SMWCon Spring 2010

The Spring 2010 SMW Conference (or SMWCon) was held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on the weekend of May 22-23, 2010. It was hosted by Prof. David Karger and MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).

Below is the rest of the information for the conference.

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The entrance fee for this event is $20, which will be almost entirely used to cover catering. The fee will be collected at the door.

Location
The conference will take place at the world-famous MIT Stata Center, AKA Building 32, near the corner of Main St. and Vassar St. in Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. You can see a map here. Look for the crazy-looking building. :) The building is very close to Kendall Square, and to the corresponding Kendall Square T (subway) stop.

The conference's exact location is the Kiva seminar room, on the 4th floor of the Gates tower. You can see directions to Kiva, and a detailed building map, here. Here is the text of those directions: Enter Building 32 at the front entrance and proceed straight ahead; there will be elevators to the right. Take the elevators to the 4th floor; exit to the left and then turn right at the end of the elevator bank. At the end of the short corridor bear to the left and continue around the R&D Dining Room. CSAIL Headquarters will be to your left and the Patil/Kiva Seminar Room will be straight ahead.

The doors should be open, and there may be signs leading to the conference.

Schedule
Note that all talks will be videotaped and put online unless the speaker asks us not to.

Saturday
9 - 10 AM - Continental breakfast

10 - 11:15 AM


 * Introductions
 * State of the software - Yaron Koren

11:15 - 11:30 AM - Coffee break

11:30 AM - 1:15 PM


 * Welcome address - David Karger
 * Halo: Current status and future developments in 2010 - Philipp Zaltenbach
 * Mashup of LexWiki and WebProtege for collaborative ontology authoring - Guoqian Jiang

1:15 - 2:45 PM - Lunch

2:45 - 4:15 PM


 * The Unbearable Lightness of Wiking - A Study of SMW Usability - Jie Bao
 * Applying SMW on the Wikia environment - Timothy Quievryn

4:15 - 4:30 PM - Coffee break

4:30 - 6 PM


 * WikiTags: Connecting SMW with MS Office users - Jesse Wang
 * Flexible, purposive SMW use - Clarence Dillon

Sunday
9 - 10 AM - Continental breakfast

10 - 11:30 AM


 * SIMILE, Exhibit, Wibit, Datapress, and Dido - David Karger
 * The future of Semantic Forms - Yaron Koren

11:30 - 11:45 AM - Coffee break

11:45 AM - 1:15 PM


 * Ultrapedia: an Analytical Encyclopedia - Jesse Wang
 * Handling n-ary data - Yaron Koren

1:15 - 2:45 PM - Lunch

2:45 - 4:15 PM


 * Dynamic wiki visualization for rapid content generation - Douglas Mason
 * Intranet data integration using SMW - Laurent Alquier

4:15 - 4:30 PM - Coffee break

4:30 - 6 PM


 * Semantics & Statistics - Timothy Quievryn (a look at the techniques of the The Third Turn)
 * Encouraging SMW use with non-technical people - David Mason

Attendees
If you are planning to attend this conference, please add your name below.


 * David Karger
 * Yaron Koren
 * Jesse Wang
 * Thomas Fellows
 * Mary Barton
 * John Campbell
 * Gary Clairmont
 * Ted Rybeck
 * Clarence Dillon
 * Mary Beebe
 * Desirée Gennaro
 * Joshua Gay
 * Douglas Mason
 * Laurent Alquier
 * Joel Natividad
 * David Mason
 * Jie Bao
 * David Moore
 * Guoqian Jiang
 * Nathanael Thompson
 * Christopher Matheus
 * Brian Ulicny
 * Kent Plunkett
 * Anne Goldenberg
 * Kyle Stone (Project Leader, BASESwiki)
 * Edward Benson
 * Timothy Quievryn (The Third Turn, Wikia)
 * Philipp Zaltenbach
 * W. J. Rice
 * Jim R. Wilson
 * Andrew Budd
 * Bill Flanagan
 * David Forgianni (5/23 Sunday)

Proposed talks
You can see the page of proposed talks for this conference here.

Recommended accomodations
See here for MIT's list of suggested hotels/motels/etc. We're told that you can get a discount at all the "Closest to campus" hotels except Le Meridien if you tell them you're with the SMW Conference at MIT. Also, it should be noted that the Boston area tends to be busy around May and June due to college graduations; there are no notable graduations happening that weekend, but it's still worthwhile to book as early as possible.

Places to stay
If you live in the Boston area and are willing to host someone, please add your name and contact information below.

Pictures
http://gallery.me.com/jqnatividad#100021

Next event
The next SMWCon after this one will be SMWCon Fall 2010, to be held Sept 18-19, 2010 in Amsterdam‎.

We have a social group SMWCon at LinkedIn, please join if you'd like to be linked and informed in one more way. There is also a general SMW group at LinkedIn.