Friday, 25 July 2008

Semantic Web - Salzburg Research a look back

While googling on the internet, I came across a Report on various semantic web technologies that I myself prepared while working at Salzburg Research.

http://colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/DRMITIT/metokis_d10_kcca_final.pdf

I remember working, reading tens of research papers, writing and reviewing this 90 page document. This was one of my first big and professional deliverables and being the lead was a hard time :-). In meetings I was perhaps the youngest guy and here I was talking to experts, researchers, professors, industry folks and trying to make them understand and build use cases, tools for Semantic Web.

But I owe all this to my mentors Sigi and Wernher. They boosted my thinking and always were very appreciative of what I did. They were one of the best guys that I met in my life.

Another interesting experience was a RDF graphics tool that I built along with a smart guy Rupert. I didn't realise when me and Rupert became great team members and made this tool for viewing RDF graphs. And this all started as a pass time weekend hobby.

http://semweb.salzburgresearch.at/apps/rdf-gravity/

But all this looks way back in 2004. At times it looks I have become really old :-)

Proto4 at IIT Delhi

Last weekend I was at Proto4 at IIT Delhi. It felt great to be back both being an alumni of Proto and IIT Delhi. The event was great, met some great guys and interesting companies.

There were some great presentations in the fast track session. One interesting part in Proto is most of the audience is very young, dynamic, students and entrepreneurial. This is both good and bad. Good in the sense looks like the young India is becoming more and more entrepreneurial. The bad part is most of the stuff that is talked about is very basic in nature. Most of the people talk about how to get VC money and don't focus on how to build a big business.

As a pass time hobby I used to watch a lot of Demo videos in the past. And they are really superb and one could see break through products in Demo. Nevertheless Proto has been a great initiative and the team behind Proto is to be appreciated for all the hard work.

I have a lot of debate with other colleagues about most of the people in indian IT industry are out there for money and job prospects rather then interest. We started using computers only in our engineering college and most people in US are using them when they were kids. My personal belief is the next generation would make a much bigger impact in the Indian IT industry and will change the landscape forever.