Haklae Kim and his successful defense in September

This is a few months late but better late then never! We said goodbye to PhD researcher Haklae Kim in May of this year when he returned to Korea and took up a position with Samsung Electronics soon afterward. We had a nice going away lunch for Haklae with the rest of the team from the Social Software Unit (picture below).

Sheila, Uldis, John, Haklae, Julie, Alex and Smita

Haklae returned to Galway in September to defend his PhD entitled “Leveraging a Semantic Framework for Augmenting Social Tagging Practices in Heterogeneous Content Sharing Platforms”. The examiners were Stefan Decker, Tom Gruber and Philippe Laublet. Haklae successfully defended his thesis during the viva, and he will be awarded his PhD in 2010. We got a nice photo of the examiners during the viva which was conducted via Cisco Telepresence, with Stefan (in Galway) “resting” his hand on Tom’s shoulder (in San Jose)!

Philippe Laublet, Haklae Kim, Tom Gruber, Stefan Decker and John Breslin

Haklae created a formal model called SCOT (Social Semantic Cloud of Tags) that can semantically describe tagging activities. The SCOT ontology provides enhanced features for representing tagging and folksonomies. This model can be used for sharing and exchanging tagging data across different platforms. To demonstrate the usage of SCOT, Haklae developed the int.ere.st open tagging platform that combined techniques from both the Social Web and the Semantic Web. The SCOT model also provides benefits for constructing social networks. Haklae’s work allows the discovery of social relationships by analysing tagging practices in SCOT metadata. He performed these analyses using both Formal Concept Analysis and tag clustering algorithms. The SCOT model has also been adopted in six applications (OpenLink Virtuoso, SPARCool, RelaxSEO, RDFa on Rails, OpenRDF, SCAN), and the int.ere.st service has 1,200 registered members. Haklae’s research work was published in 2 journal articles, 15 conference papers, 3 workshop papers, and 2 book chapters. His scholarship was funded by Science Foundation Ireland under grant numbers SFI/02/CE1/I131 (Líon) and SFI/08/CE/I1380 (Líon 2).

We wish Haklae all the best in his future career, and hope he will continue to communicate and collaborate with researchers in DERI, NUI Galway in the future.

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Call for bid proposals for hosting BlogTalk 2010 / 2011: The International Conference on Social Software

BlogTalk, the International Conference on Social Software, is designed to allow dialogue between practitioners, developers and academics who are involved in the area of social software (blogs, wikis, forums, IM, social networks, microblogging, etc.). As well as a programme of peer-reviewed presentations, BlogTalk features prominent speakers from successful social media companies, research organisations, etc. Typical attendance figures are over 100 people.

The BlogTalk steering committee encourages you to submit a preliminary bid to host the International Conference on Social Software in 2010 or 2011. The annual conference includes a combination of formal talks, workshops, breakout sessions, networking opportunities, and social events. We seek to hold our annual conference in a diverse range of localities (previous countries were Austria, Australia, Ireland and Korea). Each conference involves a working partnership between the BlogTalk steering committee, the host organisers, and a programme committee of expert reviewers.

Conference schedules have typically followed the pattern of having two full days of talks, with interleaved discussion panels, birds of a feather sessions, etc. although each host has flexibility about when to hold certain extra events, or sometimes, whether to hold them at all. We recommend that the dinner event be held on the first night, in the middle of the conference. There is also an option to have a day of workshops prior to the main conference talks, and a welcome reception the night before the main conference.

Each host takes a lead role in gathering sponsorship for its conference. Usually, tickets account for about $15,000 – 20,000 and the host is responsible for raising at least $20,000 – 35,000 in sponsorship. The combined funds go a long way toward making the conference budget manageable. A small portion of the conference budget will also go into a central BlogTalk fund for aiding with publications and future events.

Sponsorship includes the placement of a logo on materials such as the attendee’s pack, t-shirts, and the conference website. It may include free registration for two attendees, and a guaranteed slot for a product demo during the conference’s demonstrations session. The conference’s main event, the dinner, can also be sponsored. As well as a placard at the entrance to the event, the sponsor will be acknowledged on the website, during the programme chair’s speeches, and in conference materials.

With your help, the steering committee will also help market the event in a variety of ways, through targeted emails and social media distribution channels.

To be considered as a host for BlogTalk 2010 or BlogTalk 2011, please fill out the attached preliminary bid proposal and return to us (blogtalk2010@gmail.com) by January 18, 2010. The steering committee will consider all proposals and notify within two weeks of the closing date.

Bid Proposal for BlogTalk 2010 or 2011

Contact Person:
Organisation:
Address:
Telephone:
Email:

Which year are you bidding for (2010 or 2011)?

Proposed Hotel / Venue Name:
Location/Address:
Distance from Major Airport (Miles):
Distance from Major Airport (Minutes):

Describe potential keynote speakers you would intend to have speak at the event:

Give details of previous conferences and workshops that you and your team have organised:

Describe available transportation modes and costs between major airport and preferred conference venue hotel (shuttle, taxi, etc.):

Describe the preferred conference venue / hotel’s accommodations (lodging and meeting rooms, public areas):

Give details of any possible social events that could be held:

Describe the restaurants, shopping, and night life close to the preferred conference hotel:

Submit a talk proposal for BlogTalk 2009, Social Software Conference in Korea this September! (Final Call)

Here’s an update regarding BlogTalk 2009, the 6th International Conference on Social Software. BlogTalk Asia will be held in Jeju, Korea from 15th-16th September.

We hope that you can submit a proposal to speak at BlogTalk: the deadline is the 31st July 2009. A one-page abstract (less than 600 words) is required. http://2009.blogtalk.net/callforproposals

Why attend?

BlogTalk provides a unique interdisciplinary opportunity for academics, developers and practitioners to come together and discuss social software projects, ideas, research prototypes or success stories.

What is the structure?

As with previous events, we will have a mixture of peer-reviewed presentations, keynote speakers, discussion panels and special sessions (including one on the Korean Social Web). Previous events in the series have featured prominent speakers such as David Weinberger, Mena and Ben Trott, Matt Mullenweg, Suw Charman, Danah Boyd, Salim Ismail and Nova Spivack.

Why Jeju?

Jeju’s temperate climate, natural scenery, and beaches make it a popular tourist destination for both South Koreans and many visitors from Japan, China, northern and southern Asia. The Cheonjeyeon and Cheonjiyeon waterfalls, Mountain Halla, Hyeobje Cave, Hyeongje Island are popular places for tourists. Jeju Island was a finalist in the new ‘Seven Wonders of Nature’, and contains a Natural World Heritage Site (Jeju Volcanic Island and Lava Tubes). In the conference venue (Jungmum Resort Complex) and associated hotels, there are also many bars, casinos, pools, etc.

Jeju is easily accessible from many parts of Asia, with flights to Tokyo, Beijing, Osaka and Hong Kong. You can also fly to Seoul and from there take a one hour flight to Jeju. http://2009.blogtalk.net/travelling

We will have special hotel rates in top-class hotels at the conference venue. http://2009.blogtalk.net/accommodation

Also, BlogTalk will be held just before the Lift Asia event on the 17th and 18th, so you have double the reason to attend! There is a special joint registration rate for both events.

What people have said about BlogTalk

“Discussed what blogs are useful for and why they are changing…”
“Good to see what academics and those in business have in common…”
“Detailed and informative!”
“Inspiring!”
“Highly relevant. Small. Great mix of people from different backgrounds.”
“Well-organised and a great selection of speakers and topics. A useful and productive time.”

Programme Committee

Gabriela Avram, University of Limerick
Anne Bartlett-Bragg, Headshift
Mark Bernstein, Eastgate Systems Inc.
Stephanie Booth, Climb to the Stars
Rob Cawte, Web 2.0 Japan
Josephine Griffith, National University of Ireland, Galway
Steve Han, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology
Conor Hayes, Digital Enterprise Research Institute
Jin-Ho Hur, NeoWiz
Ajit Jaokar, FutureText Publishing
Alexandre Passant, Digital Enterprise Research Institute
Robert Sanzalone, pacificIT
Jan Schmidt, Hans Bredow Institute
Hideaki Takeda, National Institute of Informatics

Contact us

blogtalk2009@gmail.com
@blogtalk on Twitter

Thanks!

John Breslin, Thomas Burg, Honggee Kim
Channy Yun, Haklae Kim

Interview with wetoku about BlogTalk 2009 (Jeju, Korea) and social software

I was interviewed by David Lee, founder of video interview site wetoku, this morning about the forthcoming BlogTalk 2009 in Korea.

(I apologise for the echo, I didn’t have any headphones so was causing some feedback.)

wetoku is a very interesting service that anyone can use, whereby interviews are simply carried out through a web browser that requests a connection to your webcam and mike. It shows the interviewer on one side and the interviewee on the other, and in a backchannel, the interviewee can ask questions of the interviewer via a text box (for clarifications, etc.: these are not shown in the final video). A nice review of wetoku was recently published on Read/Write Web. You can also follow @wetoku on Twitter.