MindShare 14 April 2005 Telematica Instituut (The New Building) by Lloyd Rutledge I went to MindShare and contributed by giving a CHIP (thus Topia and Noadster) demo and a 10 minute presentation over Semantic Browsing. I chatted quite a lot with Paul, Lora, Geert-Jan and Mettina. Also chatted with Anita de Waard and the new AIO and programmer for CATCH/CHOICE (TI & Beeld en Geluid), who start work next week. Chatted a bit with Rogier, Stanislav and William as well. Based on talks with the CHIPers it is clear that Natasha Stash starts with me at the Rijksmuseum in May. It also seems clear that have the same mindset about having the development of a Semantic Browser along with the RDF as a foundation for the project. The morning had three speakers. First was two guys from Telematica Instituut who presented some high-gloss designer-produced slides conveying scenarios that in turn convey some visions of TI for the future, mostly personal devices that know all about you and tell all your friends, and vice versa. Arnold Smeulders gave the second keynote called "Open uw ogen" about his research on feature extraction and recognition for images. Acting like a good plant, I asked him about "The Semantic Gap" and what was really needed to have computers "recognize" from images what people typically would like recognized. The third keynote was, as far as everyone could guess, a TI-organized joke presenter: probably a performer with a regular gig for such meetings pretending to be a German professor with all sort of joking comparisons of German, Dutch and American business and ICT culture. At least we think it was a joke. From then on we split into four groups, each on a separate floor with separate demos, coffee and lunch. My group was "interactive navigation". Lunch time was also demo time. I showed the demo to Geert-Jan, who gave the usual lively debate. I also showed it to the CHOICE-ers. We discussed future potential tie-ins between CHIP and CHOICE, primarily based on seeing if Noadster works on whatever RDF they produce. After the demos we did short talks. My talk was received well (as far as I can tell). Paul found it a good progressive comparison of Semantic Browsers, leading to the conclusion that CHIP should be developing such as beast. Anita also spoke about the Elsevier model for publishing semantics. Fabchannel.nl spoke about broadcasting and archiving concerts from Paradiso and Melkweg. Vera Hollink (sister of Laura) discussed reworking links to improve link metrics, with the application being medical advice systems. After the meetings TI held a grand opening of their new building. The building is right next to the Grolsch factory in Enschede, which dominates the view from the glassy side. The TI big wig speeches had lots of "Vakmanschaap is Meesterschap" jokes and moving references to their presence helping rebuild the Roombeek area around Grolsch devastated by the firework disaster several years ago. The new building is nice, and much closer to the Enschede station (if only they could make Enschede closer to everything else). The Grand Opening entertainment was two acrobats dangling on ribbon hung in the foyer. TI events are often expensive spectacles designed to impress the business community into giving them money. The acrobats, the comedian, and the nice lunch and dinner must have cost a lot. All the TI'ers wear suits at such events too.