Conference Hound-Up May 21, 2012: Data, Aggregated With Love

The Moon is stealing our spotlight.

To start of the week, we found some sweet and sexy opportunities to engage in the newest generation of data aggregation, amphibious vehicles and innovations in the field of chemistry.  Also, a couple neat tidbits gathered from the world wide web that might put a silver lining on this whole “Monday” thing.

An event entirely dedicated to the new era of semantic technology is taking place in London today, with the ironically clunky name: Semantic Technology: Understanding the Technology That is Reshaping Our Systems.  This conference intends to provide a crash course for those businesses interested in learning why and how semantic technology should be integrated into their data plan, and what the benefits will be.

In Washington D.C. there are some smart folks gathering to push us into the water and hopefully, help us float.  Amphibious Operations brings together the niche field’s thought leaders for a three-day event.

The Audience Measurement Event is another opportunity for folks to understand the shifting nature of data and how to keep pace with it.  New forms of traditional media like blogs and social media sites are forging a fragmented audience and creating tons of tiny problems for all kinds of businesses who wish to harvest that information and utilize it to reach and serve their customers; maybe they’ll find some helpful tips at this event in Chicago.

Independent magazines join forces today at the MPA-IMAG Independent Magazine Conference, where daily challenges and strategic uncertainties are met head-on with a group mentality in an effort to make sure these guys get to hang around as long as possible.

There’s two events in California which are making an effort to push the envelope in the field of Chemistry: INFOCAST: Next Generation Green Chemistry focuses on the sustainability and workflow of chemists and NextGen Chem takes an R&D approach, binding investors, chemists and fresh new ideas.

Movie fans rejoice (there’s some of you left out there, right?).  The new James Bond flick, Skyfall, has a trailer out.  It doesn’t reveal too much but seems to insist on how badass Bond is, which can’t be a bad thing.

The town of Monmouth in Wales is embracing what I think is a pretty cool idea.  It has created more than a thousand QR codes linked to Wikipedia articles and placed them all over the town’s landmarks.  It’s like digitizing real life.  It also saves any tourists the trouble of Googling, which we all know is just a ridiculous pain.  All that typing!

There was a solar eclipse yesterday dubbed a “ring of fire” (yes, I hear those trumpets in my head too).  It didn’t completely cover the sun, but was nonetheless pretty cool and a somewhat rare event.  If you missed it, or weren’t able to fashion a pinhole device in order to see it, and were too much of a wuss to look directly at it, here’s some pics for you.