Starting with my favorite “track,” there were several presentations at HOPE that focused on how to make stuff – either from scratch or by repurposing other things in unusual ways. This included a lot of LEDs, microcontrollers, unusual food, and a scale model of a dodo skeleton.
The Last HOPE
AKA: How is a Hacker Con like a handbasket?
Two weeks ago I went to a hacker conference in NYC called “The Last HOPE” (HOPE = Hackers On Planet Earth). As I thought about how I’d write about it here, on my professionally-oriented blog, it seemed a little like a mental puzzle posed by Lewis Carroll: How do I explain how this relates to what I do in my day job?
New Word of the Day: Metaphrast
In a meeting today with my fellow Content Strategists, I was talking about the phenomenon where content is adapted from one format to another – for example, a TV show that’s made into a movie. My colleague Bob Maynard said “metaphrast” to identify this kind of occurrence, and I don’t remember every hearing that word before. A quick online search reveals that the commonly accepted definition is:
One who renders a text into a different form, as by recasting prose in verse.*
This is worded slightly differently from one site to another, but “prose into verse” seems to be the favorite illustration of the concept. Perhaps that’s what the ancient Greeks had in mind, but this is the 21st century. It’s the media age, so why limit ourselves? The only explanation I can come up with is that the word itself is not currently in fashion, so no one has bothered to update the examples in their definition.
Let’s see if we can reclaim this word in the service of modern content formats.
*A popular alternative definition I’ve seen several times is “A literal translator.” This strikes me as one of those definitions that’s deceptively simple – the more you think about it, the less sure you are what it means.
Site I can’t do without: StreetEasy
Almost a month since I last wrote?? What have I been doing? Well, I’ll tell you – amidst all the travelling and working and travelling for work, I bought a new apartment earlier this summer, and I’ve spent a lot of time over the past month getting it ready to move in, packing my stuff, and moving.
Usually when you tell people this, one of the first questions they will ask (at least in New York City) is how you found the place that you bought. Now, of course I had a real estate agent, but I had another indispensable tool: a website called StreetEasy.
Twittering a 7-hour client meeting
Today we had a full-day workshop with a client, and I periodically felt the need to twitter about it. There’s nothing in here specific to the client, and it’s probably interesting to no one, but I’m going to post it anyway.
- Bostoners are going to be parading today. Should be passing by the office where we’re meeting sometime in the next hour. about 7 hours ago from web
- Starting a 7 hour client meeting, and yes, I’ve had coffee. about 7 hours ago from web
- Have to remember that outside NY and some places out west, bagels are probably not worth having. about 7 hours ago from web
- Clarification: NY bagels and “out west” bagels are totally different species, but both yummy. about 7 hours ago from web
- Why take a perfectly good blondie and ruin it with raisins? about 4 hours ago from web
- damn it, lunch and caffeine withdrawal are making me crash about 3 hours ago from web
- the morning’s discussion was pretty congenial, but this afternoon, with discussion of personas, the room has suddenly become a bit hostile about 3 hours ago from web
- turns out that the problem isn’t so much with the personas themselves, but with the fact that we’re calling them “personas” about 2 hours ago from web
- one of the skeptics has become a supporter. Awesome 🙂 about 2 hours ago from web
- turns out that they like the sausage, but they actually DIDN’T want to see the tour of the factory 🙂 about 25 minutes ago from web
STC 2008 – Day 4
The last day of the Semantic Technology Conference has a few morning panels, a closing keynote, and then some afternoon seminars. But the day is really about saying goodbye to everyone, finally introducing yourself to a few of the people you’ve been crossing paths with for the past week, and making that annual trip to Koo-ki Sushi. Well, that’s what it’s about for me, anyway.
STC 2008 – Day 3
Started out the day with my own presentation – Survey of Taxonomy Tools (follow the link to view the slides). It seemed to be pretty well received, for the most part. I included some time for discussion, and several people contributed interesting comments and questions. I was pretty happy with the turnout considering that this session was first thing in the morning.
After that I was so relieved, I’m surprised I could do anything, but I jumped right back into some interesting presentations, including a panel on Developing Semantic Web Applications, a talk on Calais, and a keynote that included several of the Rising Stars of the Semantic Web. Then I ended the day on the speaking side of the table again.
STC 2008 – Day 2
Started the day out with keynote speeches by Nova Spivack (Radar Networks) & Eric Miller (Zepheira). This was followed by presentations, of which my favorites were on Persistent Identifiers, Blue Organizer, and Bringing Semantics to Mainstream Markets. I closed the day out by going to the vendor exhibits.
Semantic Technology Conference 2008 – Day 1
It occurred to me, towards the end of day one of this conference, that I’ve been making my panel choices based on the speaker more than the on the topic. Now that I know more about who is doing what, this seems to be a better indicator of whether I’ll find the presentation interesting. Of course, I still take the topic into consideration, but my knowledge of the speaker will carry equal weight and will certainly come into play as a tie breaker.
So, today I went to one tutorial by some guys from DERI and one by some guys from Metaweb (makers of Freebase), and then a presentation by Tom Ilube, of Garlik. All three were just as excellant as I’d hoped.
Continue reading “Semantic Technology Conference 2008 – Day 1”
Semantic Technology Conference 2008
Heading out to San Jose tomorrow for STC 2008. In addition to my presentation, Surveying Taxonomy Building Tools (Wednesday, May 21, 8:30-9:30AM), I’ll also be participating in a late addition panel called How to Internally Market Semantic Web Technologies in Large Enterprises (Wednesday, May 21, 5:30-6:30PM). Hope to see you there!
Meaningful Data 