So I’ve decided to use this space to talk about what I’m up to, and post future plans for my work and research. Its not like my lab is requiring me to do this or anything :P

But this should be a good thing to do anyway.

So lets begin: 

Near the start of March was SXSW in Austin, TX. I went down to help out with IdeaCOMM and demo TWC’s WineAgent. It was a great event that I’m very proud of. Met a bunch of great people, made some interesting contacts, and planned some hopeful collaborations. I also spent my time meeting people at SXSW to discuss my work with LOGD and Virtual Community Incentive Models. Made again many great contacts and I’m in the works of connecting and collaborating with some of the people I met. All in all I had a great time, and I plan to go next year and submit a panel on semantic web and open government data.

This month I also worked on my Windowfarm study with Alvaro Graves. We submitted a two page abstract to Web Sci 2011. Our abstract was based on our study on incentive models in the windowfarm virtual community. We just found out last week that this work was accepted as a full paper and presentation. We are both very excited and plan on working in the next two months to further many of the ideas and concepts in our study. 

As for summer plans, I submitted to and was accepted into the Oxford Internet Institute (OII) Summer Doctoral Programme (British spelling FTW). I’m very excited about this opportunity and can’t wait to meet all the other graduate students and researchers.  

In the LOGD space I’ve been very busy with a book chapter about Linked Data mashup creation in the Open Government data space for David Wood’s Linked Government Data book. I’ve also been working on the Instance Hub project in LOGD. In this project we are working on creating great persistent URIs for linking to in the government data space. This will allow us and others to link government datasets in an easier fashion. We already have URIs for US states, US Federal agencies, and for Fiscal Years. We are planning to have new categories soon. I’m also working on a nice front end for these URIs along with some documentation on what they are and how people can use them.

As for my April plans? I plan on continuing my work with Instance Hub and the Windowfarm study. I’d also like to plan out some of the projects I want to work on this summer and think about what has the greatest priority. I’m also planning on attending Transparency Camp at the end of this month to talk about semantic web in government data and hear about all the other fun ideas in Open Government.