Therefore, the plenary meeting at the end of March, which was this time taking place in Amsterdam, was full of intense and partly controversial discussions between the partners. It became obvious that everybody wants to achieve the best results in the project. But what is “best” is of course also a matter of preference and interpretation!
The location Amsterdam was a good fit for this plenary meeting in the current project phase!
First, when you look at the town map with a bird’s eye view with all its concentric town canals, it resembles the LOD cloud with all the different resources linked to each other. Of course, in Amsterdam the “resources” are mainly small artificial islands connected by around 1.500 bridges and more than 100 km of water canals! But still, only the interplay of all these elements constitutes the town of Amsterdam!
Second, when we took our boat trip one evening, we passed the replica of a huge sailing boat, which was used for global trade in the 18th century. The Dutch were already at that time known to be open-minded and pragmatic, which are actually very useful characteristics for international projects as well.
Finally, our dinner took place in the restaurant of the “Tropenmuseum”, which covers centuries of history as well as cultures from all over the globe in its exhibitions. This was very well reflected in the buffet, where food from eight different countries from several continents was served. And yet another thing became apparent: everyone found something he enjoyed a lot in the end – and – it is not a good idea to mix everything on one single plate!
So, apart from core project work and the socializing part, there was as usual a (Linked) Open Data, organized by OKFN and Waag Society with an impressing number of 65 participants.
On Tuesday morning, Wolters Kluwer Corporate was doing a presentation on the potential of semantic web technologies and standards for supporting the strategy of a global media company like Wolters Kluwer. It was also stressed that the requirements expressed in the media & publishing use case in LOD2 are in line with many activities that Wolters Kluwer is currently executing.
So we were facing intense times with a perfect host CWI and I was lucky that on my third boat trip in Amsterdam it was the first time that the sun was shining!
