New W3C Community Groups in the Semantic Web World

W3C has launched the concepts of Community and Business Groups a few weeks ago. These groups are easy-to-create, open groups for developers, with only very few strings attached (essentially, one has to have a W3C account, public or member, to join the group). In two weeks, 18 groups have been created, which is a significant number in my view. In those 18 groups, here are the groups that closely to the activities of the Linked Data and Semantic Web communities:

• JSON for Linking Data Community Group (created just yesterday), developing the JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linking Data) specification further. JSON-LD is a lightweight Linked Data format that can be used in Linked Data applications in general, and has also the potential of creating a bridge between the JSON and Semantic Web communities.
• The Oil, Gas and Chemicals Business Group is intended to study and possibly demonstrate applications of Semantic Web technology to business issues in those industries. This group has been greatly inspired by the long term activity of the W3C HCLS IG that concentrates on a different community.
• The Ontology-Lexica Community Group, on a high level, is interested in the relationship between ontologies and linguistics, with the general goal of having a truly international approach to Semantic Web in general, and ontologies in particular.
• The Read Write Web Community Group focuses on the Read-Write aspect of the WWW via the use of WebID protocol and ACLs. Although WebID, at first glance, does not look like a Semantic Web technology, the technical realization greatly relies on technologies like SPARQL or vocabularies like FOAF.
• The Semantic News Community Group is a forum for exploring the intersection of W3C semantic technologies and news gathering, production, distribution and consumption. This group will operate in close cooperation with IPTC (International Press and Telecommunication Council).
• The Uncertainty, Trust and the Semantic Web Community Group focuses on the trust and uncertainty aspect of the Semantic Web, continuing the work that was done in earlier W3C Incubator Group.

It is great to see all these groups having been created in 2 weeks and in vacation times! And I am sure new groups will come, so better watch this space…