SweoIG/TaskForces/Next Steps

Next Steps for SWEO

What Should SWEO Continue to Do?

• Maintain the FAQ and the Use Cases/case studies Web sites.

What Should SWEO Start Doing?

• Have more of a business focus.
• Related to the issue of "speaking for the W3C" which is scribed below, it would be nice to have more W3C employees on the interest group. For example, more people from the communications must be on the SWEO IG, because they have the authority to speak for W3C. Also, they could have helped us to get the "collections of useful material" running as a permanent web service on the w3c site.

What Should SWEO Stop Doing?

• Developing software or running services such as the infogatherer or the plans for a portal. It took way too long compared to normal commercial development and the outcome is limited. The problem here is that the W3C structure does not support IG members to work on such implementations and service things 40h a week. We have a distributed set of volunteers that work with on low flame and coordination amongst parties is limiting the scarce time. It is visible that W3C runs such services, such as the HTML validator, but using W3C employed staff. An interest group does not provide a good organisational structure for this. Related to next point...
• Let an interest group "Speak for the W3C". We see it with the FAQ, which is a borderline document. It is maintained by Ivan Herman and his role is both W3C employee, SemWeb Activity Lead, and SweoIg member. As W3C employee he can speak in the name of the W3C in this FAQ, which made it such a success. If IG group members from member organizations want to "speak for the w3c", they can only do that if they publish an interest group note, which is a well defined process and guarantees well reviewed and quality outcome. When we generated documents half-heartedly, the outcome was not-so-good.
• Work on Semantic Web branding.

Taskforce/Activities Debriefing

• Business Presentation: Not sure yet, started late.
• Collateral Material:
  • Success: Not as expected.
  • Why: Took too long, due to too many opinions. No deadline for comments. We missed all the events the flyer was meant for
  • Lesson learned: We should maybe have tried to create multiple flyers, so that we wouldn't have needed the group-wide agreement for the single flyer.
• Community Projects:
  • Success: Mostly?
  • Why: Kick-Off worked nicely, but only projects with enough self-motivation made progress
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Semweb FAQ:
  • Success: Yes
  • Why: Ivan took the lead, had done a lot of work upfront already, incorporated feedback without getting lost in process discussions
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Case Studies:
  • Success: Yes
  • Why: Coordination via SWEO, content written by others, very active taskforce leads
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Info Gathering:
  • Success: Not sure yet
  • Why: No real news for insiders, no friendly entry-point for newcomers. Got a bit lost in technical details
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Preferred Document Collection
  • Success: Not sure yet
  • Why: not finished yet
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Enterprise Survey:
  • Success: hmmm
  • Why: Single-Person bottleneck
  • Lesson learned: ...
• Logos/Branding
  • Success: sort-of, but not as expected pushed the Comm Team a little bit
  • Why: no consensus, Comm team doesn't really want to give branding decisions away
  • Lesson learned: We spent way too many SWEO resources, with no clear idea whether the Comm team will let us propose the tech logos to the different groups, or for T-Shirts or similar stuff designed by us (most probably not).
• General
  • Success: Yes, and a couple of weeks left (several new things to point people at, e.g. the case studies, or the FAQ, hopefully the Tutorial Collection, and more Community Project output)

Possible General Suggestions and Comments

• Let the task leader make decisions, if necessary
• Specify a time-frame or more concrete milestones for the different activities
• Don't be shy to discontinue or re-assign activities that are stuck for too long?
• Don't get in the way of the Comm team?
• Susie++ as group chair, Ivan++

Points on envisioned cooperation between STI2 and SWEO

(Where I write SWEO2, I basically mean the W3C, whatever group(s) it decides to establish around SemWeb education & outreach. --Jacek)

• We agree with other commenters that the SWEO2 should "speak for the W3C".
• SWEO2 could review STI2's Semantic Web Master curriculum and materials, and maybe even consider giving them some publicity.
• STI2 should submit its training materials on the core aspects of the SemWeb to SWEO2, which may review and perhaps also adopt them.
• W3C and SWEO2 experts should be included in STI2 Expert DB.
• SWEO2 and STI2 could co-organize training events and summer schools. Whenever appropriate, STI2 would let SWEO2 know about its event planned events and SWEO2 could join in. Due to STI2 being represented in SWEO2, the other direction is covered.
• SWEO2 should consider participation in STI2-organized conferences such as ESWC, ASWC, ESTC etc., even to the extent of a W3C track, for instance.
• SWEO2 could hold some of its meetings in conjunction with STI2 conferences.
• SWEO2 could help form the STI2 certification programs, and then the W3C could consider officially embracing ("blessing") such programs.