On April 21, 2011, I had the pleasure of speaking to Professor Stuart Madnick's "Evolution Towards Web 3.0" class at the MIT Sloan School of Management. The topic of the lecture was—unsurprisingly—the Semantic Web. I had a great time putting together the material and discussing it with the students, who seemed to be very engaged in the topic. It was a less technical audience then I often speak with, and so I tried to focus on some of the motivating trends, use cases, and challenges involved with Semantic Web technologies and the vision of the Semantic Web.
I've now placed the presentation online. It's broken down into three basic parts:
- What about the development of the Web and enterprise IT motivates the Semantic Web?
- How is it being used today?
- What are some of the challenges facing the Semantic Web, both on the World Wide Web and within enterprises?
I found the last of the three sections particularly interesting, and I hope you do too.
The presentation has speaker's notes along with them that add significant commentary to the slides. You can view them by clicking on the "Speaker Notes" tab below the slides. Please let me know what you think: Evolution Towards Web 3.0: The Semantic Web.
Nice presentation. However, why didn't you make use of the W3C Slidy template?
[Lee: I find slidy to be unwieldy, almost impossible to print, difficult to use, lacking in simple effects, and downright ugly. Those are just a few of the reasons.]
@Lee: then you may have a look at my advanced/enhanced Slidy template. The printing view needs still to be refactored (during the changes it got broken). It's as easy as one is familiar with HTML. It provides effects for drop down of list items. It's a 1-1 copy of my former Indesign slides layout. You can find a working example here (best view Firefox 4.x + fullscreen mode + Univers font family installed).
[Lee: Zazi, thanks for the additional information. I've used slidy a bunch in the past and do appreciate it, but in the end--for me--it cannot compete with the productivity and clarity of presentation that I can get from using PowerPoint. I do happily recommend Slidy for anyone looking for a Web & HTML-based presentation tool.]