Linked Data at the BBC

A talk I gave a while back reviewing the BBC's approach to Linked Data, its' use as a design principle on /programmes and in Sport, and possible futures.

Transcript

1. Linked Data at the BBC Paul Rissen, Senior Information Architect, BBC Future Media Thursday, 16 August 2012 Hello.
2. A little Web Theory... Thursday, 16 August 2012 First, a little bit of Web theory and history.
3. THE WEB DONE RIGHT THE DREAM OF SIR TIM BERNERS-LEE http://www.flickr.com/photos/agirregabiria/5731646386/ Thursday, 16 August 2012 What is linked data? what is the semantic web? it’s ‘the web done right’ - it’s what TimBl first proposed.
4. IN THE BEGINNING... RISE OF THE MACHINES http://www.flickr.com/photos/marc_smith/6246433245 Thursday, 16 August 2012 At first, it was all about the machines - you had to know the exact address of a machine.
5. WHERE WE ARE NOW... THE WEB OF DOCUMENTS http://www.flickr.com/photos/seanvenn/3687559590 Thursday, 16 August 2012 Now, it’s about the documents - the addresses we type, mean we retrieve documents - no matter what computer they’re on.
6. IT’S NOT THE DOCUMENTS, IT’S THE THINGS... THE GIANT GLOBAL GRAPH http://www.flickr.com/photos/blmurch/522427911/ Thursday, 16 August 2012 But really, people (mostly) don’t care about the documents. They care about the concepts discussed. And that’s what linked data is. The data part is just how we represent it - what matters is the concepts.
7. WHAT’S THE MEANING OF THIS? PEOPLE CAN EXTRACT IT, MACHINES, ON THEIR OWN, CAN’T. http://www.flickr.com/photos/46871088@N00/3973599885 Thursday, 16 August 2012 Why? Because as humans, we can read a document and construct a web of meaning in our heads. Computers can’t. They’re reduced to text string matching. But we can help them get smarter. And by doing so, we can get better results.
8. THE URI IS THE THING THREE BASIC RULES Thursday, 16 August 2012 Use URIs to identify things, not just pages. Use HTTP URIs so people can find those things using web browsers. Link to other relevant URIs so people can discover more things.
9. Putting this into practice Thursday, 16 August 2012
10. BBC PROGRAMMES A PAGE FOR EVERY PROGRAMME Thursday, 16 August 2012 page for every programme, findable in google, we can aggregate blogs/tweets about a programme.
11. BBC MUSIC A PAGE FOR EVERY ARTIST Thursday, 16 August 2012 page for every artist played across BBC radio - we can pull people through from shows > artists and back.
12. BBC NATURE A PAGE FOR EVERY SPECIES Thursday, 16 August 2012 Vast archive of David Attenborough etc - page for every species - search for ‘Lion’ or ‘Polar Bear’, and we’ll be near the top.
13. User Benefits Thursday, 16 August 2012
14. PERSISTENCE WEB DESIGN FOR THE FUTURE Thursday, 16 August 2012 Persistence is important, because it’s terrible user experience if you lose pages. It’s the main reason you’ll be hated.
15. MULTIPLATFORM DESKTOP, MOBILE, TABLET, IPTV - ONE WEB Thursday, 16 August 2012 Doing things this way makes multiplatform easy. Rather than having to invest loads of money on each new platform that comes along, get the data, the information about the things right first, then just build presentation layers.
16. OUR WEBSITE IS OUR API Thursday, 16 August 2012 We want to encourage others to build stuff with our stuff.
17. Thursday, 16 August 2012 ...stitching everything across the BBC into one single thing. Because that’s how our minds work. It’s a Web, not just a delivery platform.
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20. Business Benefits Case Study: Sport Thursday, 16 August 2012
21. TOO MANY MANUALLY MANAGED INDEXES Thursday, 16 August 2012 Currently there are too many pages to manage manually for a small editorial team 7 days a week We need to drastically reduce the number of pages that are manually managed - by approximately 300 There are approx 320 manually managed ‘indexes’ - 150 or so in football, rugby teams, cricket teams and further ambitions around F1 Difficult to integrate statistical information with editorial which is why the metadata and tagging projects are an integral part of long term strategy
22. WORLD CUP 2010 A PAGE FOR EVERY TEAM, GROUP AND PLAYER Thursday, 16 August 2012
23. THE SPORT ONTOLOGY Thursday, 16 August 2012 We’re seperating concepts from content. Using the intelligence we have about the concepts to make the UX better - and lighten the workload for our staff. Does need good management of the data, but the benefits are worth it.
24. DYNAMIC SEMANTIC PUBLISHING Thursday, 16 August 2012
25. DYNAMIC SEMANTIC PUBLISHING Thursday, 16 August 2012
26. DYNAMIC SEMANTIC PUBLISHING Thursday, 16 August 2012
27. LONDON OLYMPICS 2012 Thursday, 16 August 2012 Working with external sources & partners too - geonames, LOCOG data etc. Stitching BBC into the wider Web.
28. IN SUMMARY, THEN.. - THE WEB CAN BE ABOUT MORE THAN JUST DOCUMENTS - DESIGN AROUND THINGS YOUR USERS CARE ABOUT - ONE URI PER THING - PERMANENCE IS KEY - DESIGN FOR THE WEB FIRST, THEN APPROPRIATE PLATFORMS - LINKING CONCEPTS PROVIDES GENERATIVE JOURNEYS - SAVING LABORIOUS, HAND-CRAFTED LINKING WORK - STITCH INTO THE WIDER WEB - BENEFITS FOR YOU, BENEFITS FOR ALL Thursday, 16 August 2012
29. Thanks! Any Questions? Paul Rissen, Senior Information Architect, BBC Future Media @r4isstatic http://www.r4isstatic.com Thursday, 16 August 2012 Hello.