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

Just like last year, I am very excited about the upcoming Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose on June 14th-18th. The program looks great and aside from attending many sessions and i am also going to be very busy!

Starting on Sunday, June 14, 2009 from 02:00 PM - 04:00 PM we kick-off with the Semantic Code Camp, an event that is free for non-conference attendees as well (register here).

On Monday, June 15th from 6:00-8:00pm, The DataPortability Project is hosting a DataPortability get-together. As an added bonus, when you register to attend this meetup, you will get access to Chris Saad’s conference session "It's Time for Social Media to Become Personal Media" which takes place prior to the meet-up (5:00pm-6:00pm). You will have access to the full conference and you will be able to also network with all the other attendees. You need to register to get access into the conference center for the session and get-together. (contact me with questions)

On Tuesday, June 16, 2009 from 11:45 AM - 12:45 PM , i am super excited about being on a panel moderated by Paul Miller titled "Semantifying Social Networks" with Nova Spivack, Stephen A. Leicht and Amit Sheth. (for this session you need to be a conference attendee, please see below)

Interested in attending the full conference? Use the DataPortability Discount code: ST9DP . It will give the user $200 off a “full event” or “conference only” registration fee and $100 off a “tutorial day only” fee.

For example: If you are also interested in attending a full Semantic Search Day on Wednesday. Use the code to get you $100 off the day price of $195- costing only $95!

Here is what i look like, come find me if you want to chat~ See you in San Jose!

Like i have said before, if i am not planning and organizing some sort of event (personal or work related) i am not happy- perhaps i missed my calling as an 'events coordinator' or something.

On September 22nd from 2-6pm in Palo Alto, CA - Christine Connors the Director of Semantic Technology Solutions for Dow Jones and the Business Champion for Synaptica, will be leading a roundtable discussion on the subject of Semantic Technologies in the Enterprise.

Many of our Enterprise Customers have been asking us about semantic technologies and since Christine will be in town to present at Taxonomy Bootcamp in San Jose, we thought it would be a great time to schedule a roundtable discussion on the subject since our May scheduled one had to be canceled due to last minute scheduling conflicts.

Some of our previous roundtable events that i have coordinated have been very successful and have covered subjects such as Social Media Measurement and Folksonomies and Taxonomies in the Enterprise. This event will be at our Palo Alto office that also houses the local printing plant for The Wall Street Journal. This means that afterwards we get to do a special guided tour of the printing plant which is always a highlight for the attendees (and no matter how many times i do it - for me as well!).

The roundtable portion of the event will cover topics such as:

• What can Semantic technologies do for your organization?
• How can the Semantic Web help you in your job role?
• Where do you start and what are best practices?
• How do you “sell” Semantic web investment concepts internally?

I still have a couple of seats left at the table- so if you an individual at a company that is looking at using or are already using semantic technologies in your enterprise and are interested in coming to meet some of your fellow Bay area colleagues that are working on similar projects- please e-mail at daniela.barbosa@dowjones.com or visit our registration page. {please no vendors or consultants at this time, the aim is to make this a BoF (Birds of a Feather) type of roundtable}

If you know of someone that might be interested in the topic please feel free forward this post to them.

Also- if you are interested in just the tour part of the printing plant i might be able to squeeze in a couple of additional people- please drop me a line.

On a perfect foggy walk kinda day this afternoon i listened to the newest podcast episode of the Bungee Connect Developer Network. I got turned on to this podcast show last week when i listened in on the episode on the OAuth initiative, which included Chris Messina, Larry Halff and Eran Hammer-Lahav and so far have enjoyed all four podcasts i listened to.

One of the podcasts i listened to today was with Jon Aizen of Dapper.net. Dapper provides a no-fee tool for making almost any structured web site data accessible via a REST API. On my last review of Dapper when it was first launched, i mentioned that it needed some UI work and it looks like it certainly has advanced in the last year and a half so it is probably time for me to dig in again. Starting with this short 'how to' video it is obvious that the UI is more intuitive and i spent about 30minutes playing around this evening and was able to create a dap that i might be able to use for a project i am doing (more on that in another post!).

During the podcast Aizen goes through some of the uses of Dapper and provides a very good overview of what the service is all about for both users and publishers. However that wasn't really news to me- the New DapperAds Semantic Ad Technology however was. At about minute 24 of the podcast Aizen provides an example of the power of Semantic Ad Technology with an example of a online grocer, using Dapper to dynamically generate Ads on recipe sites. So when someone for example is looking at a pumpkin pie recipe on a recipe site, the online grocer can by having a dap associated with the ingredients dynamically create a shopping cart of all the ingredients needed for that recipe.

Although not as complicated as the online grocer example Aizen gives, this Screencast of a simple Dynamic Ad creation in which in a couple of click a gaming website can quickly embed Amazon chicklets based on the game reviews that each page does provides a good overview of what they are looking to offer.