I arrived in Birmingham and joined the Talis Consulting Team about three weeks ago now (time flies!), so it’s about time I introduced myself to the wider world. I have been closely involved with the Semantic Web since early 2004, when I started my PhD at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) in Galway, Ireland. Back then this idea of semantics and structured data on the Web was still new, very much academic, and considered to be mostly arcane and irrelevant by the majority of the Web community. Terms like “Linked Data” or “Open Data” hadn’t even been coined yet, and wide-spread adoption was still far beyond the horizon. It was a great time to work in academia and start a PhD in this emerging field, and DERI was a fantastic place to do it.
Now, almost eight years later, the idea that semantics and structured data matter has started to stick – just have a look at last week’s blog post about schema.org, or think about the way Open Data has not only established itself as a hot topic in many countries, but has in fact become a wide-spread policy. So, after spending many years on the academic side of things, getting a PhD a long the way, and watching the web slowly embrace these “weird” new ideas and technologies, I felt that maybe this was the perfect time to switch over to the industry side of things. I enjoy building things, seeing something take shape, and now that more and more serious Linked Data and semantics-related projects are being started, I can apply my know-how and help to bring them to life. Or maybe people have an idea for a project, but don’t yet know which direction to take, or are unsure which approach might work for them? I should be able to use my experience to help them figure out which way to go. Maybe an organisation just wants to learn about Linked Data, and how they can benefit from it? Again, my time in academia has helped me to communicate things like that.
Talis has been very active and visible in the Linked Data community for several years now, and has in fact established itself as one of the leading players in the field. I had already co-operated with several people from Talis over the years, writing papers, organising community events or running projects. Some time last year then I heard about the plans for a new consulting team, which sounded like the perfect environment to do the things outlined above – teach, design and create solutions with a wide range of different clients in the Linked Data and semantics space. Talis looked more and more like the ideal place for me to go. Fast forward to the present day, and here I am with my first, but certainly not my last post!
