There are some great sessions on the Programme, and I look forward to comparing the diverse ways in which Big Data concepts and methods are being put to work across a range of market segments. I also look forward to exploring answers to some of the questions I posed back in November.

As usual, the diary is filling up with meetings, briefings, and the odd conference session, but there are still some gaps to fill. If you’re at the event – or in the area – and want a chat, why not grab one of the slots over on Tungle?

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A somewhat hectic June concluded with my second trip of the month to California. Whilst the first excursion led to Santa Clara and an interesting insight into attempts by Hitachi Data Systems to reinvent its relationship with the wider community, the second journey took me to San Francisco and a pair of events that lie at the heart of the advances that underpin much of my current work.

The Semantic Technology Conference celebrated its sixth year in 2010, moving from San Jose to the Hilton Union Square in Downtown San Francisco. This was my fourth (I think!) year, and alongside the “30% increase in attendance” to around 1,200, I noticed a refreshing realism amongst presenters, exhibitors and attendees; the hyperbole and inflated expectations of the “Google killers” thankfully seemed mostly to have been replaced by good ideas, sound business models, and steadily growing customer bases. Richard MacManus has been doing a good job of distilling some of the news from the event, and pushing it out on ReadWriteWeb.

Across town at UCSF’s Mission Bay Campus, GigaOM‘s smaller and younger Structure Conference broke out of its previous 1-day format to pack two days with various insights into the shifting Cloud Computing landscape; insights that were reported as they happened on GigaOM and elsewhere, and preserved on video for you to watch at your leisure.

Both events were smoothly run (at least one even brings in the same professional A/V team every year, don’t they Curtiss?), buzzing, and well worth attending. Unfortunately, for me at least, ‘attendance’ meant a near-unending stream of meetings and briefings in and around the venues, rather than much time spent listening to either carefully orchestrated programme. Lining up briefings, meetings and the rest seemed like such a good idea as this trip was planned. Participating in two events simultaneously, I persuaded myself, would be fine. And it mostly was, even though there were definitely times that I couldn’t quite remember where I was. Sitting down with John Hagel, looking blank, then saying “Hmm… so tell me about the Cloud,” was probably not the best way to get started with someone I’d been looking forward to meeting for a very long time. Delayed jetlag from the week before? Jetlag from the outbound flight earlier that same week? MUNI-lag from crossing back and forth between venues? Too much coffee? Not having quite got around to eating that day? Too many appointments in rapid succession? Or just impending senility? Whatever the reason, Hagel coped admirably with his pathetic interviewer’s opening gambit, and we went on to have a great conversation. More on that, his latest book, and his team’s Cloud Computing: Storms on the Horizon paper in due course, I suspect.

Despite starting from very different places (a sizeable chunk of the SemTech audience would not be out of place at an academic conference, whilst most of Structure’s attendees probably stalked the halls of Tim O’Reilly’s earliest Web 2.0 events), the perceived gulf between the real worlds of Cloud Computing and the Semantic Web grows narrower all the time. Companies like Facebook attend one to talk about the Open Graph protocol, and address issues of scale at the other. With Cloud infrastructures’ (yes, that apostrophe is correctly placed) capabilities ever-more commoditised by the day, value and differentiation move toward putting those assets to work in tackling real business challenges; challenges that require data, challenges that depend upon business buy-in, and challenges that benefit from lessons the Semantic Web community has learned in grappling with its transition toward a range of (hopefully) sustainable data businesses.

I have long believed in the fusion of the two (‘Cloud of Data,’ after all), but it was both refreshing and reassuring to observe the growing convergence in hallway conversation at each event. At SemTech, many were reaching toward ‘the Cloud’ (mostly, they meant ‘using Amazon’) in its simplest, purest, form. At Structure, many of those with whom I spoke were reaching for Semantic Technologies and some of Linked Data’s promise, without initially recognising that for which they sought. The Semantic Web, to them, was all too often just a discredited pipe dream from the Web’s distant past. The Semantic Web community of today is a very different place, and one with which Structure’s attendees might find much in common. The danger for the Semantic Web community, of course, is that they once more become absorbed in internal debate or the purity of the model. They may have powerful ideas and technologies to offer, but they need to reach out and describe those in ways that resonate with an industry that is ripe for hearing these messages. Delay too long, or descend too far into re-imagining technical underpinnings, and this fleeting opportunity will be lost; the bright young things of Silicon Valley will just develop something else that does the job almost as well, then iterate rapidly as they mine the flow to observe what works, and what doesn’t.

Personally, I am still absorbing the cacophony of ideas, contacts and opportunities arising from my week in San Francisco, but I am sure that there are plenty of projects, stories, podcasts and other follow-ups to appear here and elsewhere over the next few months.

And finally, an appeal to the organisers; can you locate these events a little closer together next year, please?!

Disclosures: Costs for my trip to Santa Clara were met in full by HDS. Both the Semantic Technology Conference and GigaOM’s Structure Conference supplied Analyst Passes for admission to their events.

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Today’s my first day back at home, following a tour of Silicon Valley and a couple of days in London to present at the ISKO UK Conference.

The main event was this year’s Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose, which I’ve already partially covered via various blog posts over on ZDNet. More on this in a moment.

On the travel front, it was great to chat with JP Rangaswami on the flight out and even greater (no offence, JP!  ) to recline in comfort on the overnight return journey after a very welcome upgrade from British Airways.

Before and after the conference, I visited several Silicon Valley companies both new and old. Despite evidence of the economic situation at every turn (most shockingly, actually, in the boarding up of two fixtures of many a trip to San Francisco; the Disney Store on Union Square and the big Virgin Megastore on Market) the people I spoke with were full of ideas and enthusiasm for the journey ahead. In so many areas of technology, the edge cases and the cool or interesting concepts are moving towards the mainstream. Mobile, clearly, is everywhere, and there is a growing recognition of the value in structure, linking and data or application portability. We’re even, finally, seeing some viable business models based upon something other than just plastering sites with Ads. Painful as it has been for far too many individuals, this latest economic hiccup appears increasingly likely to have been very good for a tech industry that had become a little too complacent, far too smug, and rather caught up in tech for tech’s sake. The survivors are leaner, meaner, and far more focussed upon understanding the areas in which they bring sustainable value to audiences of a viable size. That’s a good thing, and I can only hope that we remember the lessons we’ve learned when the champagne starts flowing and the car parks of tech startups once again fill with Porsches, Ferraris and Teslas…

It’s a testament to the topicality of the subject matter and the hard work of the team at Wilshire that attendance was actually higher than last year, and the buzz of conversation during the event would suggest that the upward trend shows every sign of continuing. Speaking during a special live episode of the Semantic Web Gang that we recorded on stage just before the end of the conference, Wilshire‘s Tony Shaw discussed attendance figures and the breakdown of different audience categories. This podcast should be online shortly. In the midst of this collective tightening of belts, it’s not surprising that the freebie/schwag haul was the lowest I’ve ever seen. I understand why. The children, however, were sorely disappointed and distinctly unimpressed by my attempts at rationalisation. I think they feel that the technology sector owes them schwag.

With a programme that began at 0730 each morning and proceeded through the day with as many as ten parallel sessions, there was something for everyone. Free proper coffee helped to lubricate the corridor conversations, and I probably drank rather too many vanilla lattes as I tended to find myself engaged in those conversations when my panel moderating duties permitted. Keynote sessions each day addressed different aspects of the space, from the Toms (Tague and Gruber) discussing where we’ve been and one aspect of where we might go, through an ultimately disappointing assemblage of Semantic Search’s big hitters to Nova Spivack’s chat with Wolfram Alpha’s Russell Foltz-Smith and the final morning’s (promising, yet disappointingly vague) announcements from the New York Times.

I didn’t see (much) radical innovation, and I didn’t see any great technological leaps forward from last year. However, what I saw again and again was evidence of maturity, adoption and real-world deployment. Ideas that might have seemed a little unrealistic or risqué just a year ago had become an accepted part of the conversation. The Web was more dominant than in previous years. As Ian Davis has often described it, we’ve seen a welcome and perhaps overdue shift from the Semantic (Web) toward (Semantic) Web. Efforts like Freemix package existing capabilities and bring them within reach of the next wave of adopters. Linked Data was on the lips of many, and Mills Davis was amongst those keen to encourage the sector’s serious engagement with the accelerating enthusiasm for Linked Data in Government on both sides of the Atlantic. I agree with him, and look forward to playing my part in ensuring that something real follows the political rhetoric of recent weeks. Although the terminology is different, in many ways it’s the realisation of the vision we set out within the Common Information Environment at the beginning of this decade. I’m trying to line up podcasts with some of those involved inside the US and UK Governments, so watch this space…

Thanks to Tony Shaw, Eric Franzon and the team at Wilshire for once again laying on a great event. Thanks to the panelists on all the panels I moderated for making my job exceedingly easy. And thanks to all of those I met for some great conversation, much of which I’m still digesting.

Roll on next year, when the conference moves out of San Jose to take over the San Francisco Hilton from 21-25 June. See you there!

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One of the podcasts I’ve been doing for a while is the monthly Semantic Web Gang. It began whilst I was with Talis, and the company continues to support production and hosting of the show.

Unlike most of my podcasts (all listed over there on the right, for those of you reading on the cloudofdata.com site), the Gang is a (virtual) round table rather than an interview. Each month, regular Gang members (and the occasional guest) get together to discuss the latest moves in the semantic technology arena.

June’s Semantic Web Gang is going to be a little different, as it will be recorded – live – on the stage at this year’s Semantic Technology Conference in San Jose, California.

Almost all of the Gang will be there, and I’m delighted to say that Richard MacManus, Founder and Editor of Read/Write Web will be joining us on stage, along with Tony Shaw of conference organisers Semantic Universe.

We also intend to get the audience involved in our look back at some of the conference’s highlights, so if you’re in San Jose for Semantic Technology do come along to take part in our session at 11am on 18 June.

It looks like being a busy few days, with meetings before and after, three panels to moderate on 16 June, one on 17 June, and this on 18 June. I’m also in the middle of lining up a few more Semantic Web, Cloud Computing, Enterprise 2.0, Social Media-type meetings in San Jose, San Francisco and points between for 15, 19, 20 and 21 June… so if you’re in the area and interested please do get in touch.

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