Requirements Workshop 28-29 May 2009

We invite open source developers  for a workshop at the end of May to  discuss semantic capabilities and requirements of content management systems.

 

The European "IKS" Project ("Interactive Knowledge Stack") is inviting an initial group of FOSS community members to a workshop where we would like to achieve some consensus on "semantic requirements" for (open source) content management systems.

What are we up to?

We are an EU funded research project including currently 6 open source CMS providers trying to develop an open source technology stack for semantic CMS that can be adopted by CMS providers in a modular fashion. Therefore, we want to work with the communities directly.

The planned workshop is the first of a series (approx. 2 per year, 2009 - 2012) and it is aimed at establishing a set of requirements which semantically enhanced CMS should fulfil in the future. Later workshops will address design, implementation, validation and extensions of the "IKS Technology Stack" for semantic CMS. We want to start with talking to a smaller number of leading figures, but invite all open source software communities to look at our work and decide for themselves whether our objectives are relevant to them. Being 75% EU funded, we make 100% of our work publicly available, to give European tax payers a fair deal  for their money. If you are not European, then please be our GUEST, anyway!

Where and when? 

Salzburg, Austria from 28-29th May, 2009.

What is happening at the workshop?

We have done some initial work on gathering requirements for semantic enhancements to open source CMS and we would like to:

  • present the technical vision of IKS to a select group of open source lead figures
  • present our initial set of requirements and discuss how well they fit with the agenda of the invited communities
  • open a debate on which community would like to contribute what, to the overall objectives of IKS
  • critically assess our current findings and our current approach
  • in short: we ask you to INFLUENCE the way IKS develops (and yes, also to BE INFLUENCED by IKS, as well!)
  • this whole process of governance should lead to a technology basis for a new breed of "content" (rather: "knowledge") management systems

Should I be there?

If you feel this is an interesting and worthwhile initiative, then there are three ways how we can get in contact with you:

  • please do try to come if we invite you (i.e. somebody in our group thinks we should)
  • please introduce yourself if you think we should invite you (i.e. please tell us why there is a mutual interest)
  • please introduce yourself if you would like to come and if you can afford to cover your own cost - we have a limited budget.
  • we put a limit of 20 participants on this first workshop to ensure that discussions can go deep enough - we want to broaden that circle over time and build a proper, open access community. So if you can't take part this time, please keep tracking our work and consider joining at a later date.

What does it cost to take part?

  • The workshop itself is free of charge, but limited to approximately 20 individuals from open source communities
  • if we invite you specifically, we can support you with up to 1000 EURO towards your travel and accommodation (there will be up to 12 such grants)
  • if we accept you to take part, you have to find your own subsistence support.

 I need to know more ....

Please contact John Pereira at Salzburg Research. John is our Community Network Manager and he works closely together with Sandro Groganz from InitMarketing, who has a contract with us to advise IKS on all things open source, community, and CMS!