Semantic Technologies and Ontologies Overview Presentation

Last year, I did a short talk on semantic technologies and ontologies, and thought that I would share it. The audience was mostly people who were new to the technologies, and needed to understand their basics and how/where they are used.

[Disclaimer] The presentation is pretty basic ...

But it seemed to work. It overviews key terms (like the "o-word", ontology :-) and standards (based on the ever popular, semantic "layer cake" image). In looking over the deck, I see that I should have talked about RIF (Rule Interchange Format). But, I was using SWRL at the time, and so gravitated to that. (My apologies for not being complete.)

Since the talk was meant to show that semantic technologies are not just an academic exercise, I spent most of the time highlighting how and where the technologies are used. IMHO, I think that the major uses are:

• Semantic search and query expansion
• Mapping and merging of data
• Knowledge management

The last bullet might be a bit ambiguous. For me, it means organizing knowledge (my blog's namesake) and inferring new knowledge (via reasoning and logic).

There are also quite a few examples of real companies using ontologies and semantic technologies. It is kind of amazing when you look at what is being done.

So, take a look and let me know what you think.

And, as a teaser, I want to highlight that I will be presenting at the next Ontology Summit 2014 session on Thursday, January 23rd, on "Reuse of Content from ISO 15926 and FIBO". If you want to listen in, the details for the conference call are here.  Hopefully, you can join in.

Andrea