I attended the 15th annual SEMANTiCS conference
this week for the first time. Semantics means “meaning” in language, and in the
context of taxonomies and other controlled vocabularies (knowledge organization
systems) semantics is a given. We taxonomists don’t concentrate on the topic of
semantics that much, because it’s a basic characteristic of knowledge
organization systems, which focus on concepts and their meanings, rather than
just words. Tagging/indexing with a taxonomy or other kind of knowledge
organization system may even be called “semantic enrichment.” Semantics is not
a given, however, in related areas of information technology and data science,
but more awareness and interest in how technology and semantics can support
each other, for better utilization of
information, is growing, as this conference demonstrates. These may include
technologies and standards of the Semantic Web, but uses go beyond the Web to
include various internal enterprise applications.
SEMANTiCS is a European conference that rotates in different
cities This year the conference was in Karlsruhe, Germany, for the first time,
which turns out to be somewhat of a technology center. Before I went, someone
told me to expect European conferences which are not merely spinoffs of
American conferences to be different, with perhaps less intermingling,
socializing, and networking. That was certainly not the case. I found the
attendees, whether German or from other European countries, to be very friendly
and open to speaking with and connecting with new colleagues, whether myself or
others. So, it was definitely a good networking opportunity.
The SEMANTiCS conference is more in the area of information
technology and data science than in fields of content/knowledge management,
where we taxonomists tend to be, but, of course, it was not just about
technology, but rather about the added “semantic layer.” What I liked is that
it brought together taxonomists (I was not the only one) with those who work in
technology (software developers, solutions architects, computer scientists,
data scientists, etc.). The theme of the conference is knowledge graphs and AI,
which have also become themes of the Taxonomy Boot Camp conferences recently.
Ontologies, another specialty that bridges the work of taxonomists and computer
scientists, were also a focus of this conference. Other topics included machine
learning, data governance, and knowledge management.
The SEMANTiCS conference is somewhat unique in how it
bridges both industry and academia. It has both industry presentations and
academic papers, each with separate conference chairs/review committees, and
with academic papers to be published as conference proceedings , yet the
presentations were not in separate tracks, and both industry and academic
presentations were combined into the same sessions by theme. Session themes
included knowledge graphs, natural language processing, semantic information
management, knowledge discovery & semantic search, knowledge extraction, data
integration, and also thesaurus & ontology management (in which I
presented). There were also subject-themed tracks on legal technology and on digital
humanities/cultural heritage. In each time slot were five consecutive sessions.
Heather Hedden presenting at SEMANTiCS 2019 Karlsruhe |
SEMANTiCS is not put on by an event company, but is rather a
collaborative effort of several organizations, companies and educational
institutions, with some variation, depending on the location. The Semantic Web Company has been a consistent organizer/sponsor. Others this year included FIZ Karlsruhe and several European
universities.
By the numbers, the conference had 472 registered attendees
and 25 sponsors, of which 15 were also exhibitors. There were 37 industry
presentations, 28 academic paper presentations, 5 keynote/plenary presentations,
2 invited talks, 1 panel discussion, 31 posters, and 9 preconference
workshops/tutorials. This was the largest SEMANTiCS conference to date.
Attendees gather for the conference gala dinner |
Particularly exciting was the announcement that, in
additional to next September’s conference in Amsterdam, for the first time
SEMANTiCS will come to the United States, scheduled for April 21-23 in
Austin, Texas: SEMANTiCS Austin 2020. (Call for proposals due November 8.) Lead organizers are the Semantic Web Company and Enterprise Knowledge. The conference won’t be identical to the European version, as it will not have academic papers, but it promises to be very interesting and
informative, and I plan to be there.
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