Here I am in the self-proclaimed “Capital of Silicon Valley”, surrounded by corporate folks, VCs and geeks of various persuasions, discussing the Semantic Web. Yesterday Ivan Herman of the W3C did an intro talk on the State of the Semantic Web. Good concrete material, but I couldn’t help thinking he could have saved a lot of effort by pointing to the audience. Clear visible evidence that the Web model of indepedent innovation is alive and kicking. There’s a good selection of people that were early creators/drivers of this tech along with current implementers and seriously interested parties. Noses meet food trough.

On a personal level it’s great. Plenty of friends of old, quite a lot of colleagues in this big adventure I’ve never met in person – golly gosh: Uche Ogbuji, David Booth, John Breslin, Paul Gearon, Jim Hendler, Pat Hayes… (Hmm, Pat claimed only his mother calls him Patrick, but Google does too). Every single one of them is giving positive messages on how things are going webwise.

It’s really nice being here with a team – Talisians Ian, Paul and Ceri have been doing a grand job of keeping me out of trouble on message. My commitments have been mounting per hour, though fortunately my ego has now swelled enough that it can divide, split and become an entity in its own right (blogging gets you known kids!) so I’ll let that do the chatting while I go look for a restaurant that does refried beans.

There is a lot I should be reporting here, but that’ll have to wait – I’m diving into the scariest session this afternoon, on Common Logic. Or maybe I’ll get a cab to the garlic theme park. California rocks. Literally.