ESWC Summer School 2014

The 4th ESWC Summer School will run in southern Crete from the morning of Monday September 1st to midday Saturday September 6th 2014. The overall goal for this event is to provide intensive training and networking opportunities for the next EWC generation. In particular we wish to facilitate the creation of a new cohort of ESWC: Master’s, Ph.D. students and junior researchers who will in time become the next leaders of the ESWC conference and of the Semantic Web research area in general.

In this respect the topics of the ESWC summer school will be aligned with the most prominent and emerging topics of the ESWC conference. We will also provide opportunities for attendees to network with their peers, the school tutors and keynotes as well as senior members of STI International and senior members of the Semantic Web community who are participating in the associated events.

This year there will be a parallel track associated with the PRELIDA EU project. This track will focus on raising awareness on the digital preservation of Linked Data in related communities and will expose students to the challenges and opportunities associated with this area. To cover this topic the track will be given by a number of experts from the Digital Preservation community who will give presentations and hands-on tutorials as well as supporting group project work. Thus, students at this year’s school will have an opportunity, if desired, to gain knowledge of digital preservation as well as the technologies associated with Linked Open Data.

The organization and tutorial team for this summer school have extensive experience in these types of events having organized similar events in Europe, the US and Asia over a number of years. Building from this experience, and also knowledge of pedagogy we know that learning-by-doing leads to successful learning. We also know the true value of networking in the research context and that this is best supported by an informal atmosphere coupled with an enjoyable inclusive social program. Supporting the above will be a dominant theme of the EWSC summer school and a significant portion of the school will involve hands-on sessions with the latest generation of Semantic Web tools.