Some 110 participants attended this event and 63 presentations of projects and project ideas had been proposed. Due to time constraints 24 of these could actually be given. The mix of different interests represented was remarkable. Invited talks covered the role of ontologies, special requirements for mobile platforms, specific multimedia issues, agent technologies and, last but not least, business opportunities. We briefly summarize these talks, the short contributions and the general discussion.
Formal ontologies seem indeed instrumental in achieving the Semantic Web .
Rooted in a long tradition not only of formal logics and artificial intelligence but also of more mundane endeavours such as the setting up of classification schemes, thesauri and controlled vocabularies, they are currently the most promising candidates for providing semantically sound machine-processable descriptions of digital content. Only heavy-weight ontologies, endowed with axioms or rules, can support inferencing engines that would implement an important part of the Semantic Web vision, the Web of Trust . Also required are agreements on ontology language standards, necessary conditions for creating a sustainable Semantic Web . Pertinent activities have already been launched at the W3C, with the participation of European, US and Japanese groups. Mobile platforms, or the wireless Web , pose particular demands in terms of content semantics, largely due to the perceived usage patterns and a multitude of different capabilities of mobile devices.