Jena User Conference Write-Up

I was at the Jena User Conference this week up in HP Labs, for an very enjoyable series of Semantic Web and Jena related talks.
There was an excellent series of presentations, see the schedule and #swig notes from Wednesday and Thursday for an overview of the sessions and lots of handy pointers. The proceedings and presentations should be online shortly.
I’ve come away with a long lists of projects to take a closer look at. RDFReactor, KnoBot, EyeBall, and D2R Server appear high on my list.
Of course the best aspect of any conference is the chance to get together face-to-face and discuss problems, cool ideas, and show off neat hacks. Had lots of fun discussions with the usual suspects, like Dan, Damian and Libby (the Bristol Semweb Mafia :), Tom Heath, Dave Beckett, etc. And I finally got chance to meet the rest of the Jena team, Richard Cyganiak (who gave me one cool idea for a means of transparently integrating Slug into Jena apps), Reto, and that bloke called Danny.
There was plenty of scope for break-out sessions which I put to good use, attending and giving some demos, and getting into some impromptu hacking. The latter gently encouraged by Dan Brickley: “Have you implemented that BoundingBox query yet? Have you done it yet? So…is it done yet? 🙂
The conference was very well organized. A lot of effort was expended to make sure everything was running correctly. Thanks to the Jena team and Jan Ward for putting it all together. A very enjoyable two days.
Roll on XTech!