Tom Morris announced SemanticCamp this week. It’s a two day thing (Sat 16th – Sun 17th Feb) centred around discussions of meaning and Kenneth Williams. No wait, it’s a two day thing centred around discussions of a practical semantic web. Something that I’m very interested in, so I signed up.
Then I read the rules:
Attendees must give a demo, a session, or help with one, or otherwise volunteer / contribute in some way to support the event. All presentations are scheduled the day they happen. Prepare in advance, but come early to get a slot on the wall. The people present at the event will select the demos or presentations they want to see.
Ok, the last time I gave a presentation was an Open Museum lecture at the Maritime Museum in 2003. It was an overview of our Solar System, as an introduction to two days of talks about current Solar System research in the UK. Prior to that, I’ve also given lectures to the Flamsteed Astronomy Society. About comets – what they are, how they might have formed, why the Stardust mission was so interesting, that sort of thing.
All fascinating stuff, and well worth talking about, but what on earth would I present at a semantic web workshop? Answers on a postcard please!
You could talk about the importance of source order when it comes to marking up your web documents. I refer to this recent article / experiment Thierry Koblentz posted about on various web forums / email lists (http://tjkdesign.com/articles/css-layout/no_div_no_float_no_clear_no_hack_no_joke.asp) where he questioned the accepted practise of using div tags to divide up a web document and suggested using an ordered list instead, which would provide a much more semantic structure to web pages. Quite a thought provoking idea I have to say!