Entrepreneurial Connections Conference 2006 (EntConnect 2006) coming up on March 23-26, 2006

Every year there is a small but loyal group of former readers of the former Midnight Engineering magazine who gather in the Denver, Colorado area for a conference known as Entrepreneurial Connections, or EntConnect for short. These are people who have a background or interest in technology and are either running their own businesses or would like to be running their own businesses. Some attendees don't have quite the depth of technical background, but are simply interested in the special angle on business that the conference offers.

This year's conference is being held on March 23-26, 2006.

The conference is run by John Gaudio. Details on the conference can be found on his official conference web site at www.EntConnect.org, or you can check out descriptions of past conferences at my Enrepreneurial Engineers web site.

So, if you're in the Denver, Colorado area, or you live in a galaxy that is within teleportation range, and you're a technical entrepreneur or have entrepreneurial aspirations, consider checking out EntConnect this year. Even if it sounds as if you might not fit the profile of a typical attendee, you might consider the conference anyway. Sure, a lot of technology gets discussed, but the focus is running your own business and thinking like an entrepreneur.

Tell John that I sent you. [Really -- I get a commission!]

-- Jack Krupansky

COW: Consumer Ontology Web vs. Consumer Ontology/Knowledge Web vs. Consumer Knowledge/Ontology Web vs. Consumer knOwledge Web

I'm still struggling to coming up with a mnemonic name to associate with my white paper entitled "The Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web - A Vision of Consumer Applications of Software Agent Technology - Enabling Consumer-Centric Knowledge-Based Computing." I still feel inclined to go with COW since it's so simple and almost accurate. I now have four options for COW:

1. Consumer Ontology Web
2. Consumer Ontology/Knowledge Web
3. Consumer Knowledge/Ontology Web
4. Consumer knOwledge Web

My implied meaning is still that COW is consumer-centric and not merely consumer-oriented, but that may be too wordy... or maybe not. So, maybe the list of options should be:

1. Consumer-centric Ontology Web
2. Consumer-centric Ontology/Knowledge Web
3. Consumer-centric Knowledge/Ontology Web
4. Consumer-centric knOwledge Web

And, if anybody wants to leave off -centric in common use, I won't object vociferously, assuming that they still mean that it is consumer-centric and not something vender-centric that happens to be consumer-oriented.

I'm leaning towards option #4, Consumer-centric knOwledge Web, but I'm also considering the convenience of eliding the implicit -centric, and capitalizing both the K and O of KnOwledge:

COW: Consumer KnOwledge Web

Or maybe I'll just leave the O lower-case and make that implicit in the acronym as well:

COW: Consumer Knowledge Web

My final thought is to go with a triple of meanings, any of which is "correct", depending on context:

1. COW: Consumer Knowledge Web
2. COW: Consumer Ontology Web
3. COW: Consumer Ontology/Knowledge Web

Where the second meaning is used as the core source for the O in COW and reflects more of a schema for the consumer knowledge web, the first refers to the actual instances of knowledge in the web, and the third refers to combination of the schema and the instances of specific knowledge.

I'm still not quite happy with this formula, but at least some progress has been made.

If I had to pick one right now, this would be it:

COW: Consumer-centric Ontology/Knowledge Web

After all, it captures all of the meaning that I intended, and has an almost-precise acronym. And, people can simplify it in a slang manner as they see fit.

Now the question comes up of whether a large, lumbering beast is the desired metaphor for a consumer knowledge web. Unfortunately, it may be more precise than we would hope.

-- Jack Krupansky

Web Farming

Have you heard about the concept of Web Farming? No? Well, neither had I, but I ran across a reference in an announcement for a conference on Web Intelligence. I haven't dug into any of the details, but I did run across a web site, WebFarming.com. I'll dig through it when I get time, but I just thought people might want to be aware of this concept.

Incidentally, the conference is The 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI-06), to be held December 18-22, 2006 in Hong Kong.

-- Jack Krupansky

C-KOW: Consumer Knowledge Ontology Web vs. COW: Consumer Ontology Web vs. CCKW: Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web

I've come up with yet another possible mnemonic name to associate with my white paper entitled "The Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web - A Vision of Consumer Applications of Software Agent Technology - Enabling Consumer-Centric Knowledge-Based Computing":

C-KOW: Consumer Knowledge Ontology Web

C-KOW (pronounced "see cow") is an alternative to Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web (CCKW) which is a bit wordy and not very memorable, Consumer Knowledge Web (CKW), or even Consumer Ontology Web (COW).

For now, I'm sticking with COW (Consumer Ontology Web) as my prime candidate since it's so simple to write and say. It's starting to grow on me. If I go with it, next I'll have to decide what MOO would stand for. Obviously one of the "O"s would be ontology. I think it should relate to a much simpler approach or method to constructing ontologies. More Obvious Ontologies?

Yes, it is Friday evening.

-- Jack Krupansky

COW: Consumer Ontology Web vs. CCKW: Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web

As I continue to work on my white paper entitled "The Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web - A Vision of Consumer Applications of Software Agent Technology - Enabling Consumer-Centric Knowledge-Based Computing", I also continue to struggle with how to crisply refer to it. Consumer-Centric Knowledge Web (CCKW) is a bit wordy and not very memorable. Even Consumer Knowledge Web (CKW) still isn't "there".

My latest rendition is to call it the Consumer Ontology Web (COW). That has the disadvantage that nobody knows what an ontology really is (including most of the people working with the W3C and the Semantic Web, unfortunately), but at least COW is memorable and might inspire a sense of curiosity and get people to ask "Well, so what does the 'O' in 'COW' really mean?"

Hey, it least it might be a great conversation starter... "I'm working on a COW." Or, "My goal is that some day everybody will have a COW, and be happy about it."

I'm thinking that maybe the COW could be the underlying infrastructure, the real ontology on which the higher-level, consumer-oriented knowledge management and user interface layers operate.

Or, maybe the COW is the sum total of all of the interacting software agents that are needed to really make a distributed ontology fly.

I have mixed feelings about this new name for my vision... any thoughts?

-- Jack Krupansky