Where is semantic technology better poised to be better commercialized – the U.S. or Europe? At the last SemTech conference in San Francisco, 3RoundStones took first place in the Startup competition with Callimachus Enterprise. During a discussion of some of the product’s winning features, talk turned to some of the differences between how semantic technology has progressed in the States and overseas:
3RoundStones CTO David Wood
“I finally see the difference between Europe and the U.S.” “...The work done in R&D there (the UE) was very important and the large government projects were very impressive,” “In the U.S. we don’t spend a lot of money in top-down, federally funded R&D, and not in big central government data projects.” But what is here is a commercially-focused culture, and now large enterprises based here, seeing big vendors like IBM and Oracle talking up semantics, are buying into the idea of semantic tech in a bigger way. “...our projects, because they are economic in nature, are more sustainable.”
Antonia Bradford of the U.K.’s AB Computing
“There has been a lot of EU funding for semantic web projects and for semantic technology projects in general. There’s been funding at the government level and support in the university, but it does need to move out – it will never get anywhere if it stays in university labs,…or continues to receive government funding,” Bradford notes.
Martin Bradford, primary developer at AB Computing
“The American model needs to take over and turn it into something that makes money for people.”
