The US Semantic Technologies Symposium was held at Wright State University a month ago where there were great discussions with Craig Knoblock about SPARQL servers reliability1, Eric Kansa about storing archeology data and Open Context, Eric Miller about the workings of the W3, mid West farmers and old bikes, Matthew Lange about tracking crops with LOD and a 'fruitful' talk with Evan Wallace about farm data storage standards. 

Thinking through these conversations, I decided to outline what I think are the troubling conclusions for our area, namely that a) Semantic Web adoption is lagging, b) we keep rehashing old problems without moving on and c) our ongoing lack of support for our own projects after which I'll suggest a few solutions.

This is a half-day workshop about the current business uses of the semantic web. It is targeted at executives, project managers and subject matter experts who want to understand what problems the technology can solve. This workshop will concern itself with the basic building blocks of the semantic web and the solutions that each aspect brings to an organization. The objective of the workshop is not to provide in-depth technical training, rather, we wish to present an overview that will enable a varied audience to determine what this technology provides for their organization. Specific aspects will include recent standards such as the FIBO and schema.org and the recruitment and training of staff, as well as opportunities for localization to different markets and lowering the cost of regulatory reporting. In order to anchor the discussions the tribulations of a fictional company, "The Triples Coffee Company", will be used to present business cases within different areas of an enterprise. Example solutions will then be outlined using a semantic web approach for each business case.

Jointly presented with Robert Warren, Ph.D., Jennifer Schellinck, Ph.D., Patrick Boily, Ph.D.