Posted on February 23, 2007 at 1:03 pm | 
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Thanks to an invitation from Vecosys, I gave a keynote presentation at last night’s mashup * event.
It was held at BT’s astounding conference centre, which possibly has the best conference facilities I’ve seen. It was fully equipped with a control room, 2 video cameras, live bloggers, investors, entrepreneurs and Semantic enthusiasts.
I don’t know who I was scared of most, bloggers hitting the enter key as you took a pause, or the 3 people wearing ties (Jag ?) 
Although I’m not sure how many logged on to blog given that BT were charging for Wi-Fi - how bizarre.
The evening was facilitated and kicked off by Sam Sethi who gave intimate demonstrations on Microformats. Mark Birbeck from X-Port was the first speaker up and gave a good demonstration on how his
next-generation semantic web browser that seamlessly combines XForms with other languages such as SVG, MathML and X3D.
I spoke about how Content Labels can (and will in my opinion) be a major player in changing how search works in the future. I talked about how they are a great use case for demonstrating the benefits of the Semantic Web in a meaningful way for end users. I also gave a demonstration of a Firefox extension which did all of the above.
Thanks to ReadWrite/Web Route79’s Flickr for both photographs. I believe the video will be on YouTube soon.
In essence, our Firefox extension (built by our friends at Glaxstar) provides users with more information about a particular Web site from the search results screen. This means users no longer have to hit a site before finding out if it is suitable to them. The suitability of content are determined by the users needs, such as suitability for minors, disabled users, privacy conscientious users, security, identity and so on.
If you want to learn more about ‘how’ Content Labels look to end users, visit our Search Thresher Web site. Alternatively you can read what ReadWrite/Web had to say as they’ve given a pretty good explanation themselves (well done!). There is more to add so I’ll write it up soon.
Tony Fish was last to articulate his thoughts. I’m not sure if I got what he was saying, but it sounded interesting. I’m a very philosophical person myself. Given that I own Michelin rated restaurants in Dublin, I found his analogy using food interesting… personally though, I don’t care what a kebab looks like after a few beers - watch out for the video if you want to put this into context 
We ended up with a lively debate during the panel discussion with questions flying in from the audience. There were a couple of people however, who just didn’t get what we’re trying to achieve with Content Labels. I’d like to put it down to speaking for such a short space of time, so it’s impossible to appeal. to everyone.
There’s only so much you can do to ensure you appeal to as many listeners as possible. I certainly wasn’t there for a debate about ‘RDF ‘. I was there to show what you can do with it for end users. Having said that, I did enjoy the banter with the few individuals that got hung up on police forces patrolling the Web and their definitions of machine-readable vs machine-understandable.
Basically, I was being blamed for trying to ‘police the Internet’ and ‘restrict access to the open Web’. Well, nothing could be further from the truth. I would simply like Web site owners to provide more information about the content on their Web sites so users can make informed decisions before entering them. We can also enable Web site owners to have their assertions about content verified. This helps them to demonstrate an additional layer of trust to consumers.
I really did enjoy the evening as I love a good debate. There’s nothing worse than attending an event and not getting the opportunity to ask the speakers direct questions. I hate attending broadcast events where speakers stand up, talk and then sit down.
Perhaps the people who disagreed with my approach to enabling trust on the Web could articulate their thoughts on this blog if they happen to stumble upon it in the future.
To get a very good break down on the topics that were being discussed take a look at ReadWrite/Web’s post . Thanks for the mention!
Take a look at Paul Miller’s post if you would like very good coverage on speakers and comments coming in from the audience.
The networking part afterwards was great for me personally. I met a few very interesting people who I hope to see again in the future.
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