{"id":168,"date":"2018-03-12T18:33:14","date_gmt":"2018-03-12T18:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.juansequeda.com\/blog\/?p=168"},"modified":"2018-03-12T18:33:14","modified_gmt":"2018-03-12T18:33:14","slug":"why-the-us-semantics-technology-symposium-was-a-big-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.juansequeda.com\/blog\/2018\/03\/12\/why-the-us-semantics-technology-symposium-was-a-big-deal\/","title":{"rendered":"Why the US Semantics Technology Symposium was a big deal"},"content":{"rendered":"
I recently attend the 1st US Semantics Technology Symposium<\/a>. I quickly published my trip report<\/a> because I wanted to get it out asap, otherwise I would never get it out (procrastination!). It\u2019s been a week since my trip report\u00a0and I can\u2019t stop thinking about this event. After a week of reflection, I realized that there is a big picture that did not come across my\u00a0trip report:\u00a0THE US2TS WAS A VERY BIG DEAL!<\/div>\n
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Why?\u00a0 Three reasons:<\/div>\n
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1) There is a thriving U.S. community\u00a0interested in semantic technologies<\/div>\n
2) We are not alone! We\u00a0have support!<\/span><\/div>\n
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3) Time is right for semantic technologies<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Let me drill through each one these points.<\/div>\n
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1) There is a thriving US community interested in semantic technologies<\/h1>\n
Before the event, I asked myself: what does success look like personally and for the wider community after this event? I didn\u2019t know what to expect and honestly, I had low expectations. I was treating this event as a social gathering with friends and colleagues that I hadn\u2019t seen in a while.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It was much more than a social gathering. I realized that there was a thriving US community interested in semantic technologies, outside of the usual suspects (academics such as USC\/ISI, Stanford, RPI, Wright State, UCSB and industry such as IBM and Franz). At the first coffee break, I told Pascal\u00a0\u201cI didn\u2019t know there were all these peoples in the US interested in semantic technologies!\u201d. Apparently many people shared the same comment with Pascal.\u00a0US2TS was the first step, in my opinion, to unify an existing community that was not connected in the US.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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I\u2019ve known about the semantic work that Inovex<\/a> and GE Research<\/a> have been doing. I was very glad to see them coming to an event like this and publicizing to the wider community about what they are doing.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Very exciting to meet new people and see what they are doing coming from places such as\u00a0Maine, U Idaho, UNC, Cornell, UC Davis, Pitt, Duke, UGA, UTEP, Oregon, Bosch, NIST, US AF, USGS, Independent Consultants,<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Additionally, very exciting to see the different applications domains. Life Science has always been prominent. I learned about the complexity of geospatial and humanities data. I\u2019m sure there are many more similar complex use cases out there.<\/div>\n
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2) We are not alone! We have support!<\/h1>\n
The US government has been funding work in semantic technologies through different agencies such NSF, DARPA and NIH.\u00a0Chaitan Baru<\/a>, Senior Advisor for Data Science at the National Science Foundation had a clear message.\u00a0NSF thinks of semantic technologies as a central component of one of its Ten Big Ideas<\/a>: Harnessing the Data Revolution:<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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“Harnessing the Data Revolution aims to engage NSF\u2019s research community in the pursuit of a cohesive, federated, national-scale approach to advance fundamental data-centric research and data-driven domain discoveries, build data infrastructure for research, and develop a 21st-century data-capable workforce.<\/a>\u201d<\/em><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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He also mentioned that the\u00a0FY 2019 Budget Request to Congress<\/a> was recently released. The\u00a0\u201cHarnessing the Data Revolution\u201d budget\u00a0request is of $30M. Plus, there is an additional $30M for an\u00a0Harnessing the Data Revolution\u00a0Convergence Accelerators.<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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How do we harness the data revolution? Chaitan and others have been working through NITRD to promote an Open Knowledge Network<\/a> that will be built by many contributors and offer content and services for the research community and for industry.\u00a0I am convinced that an\u00a0Open Knowledge Network is key component to harness\u00a0the data revolution! (More on Open Knowledge Network below.)<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Basically, NSF is dangling a $60 million carrot in front of the entire US Semantic Technologies community.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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Chaitan’s slides will be made available soon through the US2TS web site.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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3) Time is right for Semantic Technologies<\/h1>\n
Semantic Technologies work! They solve problems that require integrating data from\u00a0heterogeneous sources where having a clear understanding of the meaning of the data is crucial.\u00a0Craig Knoblock\u2019s keynote<\/a> described how to create semantic driven applications from end to end in different application domains.\u00a0Semantic technologies are key to address these problems.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One of the themes was that we need better tools. Existing tools are made for citizens of the semantic city. Nevertheless, we know\u00a0that\u00a0the technology works. I argue that it is the right opportunity to learn from our experiences and improve our toolkits. There may not be\u00a0science in this effort and that\u2019s fine. I think that is a perfect fit for industry and startups. I really enjoyed talking to Varish<\/a> and learning how he is pushing for GE Research to open source and disseminate the tools<\/a> they are creating. Same for Inovex<\/a>. One of our goals at Capsenta<\/a> is to bridge the chasm between the semantic and non-semantic cities by creating tools and methodologies. Tools don\u2019t have to come just from academia. It\u2019s clear to me that the time is right industry to work on tools.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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One of the highlights of the event was Yolanda Gil<\/a>\u2019s keynote. Her\u00a0slides are available at https:\/\/tinyurl.com\/Gil-us2ts-2018<\/a>.\u00a0Yolanda made three\u00a0important points:<\/div>\n
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1) The thirst for semantics are growing<\/strong>: We are seeing the interest in other areas of Computer Science, namely, Machine Learning\/Data Science (slide 3), Natural Language Processing (slide 4), Image Processing (slide 5), Big Data (slide 6) and Industry through Knowledge Graphs (slide 7). If the thirst for semantics is growing, the question is, how are we quenching that thirst? We are seeing Deep Learning workshops at semantic web conferences<\/a>. It\u2019s time that we do it the other way: semantic\/knowledge graphs papers and workshops at Deep Learning conferences<\/a>.<\/div>\n
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2) Supercomputing analogy<\/strong>: In 1982, Peter Lax<\/a> chaired a report on\u00a0\u201cLarge Scale Computing in Science and Engineering<\/a>\u201d. During that time, supercomputing had major investments by other countries, dominated by large industry players, limited access to academia and lack of training. The\u00a0report recommend NSF to invest in Supercomputing. The result was the National Science Foundation Network (NSFNET)<\/a> and the Supercomputing centers that exist today. This seems like an analogous situation when it comes to semantics\u00a0and knowledge graphs: major\u00a0investments by other countries (Europe),\u00a0dominated by large industry players (Google, etc), limited access to academia (not mainstream in other areas of CS) and lack of training (we need to improve the tools).\u00a0I found this analogy brilliant!<\/div>\n
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3) We need an Open Knowledge Network<\/strong>: As you can imagine, to\u00a0continue the analogy, we need to create a data\u00a0and engineering infrastructure around knowledge,\u00a0similar to the Supercomputing centers.\u00a0\u00a0An Open Knowledge Network would be supported by centers at universities, support research and content creation by the broader community, be always accessible and reliable to academia, industry, and anyone, and enable new scientific discoveries and new commercial applications.\u00a0\u00a0For this, we need to think of semantic\/knowledge graphs as reliable infrastructure, train the next generation of researchers, and think of the Open Knowledge Network as a valuable resource worth of collective investment.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Do yourself a favor and take a look at the Yolanda\u2019s slides.<\/div>\n

Conclusion<\/h1>\n
This is perfect timing. We have a thriving semantics technology community in the US. Semantic technologies work: we are seeing a thirst for semantics and\u00a0interest\u00a0from different areas of computer science.\u00a0Finally, the NSF has a budget and is eager to support the US Semantic technologies community.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently attend the 1st US Semantics Technology Symposium. I quickly published my trip report because I wanted to get it out asap, otherwise I would never get it out (procrastination!). It\u2019s been a week since my trip report\u00a0and I can\u2019t stop thinking about this event. After a week of reflection, I realized that there … <\/p>\n

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