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A couple of people pinged me last week to see how i was doing and to find out how i felt about the news that Dow Jones had a major reorganization and was combining the Enterprise and Consumer Divisions. As many of you know, i have been with the Enterprise Media Group (formally factiva) for 10 years.

Of course timing is everything and I happen to be on maternity leave and although i have spoken to a couple of my colleagues after the news (yeah i just couldn't help it!), i mostly have gotten the news from internal memos, blog/media coverage and industry analyst insights that have been published.

So what do i think? If you have been reading my blog for a while you know that since 2005 i have been writing about enterprise information delivery and the consumerization of information and information delivery and consumption tools in the enterprise. My main theory being that the tools that employees use outside of the workplace influence and drive the tools that they will ultimately use within the enterprise and at times become one and the same.

So since i have been advocating and working with customers for years trying to assist them in creating the right tool sets for their employees, i believe that the combining of the two divisions could not come at a better time. Four years ago when i first started writing about what our former CEO/EVP Clare Hart eventually called the 'prosumer' - those users were the early adopters. Fast forward to today and most if not all enterprise users are keenly aware of how consumer web applications, portals and tools operate and facilitate their information finding needs. These users now demand that the tools that are given to them to do their jobs offer the same if not superior functionality.

I am hoping that this change will make my job easier and even more rewarding when i return from maternity leave as we continue to leverage the technologies that the consumer media group has developed to deliver innovative tools for enterprise use.

The Silicon Valley Semantic Technology Group organized by Peter Berger is one of the meetups that i have been going to for a while and have even helped coordinate and host in the past. Last Thursday the 15th they had what seems to be a great session about Semantics in Financial Services with David Newman who is a Senior Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Wells Fargo Bank (now part of Wachovia). I missed it due to the bambina, but lucky for me and for the rest of you that were not able to make it, the excellent slidedeck that David Newman used has been posted on Slideshare- see below (thanks Peter!).

Based on the Slidedeck, the presentation covered:

• The Case for Semantic Technology- Important Key Drivers, Limitations and Benefits
  
• Overview of Semantic Technology - Basic Overview that hits all the most know items for business and technology folks
  
• Semantic Technology Providers and Adopters -a high level list. He makes mention of Dow Jones as an adopter but forgets to mention Synaptica as a technology provider of ontology editor
  
• Semantic Applications for Financial Services- I am always a sucker for 'use-cases' of semantic technologies in the enterprise and Newman provides two slides that outline various semantic applications for financial services which i have highlighted below
• Recommended Semantic Technology Books and Articles

Many of the Semantic Applications that Newman points out for financial services can also be extended to other non-financial services companies but his breakdown highlights specific opportunities for financial services. Wish i had been there in person to learn more about which of these applications Newman and his team are tackling using semantic technologies:





From Peter Berger's introduction:
David Newman serves as a Senior Architect in the Enterprise Architecture group at Wells Fargo Bank. He has been following semantic technology for the last 3 years; and has developed several business ontologies. He has been instrumental in thought leadership at Wells Fargo on the application of Semantic Technology and is a representative of the Financial Services Technology Consortium (FSTC)on the W3C SPARQL Working Group