Commercial uses of the Semantic Web at WWW2008 ?

This year's World Wide Web conference (WWW2008) is rapidly approaching, and all over the planet web researchers are grappling with the Chinese visa application process ahead of their trip to Beijing.

In contrast to a corporate event like Semantic Technology, the World Wide Web conferences tend to be geared more toward the research community, and .edu, .ac.uk and similar addresses definitely outweigh the .com's on delegate business cards.

Corporate delegates certainly do attend, though, and as Semantic Web applications become increasingly relevant to the enterprise I would expect reasonable commercial representation in the Semantic Web tracks at the conference.

Talking this over with Danny Ayers and the Chair of the conference Developer Track, Google's Jeffrey Korn, we wondered if there might be scope for a panel specifically looking at commercial uses of Semantic Web ideas and technology. I would certainly be interested in seeing that fusion of business thinking and cutting edge academic research.

So if you work in a .com that's doing interesting stuff with the Semantic Web, plan to be in Beijing, and would be interested in sitting on a panel like that, please do get in touch. I'll pass the names to Jeff, and he can then see if the idea is viable.