Wednesday, 5/23/2007
8:00 AM - 9:00 AM
Level: Case Study

There is often a wide gulf between technology evaluation and technology adoption, between "just kicking the tires" and driving the new car off of the lot. This is especially the case with semantic technologies, because the Semantic Web field is so new. Moving from evaluation to adoption thus becomes as much an exercise in organizational change as it is in technology assimilation. This presentation is a case study of the successful adoption of semantic technologies by Sandia National Laboratories, which focuses in particular on the critical first year. The following activities were crucial to moving from investigation to production during that year:

• Formation of a Semantic Working Group (SWG) to investigate and apply semantic technologies throughout the National Laboratory complex
• Creation of a collaborative Web site for the SWG, including a Wiki, for the preservation and dissemination of knowledge about semantic technologies
• Development of a roadmap for the implementation of semantic technologies, including the choice of the first such application
• The choice of ontology development and programming tools, as well as how to get support for the use of those tools, which were primarily open source
• Creation of a pedogogical ontology for an intuitive domain, as well as supporting demonstration applications, to demonstrate the benefits of semantic technologies
• Technology evangelism and supporting presentation materials, from a two-minute elevator speech, to a 15-minute Director-level presentation, to a two-hour technical seminar presentation
• Productionizing the first semantic technology application

John M. Linebarger is a Principal Member of Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories, where he has worked for the last 17 years. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Lehigh University, and his professional interests include distributed computing, group collaboration, and ontology development. His interest in semantic technologies springs from the fact that ontologies provide a locus of "cognitive collaboration" because they structure a shared conceptualization of a domain of interest. John is the founder and chair of the Semantic Working Group (SWG) at Sandia National Laboratories, a cross-lab working group dedicated to the investigation and application of semantic technologies in the National Laboratory complex.