The program for the Linked Data Planet conference that I'm co-chairing with Ken North in New York City in June is just about all set. The list of speakers has a great mix of well-known names in the Linked Data world (which overlaps quite a bit with the semantic web world) such as Tim Berners-Lee, Kingsley Idehen, Jim Hendler, and Jim Melton. We have hands-on people, as opposed to marketing people, from large and small software companies talking about tools that you can use to build applications with the increasing amount of linked data out there.

I'm especially looking forward to the Linked Data Workshop panel that I'm moderating, in which seven experts in the field discuss approaches to the key issues involved in building linked data applications. My only regret is that this is scheduled opposite Seth Earley's presentation on the role of taxonomies and controlled vocabularies in data integration, because I've been reading up on taxonomies lately and wanted to hear what he has to say.

At least I'll get to meet him, and many other people I've always wanted to meet, in addition to seeing some old friends such as Uche Ogbuji and Walter Perry, two of my panel's participants. Come join us, and then as the world of linked data technologies grows you'll someday be able to say "I remember the first Linked Data conference, back in 2008..."