Sporting the title of Head of Making Public Data Public and data.gov.uk, Richard Stirling leads the central team behind those two initiatives, based out of the Cabinet Office of the UK Government.

In our conversation we discuss data.gov.uk which emerged from a conversation between  Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the Prime Minister, less than a year ago, and how Richard found himself involved.

The setting up and launch of data.gov.uk, with external advisors Sir Tim Berners-Lee & Nigel Shadbolt, exceedingly short development period, and involvement of the wider community, has been very different to the popular conception of a government IT project.  Richard gives us some insight as to what it has been like on the inside.  He also explains the focus on taking data in to RDF and Linked Data in addition to publishing it in the form provided by the originating departments.

With a look in to what might be next, Richard gives us a great view of what is behind the web site.

Picture published on Flickr by Thayer18

In this Nodalities Podcast, I talk with blogger and Guardian information architect Martin Belam. I’ve run into Martin at a few Linked Data events where the news and media industries have had a high profile (including the recent News Media Summit, and News Innovation conference last year). Martin has an interest in Linked Data, and an interesting perspective on where it fits in with News, both as a tool for journalism and research and as a resource for the industry.

Also mentioned:
Guardian Open Platform

The subject of this Talking with Talis Nodalities Podcast is Conrad Wolfram, founder and Managing Director of Wolfram Research Europe.  He is also Strategic and International Director for Wolfram Research, the organisation founded by his brother Stephen, and responsible for Mathematica software and the WolframAlpha Knowledge Engine.

In our wide ranging conversation we look at Conrad’s career, the evolution of Wolfram Research and its role in introducing wider access to computational functionality.   He takes us through the creation of Mathematica by Stephen Conrad and building a company based upon maths.

We move on to discus the WolframAlpha Knowledge Engine, which is built upon Mathematica technology, and how it fits both in to the online world and the Wolfram strategy.  We close having discussed many issues relevant to the evolution and future of the web.

Photo Copyright © 2009, Conrad Wolfram.

In my latest podcast I talk with Flip Kromer, co-founder of InfoChimps.

We explore the background to InfoChimps, and discuss their aspiration to build a marketplace in which people can contribute and find data – both freely available and commercial.

In my latest podcast I talk with Felix Van de Maele, CEO of Belgian semantic technology company Collibra.

We discuss Collibra, and the problems that many enterprises face in understanding and integrating data held in diverse silos.

For this final podcast in the Online Information Conference 2009 series, I caught up with Dame Wendy Hall in a very echoey room at the Royal Society in London.

Wendy is sharing the opening keynote session on the first day of the conference with Nigel Shadbolt.  Their session has the title The Semantic Web Revolution – Unleashing the world’s most valuable information.  This promises to be a great session to catch with a combination of slide-backed presentation, conversation, and Q&A.

In this conversation with Wendy, we explore the approaching step-change evolution that Semantic Web technologies, specifically Linked Data, will  bring to the online world over the next few years.  An evolution to the web that is already in place, not the totally disruptive revolution that the web itself was.  Wendy makes it clear that, as with the document web of the mid nineties prior to the emergence of Google for instance, it is difficult to predict how the data web will turn out and what tools, services, and business models will emerge.  Nevertheless, the opportunities for innovation, building on the unleashing of distributed yet interlinked data, will be massive.

An interesting insight in to the thinking that will underpin what promises to be a great opening session to an equally good conference.

Antonio has been working in the area of Web search for eleven years.  He has recently joined Microsoft as principle developer manager based in London.

Presenting in the The realtime web: Discovery vs. Search session on the 1st day of the Online Information 2009 conference, Antonio brings an insight in to the challenges of realtime search.  Traditional search systems utilise pointers between pages to ascertain relevance and importance.  In a realtime environment, those references will have not been created.  News items from the BBC are obviously of high reputation, but are they as important as the local paper when you are in Iowa.

How do you calculate the relevance images, or videos, or a stream of information from an event such as an earthquake.  How do you calculate the importance of various social services such as FaceBook and Twitter.  Without giving away the secret recipe behind the way Bing approaches this, his explanations set the scene for these very real challenges.

The twelve months that have elapsed since the previous Online Information Conference has seen an explosion in technologies that influence the information world and life in general.  What was being talked about as up coming trends last year, are now core to the agenda of this years conference.

Conference Chair, Adrian Dale, joins me in conversation to discuss these trends an to explore his hopes for the highlights of this years conference.

The Opening Keynote slot on day three of Online Information 2009 will be filled by Charlene Li, formerly of Forrester Research and now founder of Altimer Group.  Named “One of the Most Influential Women in Technology” by Fast Company magazine, Charlene, co-author of Groundswell, is well know for her opinions on how social technologies are influencing all business.

In this Talking with Talis conversation we explore her thoughts on how many commercial organisations are having to wake up to the new way that there customers and employees are interacting.  Realising that they can not control or buy their way in to this space, is an important step.

We move on to explore how things will evolve further, how and for what the massive amounts of data amassed by social services.  With a history in newspapers, Charlene has some thoughts on what the future may look like for that industry if the do, or do not, adapt.

An interesting heads up for day three of the conference.

In a first for the Platform, we’ve done a video podcast. In it, I talk with Stuart Harrison, (@pezholio) webmaster at Lichfield District Council.

We talk about what local authorities here in the UK can do with open data, how Linked Data plays an important role, and what more is needed for local government to provide better web-based services.

This conversation was recorded on 27th October.
For other Talis podcasts in this Nodalities series, see here