Information architects have been singing the praises of metadata, thesauri and controlled vocabularies for years. We understand the power that words have, and the importance of the relationships between concepts. We live in a world of broader and narrower, preferred and variant terms. Structured information makes us smile. Faceted navigation brightens our day.
But there is a new game in town: the Semantic Web. This isn't the mythical Semantic Web of 10 years ago. This one has moved out of the realm of theory and is making impact on the business world today. Semantic search, ontology, knowledge base, RDF, OWL, SPARQL, triples; these are all terms you may have heard over the last couple of months, as the Semantic Web is becoming more of a reality.
This session will answer the questions "What exactly *is* the Semantic Web? And why should I care?" We'll discuss how ontologies are similar and different from thesauri and taxonomies. We'll look at examples of how this technology is being used in the marketplace. We'll talk about how these concepts can be incorporated into the information architecture work that you are doing today. And where you can go to learn more.
The technology companies and database and data warehousing geeks are the ones that currently are leading the Semantic Web. As user experience designers we need to understand the Semantic Web, so we can help shape what the world of Web 3.0 will be.
