For the third time in a row the European Semantic Technology Conference (ESTC) took place in Vienna, organized by STI International. This year attracted over 240 participants from 25 different countries to Europe's most prominent and authoritative conference focusing on the growth of the ICT semantic technology markets.
The two-day-conference, taking place in the modern atmosphere of the Vienna Hotel Le Meridien, offered not only an interesting program, but also excellent networking opportunities for all participants.
The conference was opened by representatives of two company giants within the semantic technologies – Michael Brodie representing Verizon Communications and Mark Greaves Vulcan Incorporations. The first day continued with interesting presentations within the areas Business Applications, Case Studies and Using Technologies. Within the scope of the X-Media workshop, presentations were held by representatives from Rolls Royce, FIAT, University of Sheffield, University of Koblenz and Quinary spa.
The highlight of the first conference day was the Innovation Seed Camp, where 15 startup companies pitched their business ideas to the audience and afterwards had the possibility to get feedback from experienced mentors within the field. The innovation seed camp was closed up with an expert panel on the topic “How to gain venture capital investments”.
The organized matchmaking session, where the participants held their business to business meetings, which were individually scheduled with an innovative matchmaking tool, was the last part of the program on the first day in Le Meridien.
In the evening the participants moved to the restaurant across the street “Palmhouse”, where an extraordinary social event was held, with buffet and live music. The winners of the Innovation Seed Camp were announced during the evening and the first price was earned by Leo Sauermann from gnowsis.com.
Susie Stephens from Johnson&Johnson; opened up the second conference day with the interesting keynote about usability of semantic technologies within the life sciences. The subsequent panel discussion covered the related topic “Next steps in intelligent information management in the Pharmaceutical and eHealth domains”. Representatives from AstraZeneca, Ontotext and the Spanish health systems talked about facts and trends within this field.
Besides further research presentations and a second matchmaking session, the afternoon of the second conference days covered a third panel discussion “Linked Data in the Enterprises” and an event organized by the CELTIC Cluster with high-quality presentations from large telecommunication companies.
This year’s European Semantic Technology Conference (ESTC) once more succeeded to better the last year’s and with the new and innovative networking elements it is becoming Europe’s most unique networking event within the field of semantic technologies.

For visual impressions of ESTC2009, check out the online gallery:
http://www.estc2009.com/impressions