LOD2 Creating Knowledge out of Interlinked Data

On May the 10th and 11th I represented the LOD2EU-funded (FP7) research project aiming to take the Web of Linked Data to the next level. Main research challenges: improve coherence and quality of data published on the Web, close the performance gap between relational and RDF data management, establish trust on the Linked Data Web and ... consortium on the share-psi.eu in Brussels. This conference was set up by ETSI and W3C in preparation of the Digital Agenda meeting in Brussels in mid June 2011. The audience was a mix of public services, private companiesA company is a form of business organization. In the United States, a company is a corporation—or, less commonly, an association, partnership, or union—that carries on an industrial enterprise. " Generally, a company may be a "corporation, partnership, association, joint-stock ... and non profit organizations. You can find the slides here and notes here. I presented the LOD2 objectives and plan and was considered “uncontroversial”. Some of the highlights of the LOD2 presentation:

• LOD2 prepares the infrastructure to manage, manipulate, enrich, link, search, … the data that you are publishing and are about to publish.
• LOD2 is a fine selection of innovative companies and research centers.
• LOD2 works on 3 use cases of which one is relevant to you: Open Government Data. This is next to a publishing (legal content) and an enterprise HR use case.
• LOD2 recently launched a survey on Open Government Data. The results are available here. These results serve as input to the OGD use case (and results are also available for re-use as linked open data).
• LOD2 has a service that can bootstrap your Linked Open Data project. The service is called PubLink.
  (Supporting organisations like the Greater LondonLondon is the capital city of England and the United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its founding by the Romans, who ... Authority, the City of ViennaVienna is the capital and largest city of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million (2.4 million within the metropolitan area, more than 25% of Austria's population), and is by far the largest city in Austria, as ..., the Finish Parliament – beside others)

Some things to remember:

• Some large companies where there giving presentations or participating as guests: IBMInternational Business Machines, abbreviated IBM, is a multinational computer, technology and IT consulting corporation headquartered in Armonk, North Castle, New York, United States. The company is one of the few information technology companies with a continuous history dating back to the 19th ..., Orange, Adobe, …
• The KADME presentation on ArticWeb was particularly interesting because it realizes some of the objectives of linked open data and proofs the need for linked open data. It is however not based on open data sources but on old fashioned aggregation and scraping and it is funded by the oil and gas industry.
• OpenCorporates.com should be supported because it is probably one of the main drivers for opening up the European internal market. In addition it is an enabler of more transparency.
• FearSquare.com launched a discussion on the publication data. What is the impact on society? What are the side effects?
• Licenses? The legal worked is working on synchronization of the licenses that vary across countries, sectors or other boundaries.