FOAF-a-rama

Damian Steer and I have pulled together some ideas we’ve both been thinking about for a while for the FOAF Galway workshop. I’ve been looking for quick ways to validate RDF documents for a while, and it turns out Schematron and Damian’s TreeHugger together are a pretty good fit. Strangely easy actually. Here’s the position paper, which could have done with a bit more work but sets out most of the ideas we were thinking of. The really neat thing is that in some cases the same Schematron rules file will work to validate the same file as XML (using XSLT) and as RDF (using TreeHugger-XSLT). I’m not sure what to make of that, but it’s definitely cool.
We so need a cute bunny logo.

<crschmidt> We are the foafions, my friend….


the Logica mini-conference centre, Enchede

Dirk and I have been finalizing the arrangements for FOAFCamp, and we now have some nice pictures of the Twente University campus where it will be held, August 19-20 2004.
Now we have more accurate figures, we’ve worked out that it will cost 100 Euros per person rather than 150, which I’m really pleased about (that includes breakfast and lunch for thursday and friday and dinner on thursday, but not accommodation – see below).
We now have registration form and a hotel booking form (type ‘Logica’ in the comments part of the hotel booking form if you want to stay there – which we recommend – 36 Euros a night, pay when you get there). The Logica facility is a cute little mini-conference centre for about 50 people. It’s just perfect…
Many thanks to Dirk and Gina for asking all the right questions, to Dirk and Ardy for being so hospitable, and to Marjolein and Leo for showing us around 🙂
We’ll be there from Wednesday 18th evening. Hope to see you there, or at the also-forthcoming FOAF-Galway workshop on FOAF and Social Software, September 1-2 2004.

FOAFCamp and FOAF Galway

foaf camp picture
Dan’s already blogged these new FOAF events, but I thought I might as well too, as I have been helping Dirk-Willem van Gulik with some of the arrangements for FOAFCamp and I’m going to see the physical site in Enschede next weekend.
FOAF Galway is SWAD-Europe’s ‘final workshop’ (although actually, heh, there might be some other workshops held by the project which are actually temporally after this one). But the ‘final workshop’ is supposed to be larger in scale than our other smaller developer workshops, and wider in scope, too. Previously we’ve held quite tightly scoped workshops, on image description, calendaring etc; this one is on FOAF, Social Networking and the Semantic Web. Potentially it covers a huge area: harvesting, storage, querying; combining SemWeb vocabs, building SemWeb vocabs, all of which have been themes within the SWAD-Europe project. The workshop will also look at future topics of work in the Semantic Web area. Hopefully we should get some interesting ideas about trust on the SemWeb, for example. The workshop is 1-2 September, in Galway, Ireland.
Anyway, all you need to come along is a short paper (2 pages) submitted by 22nd July (or a long paper submitted by 18th), and we and our lovely hosts at DERI will provide lunch and nice cups of tea etc for a two days of interesting technical discussion. You’ll have to find your own accommodation though. Details on the local page for the event. Many thanks to John Breslin and Stefan Decker for all the hard work they’ve put into the organisation and planning of this.
FOAFCamp, organised by Dirk and the other lovely chaps from @Semantics is more informal, but also lots of fun. The idea is to gather together FOAFs in an attractive setting for a relatively unstructured two days (19th/20th August) of geeking. Enschede is the home of the Grolsh brewery, but that’s sheer coincidence. FOAFCamp is inspired by last years’ FOO Camp and similar events such as Apache Hack-a-thon. It costs money – 100 Euro was the cheapest we could get it (but do ask if you’re short of cash and we’ll see what we can do). You also have to sort out your own accommodation, though we’ll do lunch on both days, nice cups of tea (obviously), and dinner on one night. Mail foafcamp@asemantics.com if you’re interested (even if you’re not sure). You can also add stuff to the Foaf wiki, e.g. FoafCamp page.
We’ve been wanting to gather Friends of FOAF together for a while: we reckon these are two neat opportunities to come and meet people and talk about the future of FOAF. Do come along if you can.