Kingsley Idehen wrote:
Sherman Monroe wrote:
Kingsley,
Well said. After all, we preach interoperability and standards to an
industry driven by concept of isolate & conquer. In all seriousness,
if we are to have any real chance of overcoming the impetus of
proprietary interests, then we must first achieve some semblance of
solidarity within the ranks of our own community. Yet, some of the
initiatives and territorial projects that surface clearly duplicate
efforts and at times lack interoperability with similar efforts; in
the process, precious focus and energy is wasted. The notion of
"standing on the shoulders of your fellows" is frustratingly lacking
whereas it should be one of our guiding principles. It is in our
interests to coordinate similar efforts, and diligently seek points
of synergies were none are apparent. Competition within the community
should be shunned and hissed at, seriously. Failure to align our
efforts will weaken our collective effort, and cause us to bump
against the same walls we're trying to bring down. LOD is
fundamentally a revolution in thinking, from a value on competition
and silos to the recognition of a much greater value in co-opetition
and interoperbility; that revolution must catch fire within the minds
of each LODC member before it has a chance of spreading to the rest
of the industry. The question each of us should ask ourselves is, do
I really believe in what LOD is about? The rest of the industry must
be able to look to us as an example of LOD principles at work.
-sherman
Amen!
Homogeneity of purpose must be matched with actions, we have to
dog-food every aspect of Linked Data :-)
BTW - Any comments re. the UI matters we are discussing? I ask because
you've felt the pain our service alleviates, first hand, based your
experience re. Cypher atop DBpedia.
Re: dogfooding, "experiencing" the data web, etc., it might actually be
useful to start with giving answers to these questions
http://linkeddata.org/faq
And moving the "consuming linked data" section to the top. After all,
for most people, from my limited experience, they want to "take" before
they "give"--i.e., consuming free linked data before donating linked
data back. Has no other visitor beside me complained about the lack of
answers on an FAQ page? :-)
David
