Venue: Seefeld Olympic Region, near Innsbruck, Austria.

Date: March 1-7, 2009

Description

The Semantic Web Service (SWS) Retreat was an intensive 5 day course, training existing and new researchers and practitioners in the field of Semantic Web Services, so as to encourage their participation in this growing field and to give them access to its top experts. The retreat allowed the participants to immerse themselves within the community and to interact on a one-to-one level with established researchers to gain deeper insights and clarity.

The program for the retreat (shown in the table below) combined theoretical lectures, tutorials and hands-on sessions, and mini-project teamwork, to maximize the knowledge gained by the participants. On top of these formal parts, the program also contained social networking activities for deeper interaction, and also a skiing afternoon.

Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
0900-1030 arrival SOA, motivation
(slides, video)		 Ontology Engineering
(slides)		 WSMO
(slides)		 SEE automation
WSMX, IRS-III
(slides)		 2 Invited talks (slides below) student project presentations
1030-1100 coffee break coffee break skiing afternoon with lunch coffee break coffee break coffee break
1100-1230 SOA case study (cont’d from above) Hands-on building an abstract ontology (cont’d from above) Engineering SWS
(slides)		 2 Invited talks (slides below) student project presentations, closing remarks
1230-1400 lunch lunch lunch lunch short lunch, departure
1400-1530 Web Service technologies
(slides)		 Semantics, SemWeb
(slides)		 Hands-on WSMT ontology, service modeling Student project work
1530-1600 coffee break coffee break coffee break coffee break
1600-1730 Hands-on with Axis RDFS, OWL
(slides)		 WSML
(slides)		 Hands-on cont’d Student project work cont’d
2000 welcome reception dinner,
tutors evening		 dinner dinner dinner dinner, closing party

See further materials.

Participants who successfully completed the retreat course were provided with a certificate of completion. The group that provided the best student mini-project was awarded a certificate of excellence.

The SWS Retreat was organized by STI International and by STI Innsbruck (at the University of Innsbruck). The retreat was partially funded by the Austrian FIT-IT funding agency, with support from the EU projects COIN, Service Web 3.0, SOA4All and from the Semantics TG initiative.

      

Tutors

Graham Hench (STI International, AT)
Mick Kerrigan (STI Innsbruck, AT)
Jacek Kopecky (STI Innsbruck, AT)
Barry Norton (Open University, UK)
Dumitru Roman (STI Innsbruck, AT)
Katharina Siorpaes (STI Innsbruck, AT)
Nathalie Steinmetz (Seekda, AT)
Ioan Toma (STI Innsbruck, AT)
(all slides linked in the program above)

Invited Talks, Advanced Topics

The SWS Retreat program of lectures and presentations ended with talks on advanced topics around Semantic Web Services, given by world-class researchers and top experts (in alphabetical order):

Christian Huemer (Vienna University of Technology, AT):
    The Semantics of ‘B’ in ‘BPM — Business Process Management’ (slides)
Patrick Maué (University of Münster, DE):
    Web Services in the Geospatial Semantic Web (slides)
Pierluigi Plebani (Politecnico di Milano, IT):
    Web Services Retrieval (slides)
Monika Solanki (Imperial College London, UK):
    Towards verifying compliance in Semantic Web service compositions (slides, video)

Organizing Committee

Jacek Kopecky, STI Innsbruck
Dr. Elena Simperl, STI Innsbruck
Alexander Wahler, STI International

Accommodation and Social Events

The retreat was held in a hotel in the Seefeld Olympic Region, with full board and accommodation provided for each participant. The hotel, and the area around Seefeld in general, have a full range of facilities to make the stay more pleasant. See travel information for more details.

As shown in the program, there was a “Tutors’ Evening” on Monday, giving the tutors a chance to present themselves. On Wednesday afternoon, we “hit the slopes”, and Friday evening included a wild closing party.

Participants

We welcomed participants from anywhere in the world, with some degree of preference given to Austrian applicants. We especially targeted postgraduate students and industry professionals in relevant fields. Some basic acquaintance with the principles of Service-Oriented Architectures and Semantic Technologies was expected.

Cost of Participation

The cost for each participant was €400 (or €300 for participants from Austrian institutions). Together with our acquired funding, this covered lecture materials, accommodation, full board and the social events.

Travel and Local Information

Seefeld is a mountain resort that hosted the Nordic events of the 1964 and 1976 Winter Olympics. It is located 17km northwest from Innsbruck, Austria, at the heart of the Alps.

See the travel information page for more details.

Contact

Jacek Kopecky (STI Innsbruck),
Elena Simperl (STI Innsbruck),
Alexander Wahler (STI International)