This morning\u2019s highlight was Stu Weibel\u2019s opening keynote address to the assembled conference attendees (yesterday included primarily workshop sessions and tutorials). Stu was asked to talk about DC\u2019s past and future, and he gave many of us food for thought.<\/p>\n
The first thing he did was typical Stu\u2014he took a photo of the assembled group. I hope those will show up on his blog sometime soon (if so I\u2019ll link to them). Will they look that much different from those he took 15 years ago, when Dublin Core began, or those taken at various points along the way? As is also typical, he asked how many people were returning participants in DC, and how many were brand new to the DC conference. Surprising to some of us, roughly one third of the group were new participants, a nicely healthy proportion of new people.<\/p>\n
Stu asked some interesting questions, and gave DCMI some letter grades for performance in a number of areas. His first question, \u201cWhy didn\u2019t we just stop after the 15 elements\u201d suggests the possibility that nothing done since then (the mid-nineties) was worth the effort. He points out that a number of the assumptions made at that time have since been repudiated by experience\u2014the Web is more than just a collection of document-like-objects that can be described in much the same way that we\u2019ve traditionally described library materials. He got a laugh when he reminded us (including the three of us who were actually there in Mar. 1995 when DC was born) that we thought we could solve the syntax problem fairly easily\u2014but of course our notion of syntax in those days was HTML.
\nStu gave some personal assessments of the 15 years of DCMI in the form of grades:<\/p>\n
For providing an international basis for the effort (A)
\n\tFor including a diverse group of participants (B+)
\n\tFor becoming a sustained and solvent organization (D)
\n\tMoving work from consensus to completion (C)
\n\tEstablishing objectives and completing them (C-)
\n\tDocumentation of decisions (B+) (I have to say I think he was somewhat over generous on this one, for reasons I\u2019ll explain later)<\/p><\/blockquote>\nStu also pointed out the places DCMI got stuck along the way, among those were \u2018tarpits\u2019 (his word) of our own making\u2014for example, data models (for which he gave DCMI an \u2018F\u2019). Those that were not our fault or not entirely of our making were things like the aforementioned syntax confusion (C+), which he believes stemmed from trying to do too much and getting overwhelmed (probably the rapid evolution of syntaxes had an effect, too). The \u2018tarpits\u2019 created by others included LOM (learning object metadata, promulgated primarily by IEEE), and INDECS (a now dead effort that was touted some years ago as a business model based approach).<\/p>\n
Some other points Stu made which are hard to argue include the notion that cooperation with organizations with different business models is difficult, but such cooperation is critically important, for reasons around convergence of effort, identification of similar models and related technologies\u2014all amplifying the network effect of what DCMI has done. Increasingly, cooperation is seen as an expensive value, particularly in terms of time and travel, and certainly DCMI has seen those issues having a big effect on conference planning and ability to build on past efforts. Stu also gave DCMI an \u2018A\u2019 for its standardization efforts, including the work to make DC a recognized standard via IETF, NISO, and ISO. He pointed out that these efforts were essential to allow DC to be adopted by government agencies and others that have requirements for such an endorsement.<\/p>\n
On the Singapore Framework, Stu is dubious, in particular thinking of the four levels of interoperability [link] that include the Description Set Profile (DSC) and the Dublin Core Abstract Model (DCAM). He pointed out that lots of metadata is still used primarily at the lowest, human level, and is not yet useful to machines at the moment. This issue is particularly relevant given that the DCAM is currently under review, with opinions flying around (in the halls, on twitter, etc.) in ways they didn\u2019t even when that document was new, and pretty much nobody understood it. Understanding is still an issue, to a great extent because specification and user documentation are not the same thing (something that the DCMI technical folks don\u2019t seem to understand). Stu contends that the DCAM has failed, and felt that its authors still don\u2019t agree about its motivations or implications. It will be interesting to see whether that assessment is widely held throughout the conference.<\/p>\n
On linked data, Stu was clearly somewhat ambivalent, calling it \u201cAn aspirational target of great promise and unproven benefit\u201d. Stu was around and in the fray when the RDF standard was still in diapers, and recalled for the audience how easy we all thought it would be then to bring its promise to fruition. At least a decade later, we\u2019re still trying to do that.<\/p>\n
In Stu\u2019s opinion, the Web is the data model, and we shouldn\u2019t deviate from it. He pointed out that with the issues of flexibility vs. constraints we are drawn in by the Siren Call of Flexibility but would be better off with more constraints.
\nOn the positive side, Stu points out that the linked data bulge has brought us a strong commitment to identifiers, some useful conventions about vocabularies and syntax, some tools to build ontologies and models, and some expectations of utility due to broad adoption \u2013 network benefits, in other words. But we still need to worry about data quality, usefulness, and bridging the boundaries between the existing semantic communities.<\/p>\nStu is skeptical of linked data as the new grail, but still thinks we\u2019re on an exciting threshold\u2014we need metadata more than ever, but we\u2019re drowning in it. He quoted Tom Baker: \u201cData that cannot speak for itself will be more vulnerable to becoming irrelevant\u201d.
\nStu\u2019s last points covered DCMI as an ongoing experiment in social engineering. He cited Malcolm Gladwell\u2019s article in the Oct. 4 New Yorker<\/a> where Gladwell asserts that social media are largely broadly disseminated, networked, weak tie activities, with low barriers, low commitment, low persistence. Gladwell contends that systemic change requires strong ties, hierarchical social structures, leadership organization, and f2f work. Stu believes that DCMI is a strong tie phenomenon, and its impact is amplified by this fact.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This morning\u2019s highlight was Stu Weibel\u2019s opening keynote address to the assembled conference attendees (yesterday included primarily workshop sessions and tutorials). Stu was asked to talk about DC\u2019s past and future, and he gave many of us food for thought. The first thing he did was typical Stu\u2014he took a photo of the assembled group. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,8,3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dublin-core","category-linked-data","category-meeting-reports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/managemetadata.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}