Planet Semantico

The first Mashed Libraries UK 2008 event is taking place at Birkbeck College in London on 27th November.

This Talking with Talis conversation is with Owen Stephens, Assistant Director: e-Strategy and Information Resources at Imperial College.  Owen is the driving force behind the organisation of the event and has been aided by the sponsorship of UKOLN.

Owen tells us how the idea for the day came to him, what is hopes are for the day and what attendees can expect.

To help with the organisation, Owen has set up a Ning Site Mashed Library where you can sign up for the event and get involved in the discussion about the format of the day.

This is a great idea and I am looking forward to attending with a couple of other Talisians.  We are also going to be making available a couple of Talis Platform Stores for use at the event.  I’ll be posting some info about this on the Ning in the near future.

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English Birkbeck College in London, Imperial College, London, Ning Site Mashed Library, Owen, Owen Stephens, United Kingdom

I’ve been out of the Talis office for nearly two weeks—the last of which was on holiday without internet connection of any description. The week before that, however, I spent at FOWA (Future Of Web Apps) in London. Aside from being really good fun, the conference had a bunch of brilliant speakers and an interesting range of topics covered. I followed the business track, which focused on startups, entreprenurial aspects of the tech space, and related areas. (Twitter feed here)

Some highlights from my perspective were talks by Gavin Bell, Simon Wardley, and Ben Huh. I enjoyed the tactical and people-centric approach to the business stream, and like the fact that there was more than just technical descriptions, or how-to’s. Many of the speakers brought genuine insight to their fields, and I liked hearing their stories.

There was a very entrepreneurial quality to the event, not only in the speakers and their talks on business plans, but also in the fact that the event organisers were part of that community. Many questions asked inevitably focused on the downturn in the economic climate, and Jason Calacanis and Julie Meyer both spoke at length to these concerns. The Startup community is particularly sensitive to the situation, and I was very much interested in hearing where they’re coming from.

Two slightly other-side points which came to mind, though. First, it felt a little like the past of web apps, judging more on comments from the development side of the event. There was a lot of talk aout stuff we’ve heard about already (though, those people who’ve done interesting things make the best news, I guess!). Secondly, I failed to hear the words “Semantic” and “Web” strung together the whole time, except maybe in passing.

I wonder who, among the many speakers and stand-holders, is working on the premise that the future of web applications is semantic?

English Ben Huh, Gavin Bell, internet connection, Jason Calacanis, Julie Meyer, London, Simon Wardley, Web applications, web apps

Stephen E. Arnold’s career has lead him to be a prolific writer, speaker, and expert on web technologies and their application both inside the commercial enterprise and across the Internet.  He is best known for his work on search and his insights in to the Google phenomenon.

He is presenting the keynote in the closing session of the Online Information Conference 2008 which is being held at Olympia in London from 2nd – 4th December and will have a wide range of speakers of broad interest to all information professionals from all sectors – libraries, academia, government, and commerce.

Stephen talks about his career so far and the themes for his presentation, explaining how the technologies that we have seen emerging over the last few years are ready for use inside the enterprise as well as maturing into delivering services across the web.  He also explores how the componentised nature of these technologies and the applications they power, enables them to be moulded to satisfy the needs of their users.

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English Google, London, Online Information, Online Information Conference, Stephen Arnold, Stephen E. Arnold, Web technologies

I just updated vocab.org with a series of new vocabularies, all of which were created at the highly successful and fun VoCamp organised by Tom. The new vocabularies are:

• aiiso roles: a vocabulary for common roles found in academic institutions (created by Rob Styles and Chris Wallace)
• evidence: a vocabulary for describing evidence (created by me, Ben O’Steen, David F. Flanders and Keith Alexander)
• participation: a vocabulary for describing roles people play within groups (created by Rob Styles, Chris Wallace and Knud Möller)
• whisky: a vocabulary for describing whisky varieties (created by me and Tom Heath with the collective input of several VoCampers)

All of these are very new and need some spit, polish and shine. A good place to discuss and collaborate on them is the RDF Schema Dev mailing list. Alternatively join the VoCamp community and come along to a future camp. It looks like Galway is going to be next, with perhaps Vienna, London and Washington DC in the pipeline!

English Ben O Steen, Chris Wallace, David F. Flanders, Keith Alexander, Knud Möller, London, RDF, Rob Styles, Tom Heath, Vienna, Washington DC

As Conference Chairman, there is no better person than Adrian Dale to kick off this short series of Talking with Talis podcasts produced in association with Online Information Conference 2008.

The three day conference held at Olympia in London from 2nd – 4th December will have a wide range of speakers of broad interest to all information professionals from all sectors – libraries, academia, government, and commerce.

Adrian describes how this year’s programme builds on last year’s conference and how the conference committee were impressed with the large number of case studies that were submitted for practical implementations of the subjects talked about a year earlier.   With those case study presentations supporting a quality list of informative, inspirational, and entertaining keynote speakers, the 2008 conference looks like being a high spot.

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English Adrian Dale, Chairman Adrian Dale, London, Online Information, Online Information Conference

As highlighted by Perkins from a report in the Bookseller Andrew Motion, who was appointed as Poet Laureate in 1999, has been appointed as the new chair of the Museums, Libraries and Archives Council (MLA).

His four year role which starts this week will cover the period as the country readies itself for the London Olympics in 2012.  In the MLA press release Culture Secretary Andy Burnham is quoted as saying:

“He has an obvious passion for the Arts, and has been a most distinguished and successful Poet Laureate since 1999.  I know he has some wonderful and exciting ideas about how he can take the MLA forward, continuing their pursuit of excellence and, in particular, promoting the culture sector to Olympic spectators and visitors in 2012.  I wish him well in his new position, and look forward to seeing the fruition of his inspiring ideas.”

MLA’s Chief Executive, Roy Clare, said: 

"Andrew arrives at a very appropriate and exciting time as a newly reshaped MLA equips itself to focus on the integration, improvement, and innovation of museums, libraries and archives.  A refreshed team is beginning to fit into place and will join me in looking forward to the opportunity of working with Andrew and the Board as we aim for our sector to make an ever increasing impact for the public."

Andrew said:

“I am greatly looking forward to helping the MLA continue their tremendous work in all areas of museums, libraries and galleries.  It is an exciting time to be entering the heart of the cultural arena, with the enormous boost in popularity that museums and galleries have seen over the past few years, and the Olympics just around the corner.  I am confident the MLA can build on this and achieve even greater things in the future.”

Since Roy Clare’s appointment as Chief Executive last year there have been some comings and goings.  With the obvious focus on the Olympics driving things, it will be interesting to see how all this will effect the day-to-day operations of a library branches beyond javelin throwing distance from the new Olympic Stadium.

Photo credit: Antonio Olmos

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English Andrew Motion, Andy Burnham, Antonio Olmos, Bookseller Andrew Motion, Libraries and Archives Council, London, Museums, Olympic Stadium, Roy Clare

The mind, especially in an early morning pre-caffeine state, often takes you off at unexpected tangents.  Whilst reading this press release from Ex Libris (more of which in a moment) I met a reference to EL Commons.  Immediately a vision of a dust covered spaghetti western bit-part player, complete with long moustache and sombrero, leapt in to my mind - he gets down from his horse and announces, in a bad Mexican accent "my name is El’Commons - you don’t mess with my library" 

It took at least two cups of coffee before that image dissipated so I could read the rest of the press release with any seriousness.

The press release itself was about Ex Libris launching it’s Open-Platform Program, reaffirming its commitment to openness as a core company value.

Ex Libris has translated its open-platform strategy into a program spanning three major areas of activity:

• Formalizing the process by which we design, implement, document, and publish our interfaces, to maintain consistency across all products and achieve comprehensiveness
• Increasing our emphasis on service-oriented architecture (SOA) principles in our future product designs, ensuring that our solutions will provide services as core building blocks for applications developed by us or by other parties
• Providing a platform that serves as a focal point for collaboration and as such, actively encourages and facilitates institutional and community initiatives to enhance our products or use them in ways we have not foreseen

Library 2.0 Gang member and Chief Strategy Officer at Ex Libris, Oren Beit-Arie, is quoted as saying "The open-platform strategy of Ex Libris is a different way of thinking, laying the foundation for a new business model in our industry"

The one thing that doesn’t feel quite right in what they say is "a platform that serves as a focal point for collaboration and as such, actively encourages and facilitates institutional and community initiatives"   This to me indicates an ambition for the Ex Libris systems, to be at the centre of institutional integration.  Firstly, in a loosely-coupled SOA architecture, is there such a thing as a centre; and secondly, in an institution are the library systems that centre?  I believe that the answer to both of these questions is "It depends where you are standing when you view the situation - in the library, maybe; anywhere else, probably not".

Nevertheless, open world thinking is what we all need, libraries will not survive in splendid isolation.  This is a theme that has pervaded several discussions I have been involved with recently - at the JISC/SCONUL Library Management Systems Study Consultation Event in London, I commented upon yesterday, and in the latest couple of Library 2.0 Gang conversations.

To help promote this new approach Ex Libris are going to be soon launching EL Commons -

"a collaborative Web-based platform hosting the Developer Zone, where community members can access documentation for the open interfaces, upload software components that they have written and want to share, and download components from other community members, adapting such components to their needs"

There is much to be lauded in this announcement, it’s a pity that this open community based approach to working with customers has taken so long to follow what we at Talis have been saying and doing for so long.  It is a far greater pity that others in our community appear not to be even thinking about thinking this way.

Flickr photo by mharrsch.

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English collaborative Web-based platform, Gang, library systems, London, Oren Beit-Arie, SOA, upload software components

Alejandro Garza over on the Stupendous Amazing Library blog, extrapolates the fact that there is very little partnership between library system vendors to conclude that they are not interested in interoperation between their systems.  He is picking up on extracts from the JISC/SCONUL Library Management Systems Study as commented upon by the Disruptive Library Technology Jester.

Coming from a history of integration protocols, in the library world, where they were more a framework for agreement than a standard, it is easy to assume that the only way to get two systems to talk is for their suppliers to establish a partnership to get it to work.  My least favourite standard NCIP is a classic in this regard. 

As I commented on the Jester’s post, the questions for the study were:

… in the present tense. Answering with ‘our products will integrate, etc., etc.’, would have no doubt drawn equal scepticism, but for different reasons.

The answers you picked out are symptomatic of an industry in transition. Transition from products without exception based on architectures that never envisioned light-weight loosely-coupled integration. Transition to a REST based service oriented architecture where integration between library and non-library applications should be simple and based on simple and open standards.

The “Do you have partnerships with other LMS/ERM vendors?” question in the survey demonstrates an attachment to traditional thinking towards integration. So far, with the traditional heavy-weight protocols we are used to in the library world, the only reliable way to get integration that works has been through a partnership between suppliers. Web 2.0 has demonstrated that with simple light-weight protocols, integration is possible without the need for commercial partnerships. There are many benefits that arise from partnerships, but they shouldn’t be a prerequisite for successful integration.

It is not all doom and gloom though. Initiatives such as the DLF’s ILS API defining simple REST base protocols that all vendors should be able to support, have started to gather momentum in the last few months. A momentum that appears to be supported both by vendors and open source groups.

Since I made that comment I attended a JISC and SCONUL Library Management Systems Study Consultation Event in London.  This event was a get together of stakeholders in the UK academic library community, which were joined by representatives from system vendors for the afternoon session.  For those with a sadistic streak in must have made an entertaining spectacle, watching six vendor representatives (Ex Libris, Infor, Innovative, OCLC, SirsiDynix & Talis) trying to squeeze their views in to 5 minute slots.  From most of those presentations and the discussion that followed, it is clear that the vendors are just as much stakeholders in this as the rest of the community.

I feel there is a refreshing openness in opinion and approach that is starting to spread through the conversations in the world of library systems.   This openness has been in high evidence in the recent Library 2.0 Gang conversations on ILS APIs and Bolt-on OPACs. 

It was a good meeting in London, I only hope that the organisers can keep the momentum going and build a community around the concerns of all the stakeholders, vendors included.  If the initiative started by the study falls back in to the traditional model of projects and reports that we are used to, it will be a massive waste of an opportunity.

Back to my original question - do we need partnerships to enable interoperability?  No we don’t.  With loosely-coupled integration, facilitated by web native light-weight open APIs, interoperability should ‘just happen’.  Vendors should, and are starting to be in the position to, say my systems are open for you to interoperate with - who ever you are, partnership in place or not.  This won’t happen over night, but we are already on a new path, with a healthy does of credit for the DLF’s leadership in giving us some direction.

Photo from Flickr by Just.Luc.

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English Alejandro Garza, API, integration protocols, library systems, light-weight protocols, London, non-library applications, SOA, Stupendous Amazing Library, United Kingdom

I attended the DataPortability lunch meetup in London on Sunday (see link to some photos above), where I met up with DP enthusiasts including Tom Morris, Tony Haile, Chris Saad (founder), Cassandra Shanks, Imp, Julian Bond, Christian Scholz, and Sokratis Papafloratos. We had some great food and interesting discussions, including DP scenarios, the scope of DataPortability (is it more than just the Social Web?), SIOC, forthcoming announcements, and more…

Tom, Christian and I went to the OpenSocial hackathon at the BT centre afterwards. I spoke with organiser Michael Mahemoff briefly, and Dan Peterson invited us to attend the forthcoming Google I/O event in May. I also listened in to Dan Brickley and Cassie discuss connections between FOAF and the OpenSocial APIs. (Unfortunately, I missed the presentations which were on in the morning before I arrived in London.)

English Cassandra Shanks, Chris Saad, Christian Scholz, Dan Brickley, Dan Peterson, food, Google, Julian Bond, London, Michael Mahemoff, Sokratis Papafloratos, Tom Morris, Tony Haile

If you've seen me talk at a conference recently (perhaps XTech or ApacheCon Europe) you'll know that I'm very interested in what happens when the coders who made the web get to script the real world. Cheap and powerful hardware prototyping is now within the reach of anyone who can code a webapp or configure a Unix box.

If you've taken the first steps in tinkering with an Arduino or similar kit, why not take it up a gear and sign up for the Hardcore Hardware Hacking Weekend in London on July 21st and 22nd? Massimo Banzi, co-creator of Arduino, will be teaching advanced hardware skills and I'll be there to explain how to plug it all into software and the internet. I'm especially looking forward to hearing from guest speaker Moritz Waldemeyer. Places are limited and going fast.

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Uncategorized London, Massimo Banzi, Moritz Waldemeyer, Unix

Last month I went along to the Google Open Source Jam in London. It was a very entertaining evening with a great crowd. At the last minute I decided to give a quick show-and-tell on the work in progress at Nature.

Jeremy Rayner was kind enough to upload some videos that he took from the evening's talks. Here is my two minutes:

The work went down pretty well and I had a lot of productive conversations afterwards. In particular, Ben Laurie from Google has since donated some excellent mathematical data for us to use. The project is finished for now and deserves a full writeup. Until that's done, here are some screenshots of the final state of the system:

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Uncategorized Ben Laurie, Google, Jeremy Rayner, London

It's nearly time to return to London for a pause and a stretch. Since I quit my job at the BBC almost exactly a year ago, I've spent 4 months snowboarding, attended 6 conferences and spoken at 3 (LIFT06, ETech, SXSW, XTech, Railsconf and Foocamp), worked on at least 5 freelance contracts, lived in 3 different countries (France, Holland and the USA) and spent time in at least 5 others (Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Finland). I've travelled more than 40,000 miles by air, taken a flight every 2 weeks on average, and probably met more people in one year than in all the previous years of my life put together.

Although it's no substitute for simply avoiding wasteful airtravel, after doing the calculations for this post I paid for a 15,000 lbs CO2 carbon offset from TerraPass.

My final stop on the current journey is the Near Field Interactions workshop at NordiCHI in Oslo. I'll be representing Thinglink along with Ulla-Maaria Mutanen.

On October 17th I'll be back in my own flat in Hackney, East London and considering my next steps. 2007 has a lot to live up to. Of course, the planning for XTech 2007 has already begun and I've just submitted my talk proposal for next year's ETech.

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Uncategorized Austria, BBC, Finland, France, Germany, London, Oslo, Spain, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Ulla-Maaria Mutanen, United States

UPDATE: video from the talk, expertly shot by Jyri Engestrom, is now available.

I'm heading to Helsinki in a few days for the next Thinglink workshop. My lovely hosts Ulla-Maaria and Jyri have organised a chance for me to give an Aula talk on "the Open Data Movement". I'm honoured to be part of a series that has included Ben Cerveny, Henry Jenkins, Joi Ito and Lawrence Lessig.

Here's the invitation:

OPEN DATA MOVEMENT - THE NEXT WAVE OF OPEN SOURCE

Matt Biddulph
www.hackdiary.com

Thursday August 17th at 18:00
Helsinki Institute for Information Technology (HIIT)
6th floor, Pinta-building, High Tech Center (HTC), Ruoholahti
Tammasaarenkatu 3, Helsinki

Tilaisuus on avoin ja maksuton. Luento on englanninkielinen.
Welcome - Tervetuloa!

* * *

The Wikipedia is only the tip of the iceberg of information that is becoming freely accessible on the internet. Following the success of open source, an open data movement is occurring online that seeks to gather, publish and enable the reuse of rich machine-readable datasets - like all programs ever broadcasted by the BBC.

By opening up these wellsprings of information, which were previously only accessible to large institutions, the open data movement has unleashed a new wave of creativity on the Web. Programmers, students, and companies are building mashups by overlaying photos, blog posts, and other objects to open datasets like the BBC Programme Catalogue, Wikipedia, Open Streetmap, and Thinglink.

As a case in point, Biddulph will describe how the BBC's database of programming from the 1950s to the present day was transformed from an internal green-screen application to a public Web 2.0 service using Ruby on Rails. Expect to see some playful examples of what you could do with it and other open datasets.

* * *

Matt Biddulph is a freelance software developer based in London. He previously worked at BBC Radio and Music Interactive as the leader of the software architecture team, aka Head of Plugging Things Into Other Things. He blogs on Hack Diary (www.hackdiary.com).

* * *
The event is organized by Aula (www.aula.org) in collaboration with HIIT. Aula is an open network that promotes the exchange of ideas across boundaries.

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Uncategorized BBC, BBC Radio, Ben Cerveny, freelance software developer, Helsinki, Helsinki Institute for Information Technology, Henry Jenkins, High Tech Center, Information Technology, Joi Ito, Lawrence Lessig, London, Matt Biddulph, Open Data Movement, public Web, software architecture team, www.aula.org, www.hackdiary.com