The venue is being sponsored by SQLSoft+. If you would like to attend please register here.

Topic:
We trace the roots of ontology-drive information systems (ODIS) back to early work in artificial intelligence and software engineering. We examine the lofty goals of the Knowledge-Based Software Assistant project from the 80s, and pose some questions. Why didn’t it work? What do we have today instead? What is on the horizon? We examine two critical ideas in software engineering: raising the level of abstraction, and the use of formal methods. We examine several other key technologies and show how they paved the way for today’s ODIS. We identify two companies with surprising capabilities that are on the bleeding edge of today’s ODIS, and are pointing the way to a bright future. In that future, application development will be opened up to the masses, who will require no computer science background. People will create models in visual environments and the models will be the applications, self-documenting and executing as they are being built. Neither humans nor computers will be writing application code. Most functionality will be created by reusing and combining pre-coded functionality. All application software will be ontology-driven.

Speaker: Dr. Michael Uschold
Michael has been a pioneer and leader in engineering and applying ontology’s. His background includes co-pioneering the use of ontology’s at Boeing and co-pioneered the field of ontology engineering with a methodology remaining in use today.

He received his B.S. in mathematics and physics at Canisis College in Buffalo, N.Y in 1977, a Masters in computer science from Rutgers University in 1982, and a PhD in Artificial Intelligence from The University of Edinburgh in 1991. Before arriving at the Boeing Company in 1997, Dr. Uschold was a senior member of technical staff in the Artificial Intelligence Applications Institute (AIAI) at the University of Edinburgh. He has also been a lecturer and a research associate at the Department of AI at the University of Edinburgh.

Thursday, July 22, 2010

6:00 pm – 6:30 pm (Networking and pizza/drinks)
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm (Presentation)

The venue and refreshments are sponsored by SQLSoft+ “the Gold Standard in Training” (Thank you Dennis James! – and SQLSoft+).
Please register here to reserve your spot and get directions.

About the talk
The rising popularity of the semantic web is resulting in an increasingly large number of RDF data sources available on the Internet, representing both data and knowledge in the form of OWL/RDF ontologies. These resources are gradually being linked together into a global database that promises to greatly enhance our ability to access the most relevant information at the point of need. However, this very increase in resources often makes it difficult for users to navigate the global database to find just the information of interest. The goal of our work is to make it easier for users and developers to access only relevant information by leveraging the database concept of views. Just as relational views allow only relevant aspects of relational tables to be presented through the use of saved SQL queries, so too will RDF views allow only the most relevant RDF information to be presented through saved SPARQL queries.

In this presentation Jim Brinkley will provide a high level overview of the needs and application for RDF views in the context of biomedicine; Marianne Shaw will describe two extensions to SPARQL that enable the creation of such views: vSPARQL (“view SPARQL”) and IML (“InterMediate Language” that compiles to vSPARQL); Todd Detwiler will describe and demonstrate the implementation of vSPARQL and IML in a View Query Manager and engine that is accessible on our website; and Nicola Dell will describe and demonstrate her work to create graphical methods for generating IML queries.

This is collaborative work between the Structural Informatics Group at the UW (led by Jim Brinkley), the database group in the Dept of Computer Science and Engineering at the UW (led by Dan Suciu), and the National Center for Bioontology at Stanford University (led by Mark Musen).

About the speakers
Jim Brinkley is professor in Biological Structure, Medical Education and Biomedical Education, and director of the Structural Informatics Group (SIG) at the UW. He is a biomedical informaticist and PI of the collaborative NIH grant with Stanford that funds this work.

Dan Suciu is professor in Computer Science and Engineering (CSE) at the UW. He is a database expert and co-director of this project.

Marianne Shaw is a graduating PhD student in CSE, and the developer of vSPARQL and IML.

Todd Detwiler has an MS in CSE from UW and is a research scientist working in SIG. He is the developer of the View Query Manager.

Nicola Dell is a first year PhD student in CSE. She is developing graphical methods for generating IML for her quals project.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

6:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking and eats)
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (Presentation)

Microsoft at The Bravern 2
11111 Northeast 8th Street
Emerald Elevator, Building 2, second floor
Bellevue, WA 98004

The venue is being sponsored by Microsoft Research and Eats by SQLSoft.

If you would like to attend please register and rsvp at Seattle Semantic Meetup.

About the talk
A year on the Semantic WEB @ W3C will cover the gambit of what’s been happening in Semantic Web at the WC3 since last years SemTech in San Jose. For those who may be going to the SemTech 2010 in San Francisco this may provide background information.

About the speaker
Ivan Herman is the Semantic Web Activity Lead, his main work at W3C. He is a member of IW3C2 (International World Wide Web Conference Committee, the committee coordinating the yearly WWW conference series), serving as a liaison for W3C, and of SWSA (Semantic Web Science Association), the committee responsible for the International Semantic Web Conferences series.

As part of his work, He also participates in lots of outreach activities, and regularly makes presentations, tutorials, etc. You can consult his list of presentations for further details here.

Ivan is also the senior researcher at the Centre for Mathematics and Computer Sciences in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Wednesday, June 9, 2010
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking)
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (Presentation with question and answer period)

Eastside Baha’i Center
16007 NE 8th Street
Bellevue, Washington 98008

There is no cost to attend however an RSVP is requested by noon, June 8, 2010 to mike.becker@ieee.org with “confirm 6/9” in the email subject line to help us manage the facility usage. The talk is open to the general public. Please forward the announcement to others who might benefit from the talk.

We would like to thank UST Global, a leading provider of end-to-end IT services and solutions for Global 1000 companies, for sponsoring the talk.

Update (June 19, 2010): You can now download the PowerPoint slides from the presentation.

About the talk
In 2000 Nordstrom needed to make several very large technology investments. Past track record on such investments was less than 50% successful. While the capabilities these investments were offering were acknowledged as high value capabilities in the retail industry, investors did not have confidence Nordstrom could successfully implement these solutions.

Nordstrom IT embarked on a journey to make significant improvements in their ability to predictably deliver new technology solutions. Promising aggressive dates and then failing to meet them had resulted in lost confidence in Nordstrom leadership. Nordstrom IT leadership laid out a longterm plan to address key areas of opportunity.

The changes made led to a highly predictable IT delivery capability. Nordstrom IT went from being a key liability to a strategic asset that now offers Nordstrom competitive advantage in its ability to deliver large complex new technology investments at a very high rate of success.

For the past six years Nordstrom has enjoyed a successful project delivery rate of 95% or more. This repeated success has impacted the perception of Nordstrom leadership to deliver the needed changes. This increased confidence is now reflected in analyst assessments, providing Nordstrom with additional investment capital to increase the rate at which new capabilities are delivered to the business.

This talk will share their journey to a Faster, Better and Cheaper delivery capability, along with lessons learned. Mr. Tucker will also share their plans for the next stage of this continuous improvement program.

About the speaker
Mr. Bill Tucker is the senior most IT leader over the applications delivery and maintenance teams throughout Nordstrom. He joined Nordstrom in 1986, after a six-year career with Electronic Data Systems. Since then he has worked in various IT roles, from programmer analyst to project manager, to program manager and his current role.

In this role he is responsible for supporting the five year IT investment plans for new business capabilities. He also is responsible for planning the improvements that are needed to offer Nordstrom the same level of project delivery success but at a lower cost.

Monday, May 10, 2010
6:00 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking – Pizza)
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (Presentation with question and answer period)

Microsoft Building 99
Room 1919
14820 NE 36th Street
Redmond, Washington 98052

There is no cost to attend however an RSVP is requested by noon, May 8, 2010 to Mike Becker@ieee.org with “confirm 5/10” in the email subject line to help us manage the facility usage. The talk is open to the general public.

About the talk
Semantic Wikis combine semantic web technology and wiki-based social mechanisms, by marrying the structure and flexibility of data semantics to the crowdsourcing power of a wiki. In our talk, we will show how wiki conventions can be extended to encompass structured data, which can then be used for better organization of content, better browsing and navigation (such as faceted browsing), better search (semantic search) and better visualizations. We will also present a range of fun and interesting applications of semantic wikis, focusing on the most popular semantic wiki: Semantic MediaWiki (SMW), a semantic extension to the MediaWiki software which powers Wikipedia. Finally, we will show some interesting extensions to SMW, including the Halo suite, add-ons for visualization, and an add-on to enhance MS Office documents with access to SMW-hosted data. Attendees will get a good overview of the Semantic MediaWiki platform. Moreover, attendees will see how adding a small amount of user-driven semantics can lead to a better navigation and browsing experience, more powerful visualizations, and more precise information delivery using the terms of your own schema and workflow. More technical attendees will be ready to download code and start creating powerful web 3.0 applications on top of SMW.

Dr. Mark Greaves is currently Director of Knowledge Systems at Vulcan, Inc. Vulcan is the private asset management company for Paul Allen (co-founder of Microsoft). At Vulcan, he oversees advanced research in large knowledge bases and advanced web technologies, including Project Halo. Project Halo currently has three major focuses: 1) an expert system called AURA for knowledge formulating and question answering in science; 2) an advanced reasoning system called SILK for default and higher-order inference; and 3) a social semantic web platform called Semantic MediaWiki+ for effectively building the large knowledge base that is necessary for the other two parts to work.
Formerly, Mark was program manager in DARPA’s Information Exploitation Office (IXO) for the DAML, UltraLog, and Advanced Logistics Projects. His main research interests are in mathematical logic, semantic web, and software agent technology, about which he has published two books and several papers. Mark holds a Ph.D. from Stanford University, and is a well-known speaker on social semantic web technologies.

Jesse Wang is currently a senior developer at Vulcan Inc. He helps oversee, design and manage the next generation semantic and productivity systems. His R&D interests include semantic web, information retrieval and filtering, productivity tools, and artificial intelligence in general. Formerly, he worked at Microsoft. He has Master of Science degrees in Computer Science and Engineering. Jesse gives tutorials, talks and demos on semantic wiki and software development in US, Germany and China.

Thursday, November 19, 2009
6:30 pm – 7:00 pm (Networking)
7:00 pm – 8:30 pm (Presentation with question and answer period)

Bellevue College
Building N – Room 201
3000 Landerholm Circle SE, N201
Bellevue, Washington 98007

There is no cost to attend however an RSVP is requested by noon, November 18, 2009 to mike.becker@ieee.org with “confirm 11/19″ in the email subject line to help us manage the facility usage. The event is open to the general public.

About the talk
Construx consultants work with literally hundreds of software organizations each year.  Among these organizations a few stand out as being truly world class.  They are exceptional in their ability to meet their software development goals and exceptional in the contribution they make to their companies’ overall business success.  Do world class software organizations operate differently than average organizations?  In Construx’s experience, the answer is a resounding “YES”.  In this talk, award-winning author Steve McConnell reveals the technical, management, business, and cultural secrets that make a software organization world class.

Steve McConnell, CEO, Construx Software
Steve McConnell is CEO and Chief Software Engineer at Construx Software where he writes books and articles, teaches classes, and oversees Construx’s software development practices.  Steve is the author of:
Software Estimation:  Demystifying the Black Art (2006), Code Complete (1993, 2004), Rapid Development (1996), Software Project Survival Guide (1998), and Professional Software Development (2004).  His first two
books won Software Development magazine’s Jolt Excellence award for best programming books of their years.  In 1998, readers of Software Development magazine named Steve one of the three most influential people in the software industry along with Bill Gates and Linus Torvalds.  Steve is also past Editor in Chief of IEEE Software magazine. He can be reached at stevemcc@construx.com.

However, the move to wordpress as the underlying platform of this site will make change, customization, etc. much easier for us.

I am optimistic about a number of interesting chapter activities in the coming months. Hopefully this site will do well in supporting those efforts. Please subscribe to our syndication feed or check back often to see what’s going on.

Microsoft Research Building 99
Room 1919
14820 NE 36th Street
Redmond, Washington 98052

Download the presentation.

Test Driven Development

A paper first published in the Empirical Software Engineering journal reports: “TDD seems to be applicable in various domains and can significantly reduce the defect density of developed software without significant productivity reduction of the development team.” The study compared 4 projects, at Microsoft and IBM that used TDD with similar projects that did not use TDD.
As Test-Driven Development has gained in momentum and popularity, it has also been called into question as a viable development strategy past the first 3-4 iterations in Agile projects. Many report that the test suite generated by the process can become a maintenance problem in and of itself, eventually collapsing under its own weight
The problem: Unit testing can become a time consuming process, especially when systems are complex. Over time test volume often grows with older tests becoming obsolete, and maintaining them becomes increasingly unwieldy. Test design is often ad hoc without good measures of quality or coverage. This causes the tested application to become out of sync with the tests as there is no effective way to prove that the tests and the developed code meet the requirements stated in the specification. Changing the code base and test suite for the next enhancement becomes a nightmare with accelerating cost. Preserving ROI on the current code base is not sustainable over the long haul.
Scott has had to deal with all of these problems to help show companies how Test Driven Development when done rightcan create a maintainable test suite, provide a living specification going forward, and a code base that can change to meet the need of the business. This code base can be used effectively to form the basis for follow-on projects, preserving the ROI of the initial efforts. The test suite provides both the specification and validation of the requirements, which provides persistent value to the organization.

Scott Bain is a 30+-year veteran in computer technology, with a background in development, engineering, and design. He has also designed, delivered, and managed training programs for certification and end-user skills, both in traditional classrooms and via distance learning. Scott teaches courses and consults on Agile Analysis and Design Patterns, Advanced Software Design, and Sustainable Test-Driven Development. Scott is a frequent speaker at developer conferences such as JavaOne and SDWest. He is the author of Emergent Design: The Evolutionary Nature of Professional Software Development, now available from Addison Wesley/Pearson Education. He is currently writing Essential Skills for the Agile Developer. Scott works for Net Objectives which provides guidance in the form of consulting and training to help organizations transition into a more effective way of developing software.

Innovation drives economic growth, our quality of life, and is the only hope of addressing the major challenges we face. But America, a cornerstone of innovation throughout the world, has become increasingly short-sighted. By taking innovation for granted we threaten not only our own strength but the overall global economy. Judy Estrin, technology and business pioneer and author of the new book “Closing the Innovation Gap,” will talk about how it is essential to reignite sustainable innovation in business, education and government and what is required of business and national leaders to revive organizational, national and global Innovation Ecosystems.

Judy’s book, “Closing the Innovation Gap”

Judy Estrin was cofounder of seven companies and served as CTO of Cisco Systems. She currently sits on corporate boards and advisory boards such as Stanford’s School of Engineering and Stanford’s Bio-X interdisciplinary program while pursuing speaking engagements. Judy has been named three times on Fortune Magazines list of 50 most powerful women in American business.

Co-sponsored by:

• UW Computer Science & Engineering
• UW Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Foster School of Business
• Google Seattle
• Technology Alliance
• Washington Technology Industry Association
• IEEE Computer Society