Jose F. Aldana-Montes - Khaos Research Group, Higher Technical School of Computer Science Engineering University Of Málaga

Sinuhe Arroyo - playence KG

Dr. Arroyo is the co-founder and CEO of playence KG. He counts with more than 10 years of IT experience in various executive positions, most recently as Corporate Development Manager (M&A;) at phion AG where he led the acquisition of Swiss WAF vendor Visonys AG. Dr. Arroyo received his PhD in Computer Science from the University of Innsbruck.

Neil Benn - KMI Open University

"It is clear that a lot of organisational work was done in order to produce this year's STI Offsite event. From the choice of location to the scheduling of networking activities, the organisers should be commended for their excellent job."

Neil Benn is a Research Assistant in the Semantic Web Services group of the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University (United Kingdom), as well as an Associate Lecturer in the Faculty of Mathematics, Computing and Technology at the OU. He holds a BSc. in Computer Science from the University of the West Indies (Barbados) and a MSc. in Software Engineering from the University of York (United Kingdom). He has also recently defended his PhD thesis entitled "Modelling Scholarly Debate: Conceptual Foundations for Knowledge Domain Analysis Technology" at the Open University. His research interests include Knowledge-Based Systems, Ontology Engineering, the Semantic Web, Argumentation, and Knowledge Organisation Systems. He has been involved in a number of EU-funded research projects including LHDL (EU FP6 STREP), LUISA (EU FP6 STREP), and the UK EPSRC-funded Scholarly Ontologies (ScholOnto) project

Barry Bishop - STI Innsbruck

"Good fun. Great to meet some people from the other STI's. I made some really good contacts!"

Barry Bishop is leader of following research unit(s): Intelligent Reasoning for Integrated Systems (IRIS).

Liliana Cabral, KMi, The Open University, UK

"Excellent choice of venue! Good mix of technical presentations and fun (videos and football)."

Dr. Liliana Cabral (http://kmi.open.ac.uk/people) is a research fellow at the Knowledge Media Institute, The Open University, where she has been working since September, 2002. She has been working on the implementation of IRS-III, a framework for Semantic Web Services. She has been a member of the EU-framework 6 IP project DIP (Data, Information and Process Integration with Semantic Web Services) and SUPER (Semantics Utilised for Process Management within and between Enterprises). She is currently a member of the EU-framework 7 project SEALS (Semantic Evaluation at Large Scale) and the chair of the Semantic Web Service Challenge Initiative.

Emilia Cimpian

"A very well organized event, impressive from the point of view of the number of the attendees and the quality of the talks. The remote location gave us the opportunity to interact, exchange research ideas and lay the foundation for future collaborations."

I am a researcher at the Semantic Technology Institute Innsbruck (STI Innsbruck). I am a member of the Science of Semantics (SOS) group and my interests include Semantic Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures and Business Process, with main focus on Business Process interoperability.

Fabio Ciravegna

"Very lively and interesting. I loved particularly the video session, the football match and Dieter's talk ;)"

Fabio is Full Professor of Language and Knowledge Technologies at the University of Sheffield where He coordinates the Organisations, Information and Knowledge (OAK) Group. His research field concerns Human Language related technologies for Web Intelligence and the Semantic Web, with focus on Knowledge Management applications. He is Director of the integrated project IST X-Media, and principal investigator in the EU IPs WeKnowIt and SmartProducts. He is principal investigator in the DTI funded project IPAS co-funded by Rolls-Royce plc and the UK DTI and in its follow-up IPAS-XWB funded By Rolls-Royce. He is also principal investigator in the ERC-funded project Archaeotools about analysing 1m documents from the grey literature. In the past he was director of the EU project Dot.Kom (http://nlp.shef.ac.uk/dot.kom/) and co-investigator in the EPSRC IRC AKT project (www.aktors.org)

He has considerable engagement with industry and user communities with projects funded by Rolls Royce, Kodak Eastman, Lycos, and the Environment Agency.

He is part of the editorial board of the International Journal on “Web Semantics” and of the International Journal of Human Computer Studies. He is director of research of K-Now, a spin-off company of the University of Sheffield focusing on supporting dynamic distributed communities in large organizations. He holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia and a doctorship from the University of Torino, Italy

Anne Cregan

Personal Impressions:

"- relaxing environment on a beach in Crete with sessions held at the swimming pool!

- great for catching up with colleagues and making new connections

- had opportunity to have in depth discussions with Hans Akkermans, John Davies (BT), Tom Heath

- innovative ideas put forward by Hans and Dieter.

- lots of fun!"

Dr Anne Cregan has a commercial IT background that encompasses programming, business analysis, data mining and senior level management, as well as project management and co-ordination. She also has a diverse background in a range of academic disciplines including Computer Science. Physics, Chemistry, Philosophy, Mathematics, Statistics, Psychology and Cognitive Science. Anne was recently awarded a doctorate in Computer Science from UNSW, specializing in Semantic Web Technologies and sponsored by NICTA (Australia's national ICT centre of excellence). She continues to advise NICTA on technologies and strategy to enable the digital economy. She also works with Intersect implementing eResearch capabilities in Australian Universities. She has a BSc(Hons) from the University of Sydney.nne Cregan, National ICT Australia (NICTA)

John Davies, Head of Semantic Technology, Centre for Information and Security Systems Research, BT Innovate

"Good event, well-managed, outdoor presentations were a good idea, non-tourist part of Crete was good. Invited talks by non-STI people would be good, …"

Dr John Davies leads the Semantic Technology research group at BT. Current interests centre around the application of semantic web technology to business intelligence, information integration, knowledge management and service-oriented environments. He is Project Director of the €12m ACTIVE EU integrated project. He co-founded the European Semantic Web conference series. He is also chairman of the European Semantic Technology Conference and a Vice-President of the Semantic Technology Institute. He chairs the NESSI Semantic Technology working group. He has written and edited many papers and books in the areas of the semantic technology, web-based information management and knowledge management; and has served on the program committee of numerous conferences in these and related areas. He is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and a Chartered Engineer. Earlier research at BT led to the development of a set of knowledge management tools which are the subject of a number of patents. These tools were spun out of BT and are now marketed by Infonic Ltd, of which Dr Davies is Group Technical Advisor. Dr Davies received the BT Award for Technology Entrepreneurship for his contribution to the creation of Infonic.

Frank Dengler, Institute AIFB, Universität Karlsruhe (TH)

"Nice people, great networking event"

Frank Dengler is a research associate and PhD candidate at the Institute AIFB. He received his diploma in Information Engineering and Management from the Universität Karlsruhe (TH). Before joining the AIFB team, Frank worked as IT professional service consultant at Intel. His research is focused on semantic business processes management, informal processes and collaborative process development using Semantic Technologies.

Stefan Dietze, KMi, The Open University

"Phew. That might take some time…. ;-)"

Dr. Stefan Dietze (http://people.kmi.open.ac.uk/dietze) is a research fellow at the Knowledge Media Institute of the Open University. He holds a PhD (Dr. rer. nat.) in Applied Computer Science from Potsdam University, Germany and his current research interests are in Knowledge Modelling, Knowledge-based Systems and Semantic Web Services (SWS). He is currently leading work packages within the European research projects NoTube (http://notube.org) and mEducator (http://meducator.net).

Birgit Dippelreiter, TU Wien – EC Group

"It was a great week in Greece where we had lots of fun and nice people to talk."

Birgit Dippelreiter studied business informatics at the Vienna University of Technology. Since 2006 she works as project assistant at the Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (Electronic Commerce Group), Vienna University of Technology. Her research interests are semantic technologies, project management, and collaboration systems for supporting group work. Her PhD topic is about semantic project management and semantic desktop.

John Domingue, KMI Open University, STI International

"I really enjoyed the offsite and was bowled over by the enthusiasm and motivation showed by the participants. The weather and food also added to my enjoyment :-) and I'm already looking forward to next years."

John Domingue is the President of STI International and the Deputy Director of the Knowledge Media Institute at the Open University. Apart from STI his main activities at the moment are centred on: a) serving as Scientific Director for the SOA4All project where the goal is to transform the Web from one which is mainly data-centric to one composed of billions of services which appear and disappear in a highly dynamic fashion; and b) serving as a Caretaker within the Future Internet Assembly which brings together over 90 EU projects to design a Future Internet able to comprehensively meet the needs of EU Business and Society.

Christina Feilmayr, Johannes Kepler University Linz

".. nice week in Kalamaki :-)"

researcher at the institute FAW, working on PhD in Ontology-driven Information Extraction. Project participation in Web Application Development and projects in the field of ontology-based information extraction in the domain of eTourism, eRecruitement and eManufacturing. Current research interests are ontology-based/-driven information extraction, ontology-engineering, -evaluation, -population, and -learning.

Charlotte Finkbeiner, STI International

"For me it was the first time i met all the many people from the STI Community. I had a lot of fun, organizing the Offsite and being in Kalamaki with all its Nikos' and Marias. I am looking forward to meet you all next year again."

Charlotte started working at the STI International office in September 2008. The main working field combines PR and Marketing activities. Before breaking and entering this job opportunity, Charlotte gained experience in many different areas and branches. Her educational background comes from the Universiteit Maastricht, namely the Institute of Arts and Social Science.

Florian Fischer, STI Innsbruck

"Overall I liked the offsite very much. Especially, that the location was much more suitable for an offsite then last year in Teneriffe, where people just tended to spread out and get lost. I believe that the video challenge, despite producing very nice results, is a difficult thing in the agenda, because it involves too much fighting for time-slots, camera time, ..."

I am currently working at STI Innsbruck while finishing my studies in computer science at the university of Innsbruck. Every since I
started, my main research interests have been Logic and automated reasoning, which a focus on practical application of these technologies in a Web setting.

Michael Fried, STI Innsbruck

"one word: great."

Michael Fried has joined the semantic web community two years ago. His topics cover space-based cloud computing as well as data mediation, especially data from the "social web". Currently Michael is working for STI Innsbruck being involved in some projects regarding RDF triple distribution and discovery.

Melanie Friedl

"experienced the Offsite as a well-organized, spontaneous and pleasant get-together with many possibilities to meet new people and
talk to familiar faces, work together with interesting and competent colleagues and learn new things about the organisation i work for. A+, would attend again :)"

Melanie Friedl joined the Semantic Web Family in the fall of 2008 after a short stint in the video game industry. She now divides her time and attention between STI International and Seekda GmbH as the Office Manager.

Christoph Fuchs, Programmer at STI Innsbruck

"The STI offsite 2009 was a great and interesting time! I've met a lot of new people and made a lot of new friends. I'm really looking
forward to seeing all of them some time! Also I'd like to mention that Barry Norton really looked weird with long hair! :)"

Born 1985 in Innsbruck. Grown up in a highly contrasting world between sports and computers. Currently working for STI and doing my masters degree in Innsbruck. When I'm not doing computer stuff I'm probably riding my skateboard/BMX/snowboard or I'm windsurfing at some beach. Other interests include physics, photography and design.

Christoph Grün, Vienna University of Technology Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems e-Commerce Group

"Destination and organization was great, also that it took place not in a hotel but outdoors."

I studied Business Informatics at the University of Linz in Austria. Currently, I am employed as PhD student at the TU Vienna. My research interests comprise e-tourism, m-commerce as well as semantic web technology.

Simon Hangl, STI Innsbruck

"It was a quite intresting experience to travel around with many people i've never seen before :). especially we were in a really small city (i think, sti has more members than kalamaki). i hope, i can join next year again."

born in austria, went here to school. i'm studying now for 2 years computer science and business science and startet at sti last year. i'm in the active project.

Dr. Mark Hefke, FZI Forschungszentrum Informatik Karlsruhe IPE - Information Process Engineering

"I appreciated the possibility to talk to and discuss with such a large group of people in the field of Semantic Web Technologies at such a nice location. I finally hope to meet you again in order to benefit from networking activities like that in the near future!"

Mark Hefke has studied Business Engineering at the University of Karlsruhe. Since 2002, he is working at the research group Knowledge Management. In 2008, he has finished his Ph.D. at the AIFB Institute, University of Karlsruhe (Topic: Ontolology-based Tools for supporting Organisations in the Introduction of Knowledge Management).

Graham Hench - STI International

"Compliments to all those involved in organizing the event - last year pales in comparison! Looking forward to meeting up soon - latest next year, same time, same place - to hear what you've all been up to and figure out how we can continue to support your academic and entrepreneurial endeavors... and of course spend some time catching up on the beach."

Graham Hench is a scientific coordinator at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) International. After completing his undergraduate work at the University of St. Thomas, St. Paul, MN, USA with a degree in Quantitative Methods and Computer Science, he later worked as a software developer and scientific programmer at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) of the University of Innsbruck, Austria (formerly, DERI Innsbruck). He then transfered to the STI International office where his primary responsibilities include managing the networking and coordination activities lead by STI International. His most recent work focuses on further enriching STI International’s contribution towards the realization of the Future Internet vision lead by the European Commision.

Daniel Herzig, AIFB, Universität Karlsruhe (TH)

"The event was great to get in contact with the people of the semantic web community."

Daniel M. Herzig is a PhD student at the Institute of Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) of the Universität
Karlsruhe (TH). Before joining the AIFB, he studied Business and Engineering at Universität Karlsruhe (TH), University of Massachusetts and Stanford University, and received his Diplom, Dipl.-Wi.-Ing., in 2009 from Universität Karlsruhe (TH). During his studies, he worked as an intern for SAP Research, Palo Alto and Siemens Health Care, Shenzhen, China.

Stefan Huber, STI Innsbruck

"It was a great opportunity to get to know to a lot of new and interesting people."

I am business informatics student at the university of applied science in Kufstein and working since April 2009 at the STI Innsbruck as student researcher.

Lejla Ibralic Halilovic, STI International

"Considering the organization of the last year's offsite meeting, it was a logistic challenge organizing the STI International Offsite in Kalamaki - the little Cretan village on the south coast of the isle. Despite my worries, the meeting turned out to be a great success. I'm looking forward to the next year!"

Lejla works for STI International in Vienna since the opening of the head office in 2007. The areas of her responsibility are membership and
conference management. Before taking the challenging job at STI International,Lejla worked for different research institutes in the field of social sciences. Parallel to her work Lejla is writing on her master thesis is sociology.

Nophadol Jekjantuk, University of Aberdeen

I am a research student at Department of Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen. My research interests are in semantic web and knowledge representation, with a focus on the representation and reasoning algorithms of metamodeling enabled ontologies.

Franziska Jope, STI Innsbruck

"I enjoyed the STI Offsite in Kalamaki. In my opinion it was a nice event for networking."

Since June 2008 member of STI Innsbruck University graduate in Business Administration.

Mick Kerrigan, STI Innsbruck

"Were good, but then again I was in the organization committee :) I would say we should have more scientific stuff in the program (especially now that we are a symposium). Presentation by some selected Poster/Demo would be a good start."

Mick Kerrigan is a researcher in the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) located in the University of Innsbruck, Austria. Originally from Dublin, Ireland, Mick holds a B.Sc. from University College Dublin and an M.Sc. from National University of Ireland Galway, both in Computer Science. Mick has been a long time contributor to the WSMO and WSML working groups, and has been involved in the OASIS Semantic Execution Environment Technical Committee since it was established in 2005, which he currently co-chairs. Micks current research focuses on the emerging field of Semantic Web Service Engineering, where methods, techniques, and guidelines are required to support the Semantic Web Service Engineer through the full lifecycle of Semantic Web Service artifacts.

Srdjan Komazec, STI Innsbruck

"No comment!"

Srdjan Komazec is at present in his second year of doctoral studies in computer science at the University of Innsbruck. Since October 2007 he is working at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) Innsbruck as researcher and project collaborator in national and international projects. He is also a member of OASIS Semantic Execution Environment Technical Committee. His research interests include semantic web services and middleware management.

Jacek Kopecky, STI Innsbruck

"I very much enjoyed the diversity of the meeting, where I made many new acquaintances, and strengthened old ones. The secluded location was also an important factor, ensuring a tighter cohesion of the large group."

Jacek Kopecký is a PhD candidate researcher at STI Innsbruck. He holds a Master's degree from Palacky University, Czech Republic. His research interests cluster around Web technologies, with particular focus on Semantic Web Services, especially for automation supported by lightweight semantic descriptions. Since 2001, Kopecký has been contributing to Web services standardization, especially at the W3C, and he chaired the W3C SAWSDL working group. He has also been involved in EU research projects DIP, TripCom and SOA4All.

Reto Krummenacher, STI Innsbruck

"I don't remember... I must have caught to much of something: sun? salt water? raki? work? or simply too many hits during the annual soccer match?"

Spring 2004 graduation from EPFL in Switzerland, since late 2004 member of STI Innsbruck (formerly DERI Innsbruck) as researcher, project assistant and phd
student. topics: semantic spaces, middleware, service computing infrstructures.

projects: TripCom, SOA4All.

Christian Leibold – STI Innsbruck

"This year was my first time at STI International offsite. In addition to the stimulating talks from Dieter, Tom and Hans, it amazed me how easy and well the variety of STI members got into contact and how good team building worked out in the variety of activities. The remoteness, calmness and cultural heritage of Crete and Kalamaki in particular was for sure beneficiary, to both extended discussions and focused offline work. Bottom line: STI offsite is the opportunity to (net)work in a beautiful and inspiring environment."

Christian Leibold (STI) holds a Diploma (master equivalent) of Computer Science from Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich. The topic of his diploma thesis was the evaluation of content repository solutions and implementation at BMW Group Design Project Management. During his studies he concentrated on System Architectures, specializing in Java EE and User Interaction, including teaching of tutorials accompanying the lectures towards Spoken Dialogue Systems and Enterprise Integration. Christian joined STI Innsbruck in April 2007. Since then he won a research grant towards the market preparation of a research prototype. In the EC IP MUSING he holds a major role as project researcher. Before joining STI he was involved in industrial projects with BMW Group, Infineon Technologies, Take2 Interactive Software and Execcon Consulting, covering development, quality assurance, project management and process development for Software and Hardware products.

José Manuel (Ozelin) López, XimetriX Network Thoughts

"This STI2 meeting has been a completely stressless place. I've missed more senior people in the audience that could have get more interesting discussions. However, the organization has been superb and we have enjoyed 4 days (in my case) of rest, enjoyable discussions with peers and good invited talks. I would suggest more talks, panels and workshops for nexrt years."

José-Manuel (Ozelin) López* was born in 1972 in Granada (Spain). He holds a degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Málaga. He has been working since 1999 in Research & Commercial projects, in three companies. He worked at Atos Origin and iSOCO, being responsible for the management of the Semantic Web and Semantic Web Services related EC funded projects. Currently he works at XimetriX Network Thoughts as Research Manager where he is managing new projects regarding the Semantic Content Management product of the company. José-Manuel has published over 30 publications in several books, journals and conferences.

Michael Luger, STI Innsbruck

"I had a great time at the Offsite 2009 ! The program was interesting, it was a good opportunity for getting to know the people better, and I really enjoyed the overall flair of the venue."

I'm currently working at STI Innsbruck as a student researcher, and I have been involved in several national and European research projects. My research interests include the application of Semantic Web technologies to different domains, such as multimedia archives, digital libraries, and e-tourism. I have also been working on collaborative ontology engineering.

Maria Maleshkova, Knowledge Media Institute The Open University

"This was a very interesting networking event situated in a nice location. The sky was blue, the sun was shining, the see was pleasant, AND there were a lot of exiting people to talk to. I am looking forward to next year."

I am a PhD student focussing on supporting and enhancing the creation of semantic annotations over Web services. In particular, my work focuses on providing tool support for the semantic annotation of RESTful services with MicroWSMO and developing approaches for the automatic service annotation recommendation. I am also involved in the SOA4All project, focusing on the development of an approach for the semi-automatic extraction of semantic descriptions of services, based on service-related documents and user feedback. In addition, I work on the development of a user editor for MicroWSMO, which will provide the user with options to edit and improve the resulting semantic service annotations, by adding supplementary information and comments.

Francisco Martin-Recuerda UPM (Universidad Politecnica de Madrid)

"Great organization. Kalamaki was an excellent choice for having the meeting. I was very happy to meet some of my ex-colleagues again :)."

Francisco has studied Computer Science Engineer at University of Granada (Spain) and he holds a Master degree in Artificial Intelligence (Knowledge Representation) by University of Edinburgh (UK). He has been be visitor scholar at Stanford University (USA) in the Stanford Logic Group (http://logic.stanford.edu/) and PhD candidate in the the Information Management Group (http://img.cs.manchester.ac.uk/) at the University of Manchester. Francisco has more than 8 years of experience in industry and academia. He has been working in several companies like Iberia airlines (http://www.iberia.com/), Sadiel (http://www.sadiel.es/), and Agresso (http://www.agresso.com) where I hold diverse positions, like senior developer, project manager and product manager, in projects related with e-commerce sites, information management intranet services, and software applications for concrete business units (corporate social responsibility, corporate audit, sales, and business process management). Francisco has been junior researcher and project manager at STI Innsbruck (working in EU research projects like DIP (http://dip.semanticweb.org/), SEKT (http://www.sekt-project.com/), Knowledge Web (http://knowledgeweb.semanticweb.org/) and TripCom (http://www.tripcom.org/). Francisco is currently Project Manager at the University Polytechnic of Madrid (UPM, http://www.upm.es) where he works as managing director of the EU project SEALS (http://www.seals-project.eu/)

Malgorzata Mochol, Freie Universität Berlin Institute for Computer Science WG Networked Information Systems

Dr. Malgorzata Mochol ( This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it , http://page.mi.fu-berlin.de/~mochol/) received her diploma in Computer Science in 2003 at the Technical University Berlin. Since Nov.2003, when she joined Free University Berlin, she has worked as researcher in various national and European projects and lecturer giving IT- and business-oriented courses. In January 2009 she completed her PhD on the ontology matching issues taking into account the reuse aspects of the existing approaches and the selection of current relevant and suitable matchers. She published in various Semantic Web conferences, workshops, books and journals and has also much experience in the organization and chairing of workshops and events like OAEI2006 Campaign, all ExpertFinder workshops, Corporate Sematnic Web workshop, Corporate Wiki Infoday & STI/CSW PhD-Workshop.

Lyndon Nixon, STI International

"The STI Offsite is a great opportunity to meet other researchers in semantic technologies in an informal setting, and with good weather."

Lyndon Nixon joined STI International as senior researcher in November 2008. Prior to that, he undertook and completed his PhD at the Free University of Berlin. He is involved in the SEALS and NoTube EU projects, the STI Education and Roadmapping services and supports the STI online presence, among many other things.

Dr. Carlos Pedrinaci, Knowledge Media Institute - The Open University

Dr. Carlos Pedrinaci is a research fellow at the Knowledge Media Institute (KMi) at the Open University, UK. He holds a PhD in artificial intelligence from the University of the Basque Country (Spain). His main research interests are Semantic Web services, Knowledge Based Systems, and Business Process Analysis. He has extensive experience with European research projects in the domain, namely with OBELIX, DIP, SUPER and SOA4All. He is actively involved in the standardization of Semantic Web services technologies as a member of the OASIS SEE TC, the CMS Working Group, and the W3C SAWSDL Working Group.

Ruzica Piskac, EPFL, Switzerland

"The STI Offsite 2009 was simply great! It was a pleasure to see old friends, to meet new people, to hear interesting talks, and do a bit of social networking. And all that under the warm sun of Crete. :-) Great place, great weather, great company!"

Ruzica Piskac is a PhD student at EPFL. She was previously employed at DERI Innsbruck (now STI Innsbruck). Ruzica holds a master degree in mathematics from The University of Zagreb, Croatia and a master degree in computer science from the Max Planck Institute for Computer Science in Germany. Her research is mostly focused on formal methods and decision procedures for various logics. While at DERI Innsbruck, Ruzica was working on formal large scale reasoning and co-organizer of two successful workshops related to this topic at the ISWC and ESWC conferences. Her latest work was in combining various expressive theories that share set operations. Ruzica spent the summer 2008 in Redmond, WA where she was working as a research intern for Microsoft Research.

Michael Pöttler, Vienna University of Technology

"Very well organized!"

Michael Pöttler has received his bachelor’s degree in business informatics from the Vienna University of Technology in 2006 and completed his master studies in 2007. He is currently working as a project assistant at the Institute of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (Electronic Commerce Group), Vienna University of Technology. His research interests include semantic technologies, E-Tourism, Virtual Communities and Usability Design.

Matthias Pressnig, STI Innsbruck

"For me the Offsite in Crete was a great event to get in touch with the people also working on semantic technologies - and the location was nice, too."

I am studying computer science since Oktober 2003 in Innsbruck. In August 2008 I started working for STI Innsbruck as programmer.

Yuan Ren, University of Aberdee

"Great time, amazing venue, friendly atmosphere and interesting and exciting events. The organization work is excellent."

PhD candidate in University of Aberdeen, working in ontology reasoning.

Michael Rogger - STI Innsbruck

"Great event, helped a lot to meet new people and to get an idea of their work!"

Master Stundent at University of Innsbruck

Dumitru Roman, STI Innsbruck, Austria

"A very pleasant experience!"

Dumitru Roman works as a senior researcher at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) / University of Innsbruck, Innsbruck, Austria. In 2008 he received a PhD in Computer Science from University of Innsbruck, Austria, and in 2003 a Diploma Engineer degree in Computer Science from Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania.His general research background and interests lay at the border between knowledge representation and reasoning, and large scale, dynamically distributed systems. Dumitru has performed research on broad topics related to semantic and service-oriented technologies. As of end 2008, he has co-authored over 50 publications in books, journals, conferences, and workshops, on topics such as ontologies and the semantic Web, mobile services, Grid computing, service discovery and selection, service non-functional properties, geospatial decision making and geotagging, business process management and workflows, service choreography, contracting, and service policies. His research directions point to novel methods for developing an advanced knowledge infrastructure that potentially enables individuals, organizations, and humanity as a whole to socialize, access services, and solve problems much more effectively than we are able to do today.

Rainer Schuster Vienna University of Technology, Austria

"Interesting meeting with lots of nice people. I had interesting chats, not only about working issues. The organization was perfect and the place was just lovely!! Furthermore I was in the winning team of the Semantic Challenge and of the Soccer game. So, I guess I can say, it was a fruitful meeting. Thanks to All….the Semantic Man ;-)"

I received my MSc in Business Informatics at the Vienna University of Technology in 2006. My master thesis focuses on my work within the UN/CEFACT (United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business) standardization group and is located in the field of B2B. It was supervised at the Department of Distributed and Multimedia Systems at the University of Vienna and was awarded with the 1st prize of the INITS award 2006. I am currently working on my PhD thesis and employed as a researcher at the Institute for Software Technology and Interactive Systems (Electronic Commerce Group) at the Vienna University of Technology. My research interest focuses on business modeling and business process modeling methodologies within the field of inter-organizational data exchange between information systems.

Omair Shafiq, STI Innsbruck

"Superb, excellent, fantastic !!! Would love to be there again."

Omair Shafiq (http://members.sti2.at/~omairs) works as a researcher in Semantic Execution Environment (SEE) unit at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) Innsbruck, Austria http://www.sti2.at. His research interests focus on Semantic Web, Semantic Web Services, Semantic Grid, Peer-to-Peer Computing and Distributed Systems Management. He has published over 40 articles in international journals, conferences and workshops. He has been the project management assistant of the Austrian Govt. funded research project Triple Space Computing (TSC) http://tsc.deri.at, and also have contributed to European Commission funded ICT research projects, i.e. FP6 TripCom, FP7 SHAPE, FP7 SOA4All and FP7 COIN. He is member of OASIS technical committee on Semantic Execution Environments. He has also been part of organization and program committee of a number of international conferences and workshops.

Katharina Siorpaes, STI Innsbruck and playence

"Very efficient networking and team building at a great location."

Katharina is a researcher at STI Innsbruck at the University of Innsbruck and a co-founder of the institute's spin-off playence. Katharina received her PhD in computer science from the University of Innsbruck in 2009. Her research interests include ontology engineering, games, and incentives for semantic content creation. In her PhD, she created OntoGame, a series of games for hiding tasks in semantic content creation behind online games. Contact her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it

Stuart Taylor, University of Aberdeen, UK

"Good location, good people, good activities."

I am a second year research student working toward a PhD in Computing Science at the University of Aberdeen. The main topic of my research is to provide scalable and efficient reasoning support for rule extended ontology languages. Additionally, I am interested Linked Data and Semantic Web technologies in general.

Ioan Toma, STI Innsbruck

"I think the STI Offsite was a really good opportunity to meet people from STI member institutes, to get to know some of the work they are doing, to listen to interesting talks and last but not least to have fun ;)"

Ioan Toma* works as a researcher at STI Innsbruck, Austria. His current research areas include Semantic Web Services, more precisely modeling QoS aspects of service and ranking of services based on QoS descriptions.

Denny Vrandecic, AIFB, Karlsruhe

"The attendees showed an impressive creativity and technical excellence in creating the videos in the group tasks. Nice talks in a beautiful environment with lots of like-minded people."

Vrandecic is a perennial PhD student at the Institute AIFB of the KIT Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He received his Master for studying Computer Science and Philosophy at the University of Stuttgart. Now his research interests include ontology evaluation, massive collaboration, and keeping in mind that making life easier for humans is our main focus. He co-organizer several WWW and ISWC workshops. He is co-inventor of Semantic MediaWiki and co-authored several books for Germany's most-popular role playing game.

Elmar P. Wach, STI Innsbruck

"Networking at its best"

Elmar P. Wach has joint STI in 2009. He holds two master degrees (Dipl.-Ing.Univ. and Dipl.-Wirtsch.Ing.Univ.) from Munich University of Technology. The postgraduate business studies led him also to Columbia Business School where he conducted his master thesis and researched on market concentration and entrepreneurship. Elmar has gathered more than ten years of professional experience – he worked with a management consultancy, a Web development agency and an international leading mail order company (OTTO). Since 2005 he is running his own e-commerce consultancy Elmar/P/Wach eCommerce Consulting that delivers innovative services like potential analyses for e-shops, usability studies via Mystery eShopping, and large scale project management to its clients like Deutsche Telekom and the OTTO group. Now, he strives for deepening his e-commerce knowledge to a scientific level focusing on the Semantic Web and Ontology research. Elmar is native Tyrolian/ Austrian.

Alexander Wahler, STI International

"The offsite went very well. for the next year we are planning a bigger design and presentation scope for the participants."

Alexander Wahler has a degree in electrical engineering of the Vienna University of Technolgy, where he worked as a scientific assistant. He has many years of experience in the development of database internet solutions (e.g. Sony-Intra-news, Porsche-Austria). He is the CEO of STI International and the co-founder of Hanival Internet Services GmbH and seekda OG, a start up in the field of Web Search and Service Marketplace.

Martina Wieser, Secretary at STI Innsbruck

"I only have good impressions about the offsite :) of course it was a little bit to work but most of the time was just holiday. I'm really looking forward to the next year's offsite in Crete :)"

Last year I finished school, the commercial academy in Innsbruck. Then I worked half a year at a car rental company and since May I'm here at STI Innsbruck.

Daniel Winkler, STI Innsbruck

"I really enjoyed the offsite 2009, both the talks and the surroundings. It was a great opportunity to get to know lots of the STI International members."

I am currently doing the master studies in computer science at the University of Innsbruck. Besides I am working as a student researcher at STI Innsbruck, which is also the institute where I am writing my master thesis.

Dana Zajic, STI International

"Very nice location, warm and friendly hosts, making us feel as if we are staying with good friends"

Working for STI International since April 2008. The previous six years employed as Finance Manager in the game industry, worked for Deep Silver, Rockstar Vienna (Take 2 Interactive).