Software, Services & Semantic Technologies:
S3T 2010 will provide a forum for connecting researchers and international research communities for worldwide dissemination and sharing of ideas and results in the areas of Software and Services and Intelligent Content and Semantics.
If the paper lineup is as strong as the invited speakers, this will be a great event!
Conference Dates: September 11-12, 2010, Varna, Bulgaria.
Early Registration opens July 05, 2010.
Proceedings of the 27th International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML 2010) are available.
If you are interested in the next generation of assistive tools for authoring topic maps or using them before your competition does, it would be hard to find a better starting place.
One of my interests is in text archives, so interactive construction of a topic map with an application that searches an archive for subjects or relationships for subjects would be cool. Perhaps that “learns” your preferences as you accept or reject its suggestions. And that “knows” what others have found building topic maps for the same archive. You can follow or not follow their paths into the archive.
Balisage Schedule with Latebreaking Sessions is now available.
Truly an awesome lineup! I will miss the conference for the first time in a decade but let me suggest a couple of don’t miss opportunities:
Ok, so that’s five (5). I said I was a topic map person, not that I could count.
Which means, I left out 28 presentations that you will be dying to see and that I would try to see if I were there. If I were to list all the ones I want to see, it would just be a copy of the schedule, albeit with some of my funny comments along with it.
August, Montreal, good food, top markup experts, excellent presentations, hall way discussions, what more could you ask for?
Seriously, simply the best markup conference of the year.
The Semantic Web Challenge 2010 details landed in my inbox this morning. My first reaction was to refine my spam filter. 😉 Just teasing. My second and more considered reaction was to think about the “challenge” in terms of topic maps.
Particularly because a posting from the Ontology Alignment Evaluation Initiative arrived the same day, in response to a posting from sameas.org.
I freely grant that URIs that cannot distinguish between identifiers and resources without 303 overhead are poor design. But the fact remains that there are many data sets, representing large numbers of subjects that have even poorer subject identification practices. And there are no known approaches that are going to result in the conversion of those data sets.
Personally I am unwilling to wait until some new “perfect” language for data sweeps the planet and results in all data being converted into the “perfect” format. Anyone who thinks that is going to happen needs to stand with the end-of-the-world-in-2012 crowd. They have a lot in common. Magical thinking being one common trait.
The question for topic mappers to answer is how do we attribute to whatever data language we are confronting, characteristics that will enable us to reliably merge information about subjects in that format either with other information in the same or another data language? Understanding that the necessary characteristics may vary from data language to data language.
Take the lack of a distinction between identifier and resource in the Semantic Web for instance. One easy step towards making use of such data would be to attribute to each URI the status of either being an identifier or a resource. I suspect, but cannot say, that the authors/users of those URIs know the answer to that question. It seems even possible that some sets of such URIs are all identifiers and if so marked/indicated in some fashion, they automatically become useful as just that, identifiers (without 303 overhead).
As identifiers they may lack the resolution that topic maps provide to the human user, which enables them to better understand what subject is being identified. But, since topic maps can map additional identifiers together, when you encounter a deficient identifier, simply create another one for the same subject and map them together.
I think we need to view the Semantic Web data sets as opportunities to demonstrate how understanding subject identity, however that is indicated, is the linchpin to meaningful integration of data about subjects.
Bearing in mind that all our identifications, Semantic Web, topic map or otherwise, are always local, provisional and subject to improvement, in the eye of another.
Coreference as Service by Bernard Vatant says the ontological emptiness of an identifier mapping service determines its usefulness.
I wonder how to know when that will be true?
That is I can imagine use cases where empty mapping of identifiers is good enough for some purpose.
In the case Bernard is talking about the identifiers are of geographic locations. Perhaps there is a common enough frame of reference for that to work.
On the other hand, I can imagine coreference services with mappings based upon “attributes” associated with identifiers.
How to judge between which one to use seems like an open question to me.
I no sooner point out that the Balisage conference lacks topic maps papers than a challenge lands in my inbox.
A challenge I could not tailor more for topic maps.
Coincidence? You decide.
As part of the Balisage 2010 Conference, MarkLogic has put forth a challenge in the form of a contest. The goal of the contest is to encourage markup experts to review and to research the current state of wiki markup languages and to generate a proposal that serves to de-babelize the current state of affairs for the long haul.
Wikis: tower-of-babel Solve the modern tower of babel
Contest Description: In the past few decades, as a planet, we’ve succeeded tremendously in standardizing a number of technologies (yay us!). Wiki technology (other than its underlying use of web technologies as a platform) is not solidly in this list. There is a lot of content available today in a variety of wiki syntaces. This syntax is not standardized. Some argue it shouldn’t be. Go beyond the existing debates, diatribes, and arguments. Put us on a practical track to fixing this and ensuring we will have access to this content for the long haul.
To enter, you must propose a set of concrete steps (organizational, social, and/or technological) that will enable wiki content interchange, a real WYSIWYG editor, and/or wiki syntax standardization.
Entries will be evaluated based on criteria that includes:
* How well does the entry understand the current state of the art?
* How well does the entry identify key stake holders and actors
(including history, motivation, and so on)
* Is the entry clear on its objectives? (The summary allows for
some variance here).
* Is the approach/vision elegant, clever, or mind-changing?
* Are the set of steps actionable and implementable?Guidelines, rules, and prize:
1. Please no more than 10000 words.
2. Entries should be submitted by July 15th to:
balisage-2010-contest at marklogic dot com
3. Author(s) retains copyright and grants MarkLogic a non-exclusive
license to publish the winning entry.
4. The winner will be announced on August 3rd at the conference and
will take home a choice of
* Apple 15″ (i5) MacBook Pro
* Apple MacBook Air or
* USD $2000
5. The winner will be strongly encouraged (but not required) to give a
brief summary (~10 minutes) of their winning entry at the conference
on August 3rd.
6. Employees of MarkLogic are not eligible.
7. Judges decision is final.
8. Contest-related questions may also be submitted to:
balisage-2010-contest at marklogic dot com.
Are you ready to take the challenge?
Balisage presentation schedule, Montreal, 3-6 August 2010, has been posted.
I see XQuery, C. S. Peirce’s type/token, XForms, polyhierarchical markup, parallel processing of XML, XSLT, Java, hey….!
No topic maps!
Here’s your chance! There are five (5) late-breaking news slots. Slots on the program for the very latest, cutting edge technical excellence (or boners). Can’t ever tell which one.
I am sure there are new ideas, applications, or analysis in topic maps that merit presentation at Balisage.
A bit about Balisage. It is the place to meet the people who are shaping the future of markup. It is like going to your local record store and getting to spend time with Lady GaGa. Well, maybe not quite like that but similar to that. Well, maybe not even similar to that, although I bet we could find someone who thinks Michael is cute.
Seriously, if you have seen the A-list for research and publication on markup and related issues, you have seen the lineup for Balisage.
Don’t let this Balisage pass without a strong paper or two on topic maps!
Balisage Call for Late-Breaking News
PS: Even if you don’t submit a paper, please try to attend. Simply the best markup conference of the year.
My impression is that data mining isn’t cumulative.
That is when I read about a new data mining technique, even over a known data set, like the ones used at TREC, they all make a fresh start on the data.
It is like having read a book and to find a particular passage, you start over at page one. That seems like a poor use of resources.
Another approach would be to record previously discovered relevant documents. Subsequent users can then benefit from what has been found. (Note the use of past tense.)
Can anyone suggest examples of cumulative data mining?
Warwick, UK, 15-16 July, 2010, conference fee of £ 40, a chance to network with both humanities projects and technologists.
Presentations about topic maps occur at markup and topic maps conferences, but are there presentations outside those venues? Topic maps presentations at general IT or other conferences? Anyone planning topic maps presentations at general IT or other conferences?
Promoting topic maps to each other isn’t going to find new customers/users for topic maps.
PS: There are 14 days left for paper submissions to this conference.
The success of topic maps depends upon having interfaces people will want to use.
Let’s request a one-day workshop on usability prior to TMRA 2010.
An overview of usability studies, techniques and literature. Might be a push in the right direction.
Perhaps a usability (HCI – human-computer interaction) track for TMRA 2011?
With case studies from topic map projects and usability researchers.
Impatient? See: HCI Bibliography : Human-Computer Interaction Resources, a collection of over 57,000 documents, plus recommended readings, link collections, etc.
The one article of faith shared by all topic map enthusiasts is: topic maps can express anything! But having said that, “when the rubber hits the road” (Americanism, means to become meaningful, action being taken) the question is how to build a topic map, particularly a multilingual one.
We are all familiar with the ability of topic maps to place a “scope” on a name so that its language can be indicated. But that is only one aspect of a what is expected of a modern multilingual system.
Fortunately, topic map fans don’t have to re-invent multilingual information retrieval techniques!
Bookmark and use the resources found at the Cross Language Evaluation Forum. CLEF is sponsored by TrebleCLEF, an activity of the European Commission.
CLEF has almost a decade of annual proceedings and both sites offer link collection to other multilingual resources. I am going to start mining those proceedings and other documents for suggestions and tips on constructing topic maps.
Suggestions, comments, tips, etc., that you have found useful would be appreciated.
(PS: I am sure all this is old hat to European topic map folks but realize there are, ahem, parts of the world where multilingualism isn’t valued. I suspect many of the same techniques will work for multiple identifications in single languages.)
WG 3 Meeting in Stockholm
WG 3 just concluded its meetings in Stockholm, Sweden. One of the main items on its agenda was the discussion of the requirements for TMQL (Topic Maps Query Language).
The slides will be available from the SC 34 repository but for those of you who simply can’t wait, TMQL language proposal – apart from Path Language.
Note that FLWR, XML Content and Topic Map Content (slide 27) are proposed to be left out of TMQL 1.0 in the interest of finishing TMQL.
Readers should review these slides and comment on the proposed development of TMQL.
2010 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Information Reuse and Integration
I hope to be Balisage but if you can’t make Balisage, you might want to consider the 2010 IEEE Intl. Conf. on Information Reuse and Integration, August 4-6, 2010.
The call for papers has been extended to 16 April 2010. Whether you submit a paper or just attend, it looks like a valuable experience for anyone interested in topic maps.
I am going to review prior proceedings of this conference to call out items that look especially relevant to topic maps.
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