Call For Participation: Semantics for the Rest of Us Workshop at ISWC 2009

[Lalana Kagal]

Apologies for cross posting

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              Semantics for the Rest of Us -- Variants of
            Semantic Web Languages in the Real World

                        Held in conjunction with
    8th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2009)
          Monday, 26 October 2009, Washington, DC
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The Semantic Web is a broad vision of the future of personal
computing, emphasizing the use of sophisticated knowledge
representation as the basis for end-user applications' data modeling
and management needs. Key to the pervasive adoption of Semantic Web
technologies is a good set of fundamental "building blocks" - the most
important of these are representation languages themselves. W3C's
standard languages for the Semantic Web, RDF and OWL, have been around
for several years; instead of strict standards compliance, we see
"variants" of these languages emerge in applications, often tailored
to a particular application's needs. These variants are often either
subsets of OWL or supersets of RDF, typically with fragments OWL
added. Extensions based on rules, such as SWRL and N3 logic, have been
developed as well as enhancements to the SPARQL query language and
protocol.

In this workshop we will explore the landscape of RDF, OWL and SPARQL
variants, specifically from the standpoint of "real-world
semantics". Are there commonalities in these variants that might
suggest new standards or new versions of the existing standards? We
hope to identify common requirements of applications consuming
Semantic Web data and understand the pros and cons of a strictly
formal approach to modeling data versus a "scruffier" approach where
semantics are based on application requirements and implementation
restrictions.

The workshop will encourage active audience participation and
discussion and includes a keynote by Sandro Hawke (W3C) as well as a
panel to be moderated by Jim Hendler (RPI).


ORGANIZERS

Lalana Kagal, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ora Lassila, Nokia
Tim Finin, University of Maryland, Baltimore County


PROGRAM

08:30-08:45 Welcome, introductions, etc. [15]
08:45-09:45 Sandro's invited talk + discussion [60]
9:45 - 10:35 2 research paper [50]
RDF syntax normalization using XML validation - Denny Vrandecic, Frank
Dengler, Sebastian Rudolph and Michael Erdmann (research paper) [25]
LexRDF Model: An RDF-based Unified Model for Heterologous Biomedical
Ontologies - Cui Tao, Jyotishman Pathak, Harold Solbrig, Wei-Qi Wei
and Christopher Chute (research paper) [25]
10:35-10:50 Break [15]
10:50 - 11:55 1 position paper, 2 research papers [65]
Streaming OWL, Mike Dean (position paper) [10]
Accessing Site-Specific APIs Through Write-Wrappers From The Web of
Data - Oana Ureche, Aftab Iqbal, Richard Cyganiak and Michael
Hausenblas (research paper) [25]
LTML - A Language for Representing Semantic Web Service Workflow
Procedures - Mark Burstein, Robert Goldman, Drew McDermott, David
McDonald, Jacob Beal and John Maraist [25]
11:55 - 12:40 Panel + discussion [45]
12:40-12:45 Closing comments and Wrap-up
12:45-2:00 Lunch


PANEL

Title: "Little vs Large Semantics: What's next for the Semantic Web
languages?"

Moderator: Jim Hendler, RPI

Panelists:
Kendall Clark, Clark & Parsia, LLC
Leigh Dodds, Talis
Ivan Herman, W3C
Ora Lassila, Nokia