Semantic Web Conference Leverages Newest Tool to Transform the Audience Experience; First Ontology-Based Conference Navigation Tool Unveiled at SemTech 2006

Business Wire, March 6, 2006

SAN JOSE, Calif. -- On the opening day of the Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech 2006), host Wilshire Conferences announces its utilization of the first, truly ontology-based, semantically-driven, conference navigation and networking tool. Designed to enhance the conference experience for those attending, Ontference was developed as a joint effort by founding members of the Semantic Guild -- TopQuadrant, Intellidimension and Second Integral. It was conceived, designed and developed in less than two months.

In addition to matching people to conference sessions, the system matches them with other attendees who share their interests or who have skills and resources best suited to their needs. Second Integral co-founder Pierre Gagnier commented, "Attendees at many conferences have expressed that they'd like to be able to more effectively network with others while benefiting from presentation content. Ontference helps them to address this, using ontologies to establish connections and discover relationships for its users."

A key objective of the conference is to explore the commercialization of semantic technologies and emerging applications in both enterprise systems and the Internet. "Our goal is to provide practical education and information that can be applied today," said Tony Shaw, president of Wilshire Conferences, host of SemTech 2006. "What better way to show that the meal is real than to eat your own cooking? This new product is proof of how semantic technology applications can provide compelling value under very constrained development time," he added.

TopQuadrant Executive Partners Ralph Hodgson and Irene Polikoff originated the idea of using ontologies and rules for personalizing conference experiences. "We built the ontologies relating to the conference material. By architecting Ontference in this way, we are illustrating how ontologies are powering the next generation of knowledge management and semantic interoperability solutions," said Ralph Hodgson. Intellidimension's CEO, Geoff Chappell, whose RDF Gateway platform Ontference was built upon, added, "We took full advantage of RDF Gateway's powerful and efficient OWL reasoning support and its rapid semantic application development environment to meet the ambitious performance and time goals for this project." Mr. Chappell and Mr. Hodgson will give a conference talk on semantic technology application design and implementation issues, using Ontference as a case study.

The SemTech audience has already embraced the tool enthusiastically. Within hours of announcing the availability of Ontference, more than 25% of the 600 registered attendees had signed in to use it, specifying their preferences and interests -- enabling the system to find matches to conference sessions that are most tuned to the interests that they expressed. More than 50% utilization is expected by the start of the conference.

Second Integral co-founder Eric Hoffer commented, "Such a large response in terms of the percentage of registrants who so quickly activated and customized their accounts, shows how hungry conference-goers are for resources that capitalize on these technologies, facilitate knowledge access and can transform the conference experience for them."

For more information on Ontference, contact info@ontference.com or visit www.ontference.com. To register for SemTech 2006 or for additional information on the conference, visit www.semantic-conference.com.

About The Semantic Technology Conference

The Semantic Technology Conference (SemTech) is the leading educational conference on the commercial applications and opportunities for the burgeoning semantic technology industry. Launched in 2005, the conference immediately established itself as the convergence point for developers, entrepreneurs, investors and corporate customers. SemTech is organized by Wilshire Conferences (www.wilshireconferences.com) of Los Angeles and Semantic Arts (www.semanticarts.com), based in Boulder, Colo. Wilshire Conferences is an IT-education firm that specializes in organizing events in which corporate practitioners can meet and share implementation experience. Semantic Arts is a boutique software architecture firm. Dave McComb, president of Semantic Arts and author of "Semantics in Business Systems" (Morgan Kaufmann), is the conference chairman.