Information Communications Effectiveness (ICE) is now the key to governmental and political success. The benefit to citizens of effective government technology (IT) and telecommunications - from process improvements and knowledge management to ecommerce, communications, collaboration, individual empowerment and optimal economic development - is so powerful and transformational, it is inconceivable a less tech-savvy up-start could upstage an effective ICE-savvy incumbent. We have never seen an ICE-savvy politician surface in NEO, so all communities here are just waiting for information revolution.

Over the past year everyone in the interconnected world started waking up to the value of Information Technology for individuals to transform every day life on Earth, for good and bad - a point largely demonstrated by the role the Internet and blogs/wikis now play in social organizations. 2004 saw a new dawning of enlightenment. And, overnight, a tsunami taught us that individual IT empowerment is transforming life on Earth for all, evolving us from isolated people and communities to an interwoven fabric of interconnected humanity sharing one planet with personal familiarity with the quality of life of all others.

The insightful and socially conscious civic entrepreneur Adele DiMarco Kious cooks up valuable vision for all in a recipe for prosperity posted to her Sicilian Soulfood blog - she surfaces a concept I hold dear, which is the value of developing a knowing and loving community. More than ever in our history, the American psyche is rooted in fear, but we have nothing to fear but living in fear itself. The recent natural disaster in South East Asia shows man is not in control of destiny.

The Semantic Web in Industry Today

by, Nick Berente
nxb41 [at] case [dot] edu

Disclaimer: This web site is intended to be a broad introduction to concepts associated with the semantic web and its current application. It is a result of my own investigation into these concepts, and as a non-technical person, it is limited by my understanding.

Introduction

The World Wide Web enables people to share publish information largely in the form of HTML pages like this one. This data is syntactic. That is, the content of the web is comprised of raw symbols that require a human to interpret (syntax).

In the future, many believe that data will be effectively contextualized to enable computers to interpret meaning (semantics) accurately. When computers can understand the information within the web, a great deal of additional power is expected to be unleashed from the Internet. This vision of the Internet, where the content is understandable by computers and unequivocally understood by humans, is known as "the semantic web."

The technologies underlying the semantic web enable people to associate meaning with the information they put in web pages. This is done through RDF tags that link data to its meaning. Meaning takes the form of URIs, and can be interpreted across groups through standard ontologies, or OWLs. See the “in-depth links� to the left for more detailed explanations.

Most people agree that the realization of a broad semantic web is still quite a way off in the future, if ever (see “Metacrap� to the left). One much-discussed area where semantic web principles are present today are in social networking applications such as “friend of a friend� (FOAF, www.foaf.com ). Similar networking implementations exist in other forms such as localized social networking ( www.tribe.net ), business networking ( www.ecademy.com ) and all-purpose networking groups ( www.ryze.com ).

There is an often overlooked area, however, where organizations are beginning to apply the principles of the semantic web in what looks to be a promising direction: business data integration.

Business Data Integration

The documented information and knowledge of organizations typically lies in relational databases of specific applications, within text-based documents, web-based collaboration applications, etc. These programs typically do not freely interchange data within an organization, let alone between organizaitons. The current solution to this problem is enterprise application integration (EAI) software. EAI solutions tend to require significant customization and maintenance of common data models, and are therefore often quite expensive, troublesome, and require constant attention.

An initial application for semantic web technologies looks to be an alternative method for extracting data from a wide array of applications in a usable form. Below are five industry examples of pioneering vendors that use semantic web principles in business data integration applications: Autonomy, Celcorp, Network Inference, Stratify, and Verity.

Autonomy
Autonomy created the IDOL server, which uses advanced pattern mapping techniques to associate meaning with unstructured text data. The engine is based on non-linear adaptive signal processing and is "rooted in theories of Bayesian Inference and Claude Shannon ' s Principles of Information." NASA uses IDOL server to help the software engineers that are developing earth and star observing platforms to sort through huge quantities of data in a personalized fashion.
( http://www.autonomy.com/content/Customers/Testimonials.html)

Celcorp
Celcorp ' s products utilize a recorder to capture task information, and stores this information as models in a knowledge base. A reasoning engine and agent technology are employed to interpret this knowledge base and present data accordingly. CIT’s commercial services unit is an example of a successful implementation of Celcorp ' s technology. CIT has reduced the time it takes to settly invoice disputes from over 8 days to under 1 day by using Celcorp software to access invoice information within internal and across multiple external systems. ( http://www.celcorp.com/cust.html)

Network Inference
Network Inference has developed an inference engine that adaptively interprets data of multiple forms, and mediates conflicts of meaning using standard ontologies. Based on WDC standards, Network Inference addresses a wide array of applications where a semantic web solution is superior to traditional systems that store data in “non-reusable software algorithms.� Network Inference offers an example of an electronic components manufacturer that took their quarterly Wall-Street reporting cycle from six weeks to one day. ( http://iswc2004.semanticweb.org/posters/NI-Pollock-ISWC-Poster.pdf)

Stratify
Stratify develops software that automatically categorizes and classifies data from within the applications themselves using APIs. Classifications are generated from the taxonomy server, and standard taxonomies are the means by which users effectively access data and documents from multiple applications. Dialog, an on-line news service, has purchased the stratify taxonomy server to classify real-time news data and documents for their clients. ( http://www.stratify.com/pressroom/press_releases/press_rel40.html)

Verity
A publicly traded business data integration firm that uses semantic web technology, Verity is a $100+ million provier of knowledge management solutions. Within their suite of products are tools for taxonomy management, automatic classification of data, and data extraction from a variety of applications. One unique application for their taxonomy management software is the researching needs for a large multi-national law firm. In addition to other searching enhancements, lawyers from around the world will be able to search for information across multi-language data sources using a uniform taxonomy. ( http://www.verity.com/company/press/releases/release.jsp?pressID=972)

The organizations listed above are not meant to represent an exhaustive list, or even an accurate cross section. Rather, they were chosen because each company offered an example of their application being used in industry, and each of the five companies describe their mechanism of structuring unstructured data differently. Below are some additional firms that are doing data integration on principles of the semantic web (again, not an exhaustive list) :

Brandsoft - Resource Manager uses semantic web technology to manage enterprise web content and applications

ClearForest - Text-based bridge between structured and unstructured data

Cogito - knowledge management solucion that accesses data from various databases then ' atomizes ' it, automatically creating documents, etc.

Contivo - Vocabulary Management Solution uses dictionary and thesaurus in its integrator to access semantic information from legacy and flat file data

Cyscom - semantic data integration engine that structures MS Office data for ERP and other business applications

Empolis - solutions for rationalizing business processes and processing both structured and unstructured information

Enigmatec - Execution Management System is targeted at companies who want to build agile applications that take advantage of grid computing

HP - HP has a semantic web research group that, among other things, developed ' Jena ' - a semantic web toolkit

IBM - IBM ' s Institute of Search and Text Analysis, among other things, developed an "Unstructured Information Management Architecture"

Metatomix - leverages semantic web based technologies to build enterprise resource interoperability platforms that correlate data from multiple sources

Pantero - engine that uses metadata to model data exchange across service oriented architectures (SOAs)

Semagix - Freedom architecture at the core of semantic web based solutions for content & knowledge management, homeland security, and anti-money laundering

Semaview - semantic web based calendaring (excellent semantic web intro white paper)

TopQuadrant - offers semantic web based consulting services working off of ' capability cases, ' or best practices for specific issues

Tucana - semantic web suite of products and services targeted at enterprise information integration

UB Access - Semantic Web Accessibility Platform enables companies to make web content accessible through "non-invasive" technologies

Unicorn - consulting-based product that creates custom information model and mapes existing data to that model

Based on this cursory analysis, it appears that there are two main types of data integration applications for semantic web based technologies. The first is to somehow access unstructured data, and put meaning around it, giving it structure. The second is to map existing forms of structured data and map them to each other, essentially bridging their structures. Of course, some companies look to do both of these.

Two organizaitons that are encouraging certain semantic-based standards are XBRL and UDDI.

XBRL

The eXtensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) was created by an international group of hundreds of organizations with the purpose of standardizing business reporting, such as financial statement extraction. The organization has developed a taxonomy for business data, and will work with companies to implement XBRL tags within their data so that uniform, standard, and easily-compared reporting data can be quickly generated by member organizations. Companies currently reporting using XBRL include Microsoft, Edgar Online, Reuters, and TSX Group ( Canada ).

UDDI
The Universal Description, Discovery and Integration (UDDI) protocol was created by a consortium of enterprise software vendors, and is intended to enable dynamic interactions between enterprise applications through web services defined by a standard taxonomy rather than static APIs. An application of a UDDI registry would be to offer partnering businesses a web-based “service broker� linked with the ERP systems of both parties and authenticated using XML Digital Signatures ( http://uddi.org/pubs/uddi-exec-wp.pdf ). Developers can register their products as UDDI compliant through IBM, Microsoft, or SAP.

Research Agenda

To study the implementation of semantic web principles in business data integration, a researcher might take a number of approaches. One approach is to fully understand the paradigms, technical foundation, and standards of the competing products and paradigms, then follow the industry as “dominant designs� evolve. A second approach might be to understand the social ramifications of technology that can potentially enable more flexible access to information at broader levels of cross-application and cross-organization transparency.

Nick's Home Page

Pages on Dialogue and Inclusion in OSED - posting in progress

Pages related to Branding and Marketing in OSED - posting in progress

Pages related to Quality, Connected Places in OSED - posting in progress

Pages and material related to Innovation Networks in the OSED framework - posting in progress

Pages and material related to Brainpower, within the OSED - posting in progress

Pages of content, presentations and illustratives realted to Open Source Economic Development - posting in progress

This book coordinates deployment the Open Source Economic Development framework within REALNEO. The framework provides a structure for categorizing and managing the many Community Of Interest Links -COILs - of REALNEO. Ed Morrison at the Case Center for Regional Economic Issues developed the framework, and it is distributed under a Creative Commons license.

1. personal blog entry

The outline, below and attached, summarizes improvements and
enhancements to Drupal that I beleive will greatly improve the useability and
functionality of REALNEO. I would like to hear the suggestions of others.

The Fund For Our Economic Future recently publicized insight from their first Minority Forum, which features a link to an interesting presentation from the keynote speaker, Dr. John Powell from Ohio State, on issues related to diversity and regionalization. Also included is a presentation from Ray Leach, CEO of NEO entrepreneurship supporters JumpStart, which expresses a commitment to be diverse and an interest to support minority entrepreneurs and help place minority business people in companies Jump Start supports. Page 3 of the presentation also says one thing that is "Different about Jump Start" is "We believe we can serve as a convener for all interested parties to build a social network". As this is a purpose of REALNEO, and this social network is committed to all parties in the region interested in entrepreneurship, it is clear we should all work together - we're all working with Case and dedicated to bettering this region. Time to start co-convening! Later in January, Jump Start is hosting an "Exchange", which should be a nice opportunity for local entrepreneurs to form physical connections... in the mean time, REALNEO will continue developing virtual connections and explore collaboration with Jump Start.

This book organizes all REALNEO content related to the development of virtual communities, serving as the best practices and planning lab for REALNEO and other social organizations optimizing technology for innovation.

<>There are many taxonomy, site structure, technology and implementation issues all at play now and growing in complexity as REALNEO scopes up and we see broader deployment issues and opportunities ahead. For example, you created this "book" and we already have several books and forums on related topics, like "REALNEO Development Plan" (which has important source documents going back to the launch of this project) and "Technology, System Design and User Interface", "Website Taxonomy" and even "Help", "Virtual Communities" and "FIRST" - all those books/forums should be embedded in one taxonomy and tree of related books and forums, and none of this should be included in the REALNEO "Category/COIL" taxonomy (e.g. we now have 7 "virtual community" categories that are now listed as "Community of Interest Links - COILs" for economic development (e.g. creating a "virtual community industry") but actually focus on general interests - categories/COILs should be for NEO economic development issues and opportunities (e.g. "Medical" is for medical economic development, or medical issues impacting economic development, like access to healthcare and impact of lead on early child development). Even all that said, the lines are hard to draw.

As your taxonomy tree illustrates, we're forking in too many directions with too many tools, without using any of them to their full and right potentials. We don't have policies, structures and strategies on how we use forums  vs. books, vs. blogs - don't use stories at all - need to standardize on each of these terms/capabilities and their uses. Also, we need to standardize and define how we use image galleries, better structure the content of the user profiles, and specify what categories are appopriate for the current  REALNEO site (e.g. hobbies), vs. might be nice later features for a more "sociable" virtual community (in which case, we become very much like Tribe, and have communities for every band, artists, hobby, movie, book, etc. that any group of people want to collaborate/communicate on). For now, let's keep all that out of the REALNEO world, and focus on hard core economic development and entrepreneurship - no unrelated, just for the fun of it forks at all.

The categories/COILS should be economic development and entrepreneurship communities of demonstrated, known shared interest, with an involved outside "Champion" interested to develop the COIL - e.g. Jeff Buster for Wind Power, Roberta Waxman for Eary Childhood Development, Alfred Miller for East Cleveland 2010 - no REALNEO internal development issues and terms - e.g. virtual community category terms should not exist here, unless as a potential industry for NEO (e.g. developing a global "Supply Chain Community in NEO"  - and all the internal IT terms and discussions should be kept in a well defined "support" book.

The existing REALNEO Taxonomy is represented by the following outline (also attached as a Word document. Please review and submit your comments, additions, and corrections.

I. Blogs

Personal blog entry

The handbook for Drupal -- the content management system underlying RealNEO -- is available through a Creative Commons license/ Read more.

A recent report by the Pew The Pew Internet & American Life Project explores the attitude of artists to the Internet. The surprising finding: Artists and musicians are enthusiatic Internet users and they believe the Internet helps them make and sell their work.

There is an interesting posting in Hindu Business about a development by a Carnegie Mellon professor working with academe and government in India to bridge the digital divide there, which serves all people of the world. Of course, where good happens first benefits first. At a recent Tuesday@REI it was proposed a solution for helping the disconnected in Cleveland is te deploy "dumb terminals" - thin clients designed to provide exclusive top-down solutions to limited problems community leaders consider important - whereas the Carnegie Mellon model is to provide the most functional, capabilitiy rich solutions to the most disconect people of India - the illiterate - to empower them at the highest possible level in the greatest range of ways. This is the correct model, and Case has the opportunity to help demonstrate the value of this approach as we work to bridge the digital divide in East Cleveland. Read on...

The Drupal Development community - active open source communities - act with a form of artificial intelligence as independent developers and community groups develop modules and enhancements around the world and bring the value back to the core, where that value may be freely accessed around the world... self-learning and healing. At the Drupal.org site this week are posted two important examples of this process, so remarkable and beautiful, as the community addresses hated spam and collaborates and works to openly share documentation on Drupal, under "copyleft" terms of Creative Commons. See collaborative intelligence in action - read the related postings...

Many universities around the world are focusing on the study of social computing - from technology and application development to man-machine interface. REALNEO is already working with Purdue on a Drupal documentation project and we welcome additional research affiliations, and will explore teaming up with RIT. We are well affiliated with Case's Center for Regional Economic Issues and it seems time to get the IT side of the campus involved - any other Northeast Ohio universities interested to really understand this communications and human interaction revolution that is transforming politics, economics, knowledge management, industry and society? Post your suggestions here, after reading the thoughts of the social network lab director at the exceptional Rochester Institute of Technology...

Download Rev.1 of Drupal Overview. The first blog entry did not implement file attachment correctly and, hence, this second try.

The attached file is a revised version of my Drupal Overview presentation.