Download Top Down Or Bottom Up Approaches To Web Innovation?

http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/semantic-web-thinktank-2007-03/
Top Down Or Bottom Up
Approaches To Web Innovation?
Brian Kelly
UKOLN
University of Bath
Bath
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Traditional Approaches
What we thought:
• W3C was the trusted guardian of Web
innovations
• W3C saved us from fragmentation threats
• W3C would continue to roll out
innovations which would be deployed in
the market place
• W3C standards would form the basis for
digital library development programmes
(e.g. NOF-digi; JISC programmes; etc.)
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Were We Right?
NOF-digi & JISC Standards documents:
• Use PNG; SVG; SMIL; …
• Flash, PDF, Java, … aren’t open so they don’t fit in with an
open standards approach
• Web Services & Semantic Web standards will be important
What happened:
• PNG; SVG; SMIL?
• Flash; PDF; Java – widely deployed, so a more flexible
approach for use of standards was adopted
• Web Services Considered Harmful panel at WWW 2005
• Amazon report REST approach preferred to W-S*
standards (80/20)
• Semantic Web vs. l/c semantic web debates flourish;
• W3C revive HTML developments
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An “evidence-based” approach begins to be preferred
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to
ideological beliefs
Role of Web 2.0
Web 2.0:
• Forget (for now) blogs, wikis, etc.
• Consider characteristics such as rapid
development, user engagement, ‘always beta’,
clean URIs, microformats, mashups, …
Suggestion:
• Web 2.0 clearly provides (today) the rich
environment for developing popular & userfocussed services
• We should be looking (outwards) at the
successes of the Web 2.0 environment and not
(inwards) at new schema developments
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Light- vs. Heavy-Weight Development
Lightweight Exploitation:
• Companies with limited funding (6 months to release or we
don’t get paid)
• This helps to avoid mission drift, feature creep & a userfocus (it must be ‘cool’; we must exploit viral marketing)
Heavyweight Exploitation:
• (Typically) public-sector bodies in large consortia
• ‘Worthy’ but most definitely not ‘cool’
• Focus groups; advisory bodies and need to address multiple
political & cultural pressures stifle innovation
• Academic organisations cause drift towards addressing
intellectually challenging problems
• Inability to respond quickly to technological & cultural
changes
A Daily Mail stereotype of public sector IT development, or a valid
of national
development activities?
Acriticism
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Exploiting Web 2.0 Developments
Yahoo!
Dapper
Pipes
Home is
Page
RSS
Feed Mashup
Editor
UK University
Locator
(unfunded)
What can we do?
• Explore Yahoo Pipes as a
lightweight development tool
• Explore Dapper (and
Dapplications) as a
lightweight scraping tool
(e.g. exploit microformats)
• Explore existing
Dapplications (e.g. magg)
• Geo-location services are
ripe for exploiting (and do
you need to fund this?)
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Are Museums Doing It Right?
Reflections on Nick Poole’s vision:
NP: We should place a 2-year moratorium on new projects,
programmes and initiatives & focus public funds instead on
sustained investment in core capacity building and skills
development
BK: We should place a 2-year moratorium on large-scale new
projects, programmes and initiatives and focus public funds
instead on sustained investment in core capacity building
small-scale innovation and skills development
NP: Significant investment should be made in 3-4 high-value, high-
density destination sites such as the 24 Hour Museum which
act as 'ambassadors' for our sector in the online environment
BK: Small-scale investment should be made in 3-4 low-cost,
high-density mashup sites such as the 24 Hour Museum
alongside encouragement to 3rd party 'ambassadors' for our
sector
(e.g.
YouTube).
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In Harmony With The BBC
BBC 2.0 vision outlined at JISC Conference (13 March):
• Do not attempt to do everything yourselves… link to other
high-quality sites yourselves (cf use of Flickr as
repository & selection process for John Peel day photos)
• Fall forward fast… make many small bets
• Treat the entire web as a creative canvas (i.e. blended
stuff)
• The web is a conversation… join in. Adopt a relaxed
conversational tone. Admit your mistakes. (i.e. don’t tell)
• Maximise routes to content. Develop as many
aggregations as possible reflecting as many people,
places topics, channels, networks and time as possible.
• Let people paste your content on the walls of their virtual
homes. YouTube is an excellent example of this.
• Link to discussions on the web, don’t host them… Only
host web-based discussions where there is a clear
rd party services)
rationale.
(i.e.
exploit
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Why Not?
Why Not?
We’re
JISC reliant
on large
funds from
the EU
This doesn’t
fit our
research
agenda
This Web 2.0
thing is
simple to use
and can
provide lots
of benefits!
Adapted from Washington Post cartoon
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WeJISC
have to
own the data,
the metadata,
the software
Google
might go
bankrupt
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Issues
Some issues for discussion:
• Would a heavyweight Semantic Web
recommendation be appropriate at present?
• Is a recommendation for a top-down approach
appropriate in a Web 2.0 environment?
• Can we regard Web 2.0 as a testbed rather than
a solution?
• If a user-focussed approach is advisable, do we
have concrete evidence that a heavyweight
solution (a) is needed and (b) will be used?
• What lessons can be learnt from previous cultural
heritage development activities?
In reality we’ll probably have both bottom-up and top-down
approaches.
A inchallenge
will be
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