It’s been a busy couple of months for the Semantic Web research community. At the very end of May the European Semantic Web Conference
returned to Crete, where the series began in 2004. Now in its sixth year the conference reflected the vibrancy of the research community
in this area, the progress made to date, and the increased emphasis on deployment and uptake of Semantic Web technologies. The latter aspect
was noticeable in many parts of the conference, not least of which in the Semantic Web In Use track, a new addition to the ESWC series, co-chaired by Talis Researcher Tom Heath.

With adoption of Semantic Web technologies and Linked Data principles increasingly rapidly, many members of the research community met in
late June at Schloss Dagstuhl in Germany for a seminar titled “Semantic Web: Reflections and Future Directions”. Almost ten years since the first Dagstuhl seminar on the Semantic Web the goal of this event was to learn lessons from the past and map out the research agenda for the next ten years of the field. Again acknowledging the practical aspects of the field, there were lengthy and productive discussions on the topics of hosting and persistence of RDF vocabularies, and the urgent need to examine how Linked Data and the Semantic Web can enhance Human-Computer Interaction; both of which are topics close to our hearts at Talis.

The natural question that arises from exploring the next ten years of research in any field is “who’s going to do all the work?” Fortunately
in early July the Seventh Summer School on Ontological Engineering and the Semantic Web took place in Cercedilla, Spain, part-sponsored by
Talis. This annual event, directed by Enrico Motta (The Open University) and Asun Gomez Perez (Univ. Politécnica de Madrid), provides over 50 students from Europe and beyond with lectures, invited talks and group projects in cutting edge areas of the Semantic Web field, supported by a team of leading researchers. In addition to the knowledge gained from this intense week of study, students of the summer school get to network with their peers and build the very community that will drive forward the Semantic Web research agenda over the next ten years.