WhatIsVoCamp

From VoCamp Wiki

[edit] What's the Problem?

Continued growth of the Web of Data/Semantic Web is heavily dependent on the availability of vocabularies/ontologies that can be used to publish data. While a number of key vocabularies are in widespread use, there are also many areas with little or no vocabulary coverage, hindering the ability to publish data in these domains.

Peter Mika outlines some of the issues he sees with the current state of vocabularies on the Semantic Web in his blog post What’s wrong with vocabularies on the Semantic Web?

[edit] What is VoCamp?

VoCamp is a series of informal events where people can spend some dedicated time creating lightweight vocabularies/ontologies for the Semantic Web/Web of Data. The emphasis of the events is not on creating the perfect ontology in a particular domain, but on creating vocabs that are good enough for people to start using for publishing data on the Web. The intention is to follow a "paper first, laptops second" format, where the modelling is done initially on paper and only later committed to code. The VoCamp idea is heavily influenced by BarCamp, although the VoCamp should only have presentations where strictly necessary.

[edit] What Next?

The first VoCamp event took place in Oxford, UK in September 2008 (VoCampOxford2008), and the second will take place in Galway, Ireland in November 2008 VoCampGalway2008. But you can run your own VoCamp too...add it to this list!