Introduction: Richard Wallis - Data Liberate

[Richard Wallis]

Hi,

I am Richard Wallis Independent Consultant and Evangelist for things Semantic Web / Linked Data / Schema.org via my web presence at DataLiberate.com.

My history in computing, the web, and data goes far too far back to list here - let’s just say I remember attending a course at Intel in the 1970’s, on how to program these new-fangled microprocessor thingies with something called assembler.

Much more recently (the last decade) I’ve been involved in Semantic Web / Linked Data in many areas with a focus in the cultural heritage and library sectors.  I have been promoting and helping the expansion and extension of Schema.org from the beginning. Active in several of the W3C Community Groups working on Schema.org extensions, Chair of the Schema Bib Extend Group which have been responsible for many  improvements to schema.org in the area of creative works and bibliographic materials, including the bib.schema.org extension.

Over the last couple of years, alongside my speaking and Schema.org/Linked Data consulting/education/implementation activities for global clients, I have been working with Dan Brickley at Google on the Schema.org site, it’s supporting codebase & extending its functionality,  the vocabulary itself & extensions, plus engaging with those using and wanting to extend the vocabulary.

I am very interested in the intersection between the worlds of IoT, structured data on the web, and Schema.org.   As per Jose Cantera, I’ve been advocating schema.org as I think it is a pragmatic and effective vocabulary-based approach of accomplishing what the semantic web promised but as yet to deliver.

From my point of view Schema.org can help, as it is already doing for the web world, in the description of resources and Things in a flexible de facto standard way.  

Internet of Things ’things’ need to describe themselves to the applications and services that interact with them - their physical location (already covered by Schema.org Place, Address, etc.) and network location (good initial candidate vocabulary for a iot.schema.org extension); the type of device they are (Schema Product a good basis for this); the ways to interact with them (Schema Actions could be helpful here); plus the thing (Product)  that the device is embedded in or attached to.  Then there is the way IoT devices communicate and are compacted with.

Anyway, I believe there is much to explore and discuss and I am looking forward to more on this list.

Regards,

    Richard.

Richard Wallis

Founder, Data Liberate

http://dataliberate.com

Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis

Twitter: @rjw