boakes.org

I’ve just returned from the First Italian Workshop on the Semantic Web (SWAP 2004), organised by long time chat-buddy and RDFIG lurker GiovanniT.

The workshop was very busy with (I estimate) over fifty attendees; many from Italy, and a surprisingly large number (myself included) from other European countries.

We flew in on Thursday and spent the evening with Danny Ayers, enjoying a few beers outside a small cafe in an Ancona back street, watching the chic, and not so chic, pass by.

The Friday workshop started at about 09:00 and we were still in the building at 19:45, squeezing every drop of chat and demo out of the day. Then we headed off for a rather special social dinner which featured, I think, five courses, plus dessert. This was good because I got to talk some more with Danny, and also with Max from the Semantic HiFi project, Emanuele Ruffaldi who does virtual environments and Paolo from the PlatypusWiki project too; so the conversation was diverse.

The staggering thing about the whole event was that about >80% was conducted in English: accomplished eloquent English - I take my hat off to my fellow presenters, in respect, and in thanks (’cause I can understand only a few handfuls of Italian words and phrases, so the day would have been lost without their exceptional linguistic capabilities).