Together with this years I-Semantics conference we are organizing a Linking Open Data Triplification Challenge.

The challenge aims at expediting the process of revealing and exposing structured representations, as does the DBpedia project for Wikipedia. Structured (relational) representations already back most of the existing Web sites. In addition to revealing these the challenge also aims at raising awareness in the Web Developer community and showcasing best practices.

The challenge awards attractive prices (MacBook Air, EeePC, iPod) to the most innovative and promising semantifications. The prizes are kindly sponsored by OpenLink Software, Punkt.NetServices and InfAI.

More Information about the challenge can be found at:

http://triplify.org/Challenge

Outreach to the Web developer communities (as intended with the challenge) is really crucial right now to expedite the Semantic Web deployment and we would be very excited if you support this effort - e.g. by spreading the word and/or submitting to the challenge.

As already during the last 4 years we again organize this year a workshop on Scripting for the Semantic Web, co-located on June 1st with European Semantic Web Conference in Tenerife, Spain. Scripting languages as PHP, JavaScript, Ruby etc. will play a crucial role for getting the Semantic Web out on a large scale and most of the really deployed Semantic Web applications (e.g. Semantic MediaWiki, DBpedia, Tabulator etc.) are implemented in scripting languages. The deadline for submitting papers to the workshop is March 7th. The workshop will also include a challenge, which awards an (iPod or the equivalent in cash) to the most promising lightweight Semantic Web Application developed in a scripting language. Details can be found at: http://www.semanticscripting.org/SFSW2008

Sören presented today the paper “DBpedia: A Nucleus for a Web of Open Data” at International Semantic Web Conference in Busan, Korea. You can view the slides at http://www.informatik.uni-leipzig.de/~auer/presentations/dbpedia/

There will be a talk at the WWW2007 developers track about DBpedia on Friday May 11 (Draft slides)

There will be a F2F meeting of the Linking Open Data project at WWW2007 in Banff, Canada where we will also discuss DBpedia related topics. If you are interested in attending this meeting, just put your name on this wikipage.

There will be a DBpedia Hack Night in Copenhagen on the 24th. Some slides from the event are available here.