Benjamin Nowack

This page is no longer maintained, please visit bnowack.de for up-to-date information.



I am a (Semantic) Web developer, working from Düsseldorf in Germany, where I'm running a tiny Web agency. My focus is on utilizing SemWeb technology such as RDF and SPARQL as productivity boosters for everyday Web development.

I'm an active RDF community member. My main contribution is ARC, an open-source, easy-to-use RDF toolkit for PHP practitioners.

When I'm not coding, I'm alleviating my Work-Life imbalance with learning Hip Hop Funk Style Dances.

I'm usually available for web development work (ideally using the tools I know), talks, or training (please see the experience section below, or have a look at my blog for examples of what I'm doing). Quick ways to contact me are by email (bnowacksemsol.combnowack at semsol.com), Twitter, or IRC (my nick is bengee).

Core Web Development Skills and Experience

• HTML (since 1995. Hmmm, OS/2 WebExplorer...)
• JavaScript (since 1997 IIRC)
• PHP/MySQL (since around 1999. Took the usual Perl -> ASP -> ColdFusion -> PHP road)
• CSS-based layouting (since 2004, was a little late to the game)
• Web Design (mostly user interfaces, a tiny bit of logo creation. I'm not a general designer/artist, but I know my way around Photoshop and Inkscape)
• RDF (since 2003)
• RDF Schema, OWL (since 2003/2004, I'm not so much into logics and reasoning. I wrote a simple web-based RDFS/OWL editor in 2004, though)
• SPARQL (since 2005)
• eRDF, RDFa, microformats, Microdata (more recently)

I am fine with SVN, BZR, Git, and basic CLI commands, but apart from that, I consider myself a Web-spoiled front-end developer ;-) I usually shy away from things that need to be compiled or don't have a mouse-friendly installation procedure. Deliberately.

Current Projects

• ARC - "Easy RDF and SPARQL for LAMP Developers"
• Trice - A Semantic Web Application Framework
• paggr - Linked Data Dashboards

Memberships

Talks, Slides, Articles, Papers

Spec Work and Contributions

• poshRDF - efficient RDF extraction from microformats and similar POSH markup (2008)
• SPARQLScript - SPARQL-based scripting (2008)
• An RDF namespace for MySQL function URIs (2008)
• SPARQL+ - LOAD, INSERT, DELETE, and aggregates for SPARQL (2007)
• w3photo image regions vocabulary (A collaborative RDF IG project from 2004)

Awards

• International Semantic Web Challenge: 1st Prize for paggr (2008)
• Scripting Challenge @ European Semantic Web Conference: 1st Prize for SPARQLBot (2008)
• International Semantic Web Challenge: 1st Prize for CONFOTO (2005)

Some companies and organizations I work(ed) with

• TeamThing Solution, Germany
• Talis, Great Britain
• Intellidimension, USA
• CivicActions, USA
• Asemantics, The Netherlands
• Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Ireland

Misc

• An Interview (by CrunchBase)
• A Podcast (by Talis)
• Semantic Web Challenge / Closing Ceremony at ISWC 2008

Education (well, the formal stuff)

• 2004/2005: Scientific Developer at the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI), Galway, Ireland
• 2004: Dipl.-Betriebswirt (FH) graduation with major in Media and Information Management, overall grade 1.7, Würzburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany
• 1994 - 2004: Studies of Mathematics, Computer Science and Business Administration (area specialisation New Media) at Würzburg University and Würzburg University of Applied Sciences, Germany