Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group

This Interest Group is Now Closed

This Interest Group is now closed: its official charter expired on the 31st of March, 2008. Note, however, that some of the activities started by this Interest Group have not been stopped, but go on independently instead. These are:

Introduction

The Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group has been established to develop strategies and materials to increase awareness among the Web community of the need and benefit for the Semantic Web, and educate the Web community regarding related solutions and technologies.

The scope of SWEO group includes:

  • the development and collection of use and business cases, stemming from both user and vendor companies, and documenting the value of Semantic Web technologies
  • identifying possible vertical markets and application areas for the Semantic Web
  • production of clear guidelines for tutorials, presentations, teaching materials, FAQ-s, etc, targeted at different audiences

News, Announcements

Wednesday, April 2nd 2008

22:15:19

Closing of the SWEO Interest Group

The W3C SWEO Interest Group came to the end of it's charter at the end of March with a flurry of activity. Very recently completed items include the publication of the paper Cool URIs for the Semantic Web by Leo Sauermann and Richard Cyganiak, and a Semantic Web Business Case paper and presentation by Jeff Pollock. Although it is the end of this SWEO, many of the resources that were created will continue to be developed. These include both the knowee and Linking Open Data Community Projects, the Information Gathering task, and the FAQ document. In addition, the collection of Semantic Web case studies will continue to be developed, so please go to the Web site to see how you can submit one today! Other notable achievements include the creation of the Semantic Web logo by Benji Nowack in collaboration with W3C’s Communications Team, and the creation of a Semantic Web flyer by Dunja Ewinger and Paula-Lavinia Patranjan. It’s been fun working with such a great group of people in SWEO, and it’s been wonderful to see the increase in use of Semantic Web technologies since the group begun. To facilitate continuing communication about education and outreach, the SWEO mailing list has been converted into a public mailing list, and the #sweo IRC channel will be maintained.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Monday, March 31st 2008

20:16:41

SWEO Information Gathering

One of the goals of SWEO was to enable the gathering of information about resources that relate to the Semantic Web and to ensure they are easy for others to find and utilize. The resources of interest consisted of lists of tools, products, code, demos, papers, and books. The project consisted of identifying existing information, converting it into RDF, importing it into a triple store, and then syndicating it. The work was coordinated by Leo Sauermann, with Kingsley Idehen and OpenLink Software providing the user interface and implementation, and Danny Ayers and other members of SWEO helping to gather resources. The Information Gathering project has now been completed and consists of a service for hosting the data, a form for uploading data, and a mechanism for retrieving RDF dumps. A portal could easily be created on this environment, so that users could browse for resources of interest and add comments. Please use this resource to publish details on the lists that you have been collating or any collateral or tools that you may have developed.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)
19:34:38

Community Project knowee

Just in time for the end of SWEO, the Community Project "knowee" is happy to announce the availability of an alpha release. The project aims at creating an online contact organizer by combining W3C-recommended Semantic Web technologies like RDF and SPARQL with trends such as microformats and OpenID. You can read more about knowee on the project website. knowee is the result of work that has been led by Benji Nowack.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Sunday, March 23rd 2008

08:08:57

Last Call: Cool URIs for the Semantic Web

The Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group has published the Last Call Working Draft of Cool URIs for the Semantic Web. URIs (Uniform Resource Identifiers) are very important to the Semantic Web, providing both the core of the framework itself and the link between RDF and the Web. Please send comments about this document to public-sweo-ig@w3.org (with public archive) before the 28 March 2008.
By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Monday, February 4th 2008

15:21:57

SWEO Extended

SWEO was chartered to run until the end of January, however we have been granted an extension of two months. The goal of the extension is to allow us to complete some ongoing activities. These include finishing the Cool URIs document, completing a business focused presentation, and enhancing the collection of Semantic Web case studies.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Tuesday, December 18th 2007

08:46:40

Cool URIs for the Semantic Web (First Public Draft)

SWEO has released a first Working Draft of a document explaining the effective use of URIs to enable the growth of the Semantic Web. The “Cool URIs for the Semantic Web” discusses two strategies for choosing URIs for the Semantic Web, gives pointers to several Web sites that use these solutions, and briefly discusses why several other alternatives are less effective. Comments on this draft are requested by 21 January, to be integrated into a final document at the end of the Group’s charter.
By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Friday, November 2nd 2007

15:42:53

SWEO F2F Meeting

W3C's Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group (SWEO) had it's 3rd F2F meeting last week. The event was well attended with many participants from SWEO, as well as a number of guests from other W3C activities. The meeting provided an opportunity to review our progress over the last year. Items of note included publishing a FAQ document, developing a site that collates Semantic Web case studies, and the creation of a new set of Semantic Web logos. During the F2F, we reviewed ongoing activities, and discussed approaches for raising the visibility of upcoming technologies such as RDFa, SPARQL, POWDER and SKOS. The day was wrapped up with a fun dinner at the Cambridge Brewing Company.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Wednesday, October 10th 2007

15:25:57

Semantic Web logos

Semantic Web box with peeled-back lid W3C has launched a new set of Semantic Web Logos today, developed by the Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group and the Communication Team of W3C. The peeled back lid in the logo invites you to Open Your Data to the Semantic Web!
By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Wednesday, September 12th 2007

21:31:11

Linking Open Data

The SWEO Community Project, Linking Open Data, is making great progress in incorporating new datasets. In early September, a new version of the DBpedia dataset was released. DBpedia is a community effort to extract structured information from Wikipedia and to make the data available on the Web. Users are now empowered to perform sophisticated queries against the data and to link to other datasets on the Web. DBpedia describes almost 2,000,000 “things” that include places, people, music albums, and movies. The dataset also has over 2,500,000 links to images, external web pages, and other RDF datasets. This week it has been announced that the WikiCompany dataset is also available. This dataset is a global company directory implemented as a Wiki. Currently, over 9,000 companies are included within WikiCompany. Congratulations to everyone involved in the project.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Tuesday, June 5th 2007

15:01:58

Semantic Web Case Studies and Use Cases Published

The Semantic Web Education and Outreach (SWEO) Interest Group is pleased to announce the first set of Case Studies and Use Cases giving some examples of how the Semantic Web of machine readable data is used today. Applications are presented in areas ranging from automotive to health care, and from B2B systems to geographical information systems. The SWEO Interest Group will continue to publish new Case Studies and Use Cases in the future; an RSS feed for new submissions is available. A short overview is also available in Open Document Format, PDF, and HTML formats.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Tuesday, April 24th 2007

16:20:21

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) on Semantic Web

The SWEO Interest Group is pleased to announce the first release of a frequently asked questions (FAQ) document about the Semantic Web. It provides comprehensive answers to questions covering Semantic Web standards and their usage. This is an evolving document that will continue to be updated over time. There is also a Wiki site where the community can contribute to the further evolution of this document, as well as an RSS1.0 feed to help tracking changes on the FAQ.
By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Tuesday, March 6th 2007

17:14:35

Community Project Support

SWEO was very impressed by the number of high quality ideas for community projects that were proposed. SWEO has decided to support the following four projects: FOAF based White Listing for Fighting Spam, Interlinking Open Data on the Semantic Web, Knowee/Contact Organizer, and Powder Browser Extensions. We encourage developers to sign up to participate in these projects, thereby helping to ensure their success.
By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Friday, January 26th 2007

17:39:35

Community Semantic Web Projects

SWEO wishes to encourage developers to come together to work on some Semantic Web projects. This rally has the goal of using our collective input to generating real running code, that can help us to demonstrate the value of the Semantic Web to a wide user base. More information is available on the Community Projects Wiki page.

By: Susie Stephens
(Permalink)

Wednesday, November 22nd 2006

17:36:38

Minutes of the f2f meetings are now public

The minutes of the first face-to-face meeting (held in Burlington, MA, US) are now public. Read the minutes to see the direction in which the group plans to focus its activities.

By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Tuesday, October 24th 2006

08:05:51

IG face to face meeting announced

The (first) face to face meeting of the Semantic Web Education and Outreach Interest Group takes place between November 14 and 15, 2006, in Burlington, MA, USA, hosted by Oracle. Members of the interest group may register for the meeting using the registration form; the agenda of the meeting is also publicly available.

By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

Tuesday, September 12th 2006

13:43:14

Interest Group Launched

W3C is pleased to announce the launch of this Interest Group, chaired by Susie Stephens (Oracle). The group is is chartered to collect proof-of-concept business cases, demonstration prototypes, etc, based on successful implementations of Semantic Web technologies, collect user experiences, develop and facilitate community outreach strategies, training and educational resources.

The group will hold its first face-to-face meeting mid November in the Boston area in the US. A separate announcement will follow including registration information.

By: Ivan Herman
(Permalink)

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