It’s going to be a busy spring in Semantic Web land. There are five important conferences that are scheduled in a two month period.

First up is WWW2008 in Beijing which runs from the 21st to the 25th of April. This is the pre-eminent Web conference packed full of presentations, workshops and tutorials covering everything webby. The Semantic Web traditionally has a number of tracks running through the conference programme. This year we’re co-chairing a session called Linked Data on the Web with Tim Berners-Lee, Chris Bizer and Kingsley Idehen. Rob submitted a paper to the workshop on representing MARC in RDF which I recommend to anyone interested in the future of library data. I’ve seen a couple of the other submissions and it looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun.

Then there’s a week off until XTech 2008 which runs from the 6th to the 9th of May in Dublin. XTech is another webby conference that often has a Semantic Web streak through it. Many of the people involved in organising and helping to run it are SemWeb sympathisers. A couple of us at Talis have submitted talk proposals although we won’t find out if we’ve been selected until the end of this month. XTech clashes completely with JavaOne in San Francisco which also has a little Semantic Web session courtesy of Henry Story and friends.

Another break of a week before Semantic Technology in San Jose from 19th to 22nd May. This is the fourth year for this conference whose focus is coming from the world of semantics rather than the Web. Last year saw all kinds of attendees from the CIA and NASA to Lockheed and Citigroup. This is the conference to be at if you want to see commercial applications of the SemWeb.

Again, a week off until we reach ESWC 2008 in Tenerife from the 1st to the 5th June. This is a hardcore SemWeb conference with a strong research angle. Once again we’re involved in a organising a workshop: Scripting for the Semantic Web, which aims to cover the use of the Semantic Web with all kinds of scripting languages such as PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby and JavaScript. I’m also looking forward to the first workshop on Collective Intelligence & the Semantic Web which promises to be a very hot topic in coming years.

One more week off, before we reach the new kid on the block: Linked Data Planet being held in New York on the 17th and 18th of June. Details are sketchy at the moment apart from the keynote from Tim Berners-Lee, but Linked Data has a lot of momentum and there is a lot of potential for some cool demonstrations.

As you might expect a contingent of Talisians are attending each conference, but none of us are going to attempt all five! Personally I’m planning to be at XTech and Semantic Technology and possibly at ESWC and Linked Data. I know for sure that I’m glad of the holiday I have booked for the end of June. I think I’m going to need it