Bringing the Web of Data to Vienna...

Last week, the first Web of Data Practitioners Days (WOD-PD 2008) took place in the beautiful city of Vienna! It was a great time and fun to organize such an event with other (very reliable) guys in the Austrian Semantic Web community.

The first day, we had a WOD 101 session starting with the basics by Keith Alexander and Yves Raimond. Leo Sauermann introduced the audience into Semantic Desktop solutions. Finally, Sören Auer (supported by Orri Erling and Yrjänä Rankka from OpenLink) showed us solutions how to integrate legacy data with D2R-Server, Virtuoso RDF Views and Triplify.

Thursday, the second day, Alan Dix and Richard Cyganiak gave an overview how to use the Web of Data and what data is already there. Danny Ayers (ohhh Danny..... you're really causing us headaches!) and Thomas Schandl discussed about social aspects on the Web of Data, and finally, Ansgar Scherp talked about Multimedia and the Web of Data.

It was great to have Jana blogging about all six sessions and supporting the workshop by motivating people from the Web 2.0 camp to attend. All in all we had about 65 attendants which overtopped our expectations for the first WOD-PD.

On Wednesday we had an Open Hacking Session at the Nelsons Bar with Lightning talks and controversial discussions about the state of the Semantic Web, the usefulness of the Web of Data and social aspects in the Web of today.

You can get all the materials of the first WOD-PD 2008. We are looking forward to welcome you next year. There also pictures of WOD-PD 2008 on Flickr.