Gosho palace, Kyoto

I've been gathering a bunch of Topic Maps-related stuff I wanted to draw people's attention to, so I thought I'd just do a blog posting on it all, to get it out of the way.

AToMS

The AToMS Topic Maps conference is going to be arranged again on December 12th in Kyoto. It was held last year in Seoul, and was very successful. Well, for everyone else. I spent much of it in bed. Anyway, I'm very much looking forward to another trip to Japan, and getting to see Kyoto again.

Kyoto was the capital of Japan from 794 to 1868, and during World War II the Americans had the good sense to spare the city. The result is an almost infinite legacy of palaces, temples, and shrine, as well as some interesting traditional wooden architecture. Kyoto is also the most traditionally Japanese city in Japan, and the Japanese consider it the most sophisticated city in Japan. The ponto-cho entertainment district is legendary for its geishas, teahouses, and other, more modern, establishments. And so on, and so forth.

Kyoto really is worth a visit, and although I've already been there I'd be more than happy to go back. There's still lots and lots of things I haven't seen, and in fact I'd quite like to see one or two of the sights again.

Topic Maps 2008

Ryoan-ji rock garden, Kyoto

The dates for Topic Maps 2008, the international user conference in Oslo, have been set: April 2-4. The location is going to be Hotel Bristol, which is a posh old hotel in the heart of the city centre, near the royal palace. None of the program has been published yet, but I know enough about what has not been announced yet to tell you that you really should reserve these dates. You don't want to miss this.

Smaller events

There is also some smaller events that may be interesting:

• Thursday October 25, Øyvind Litlere and I will speak about Topic Maps and the city of Bergen project at a Java Users' Group meeting in Bergen.
• Tuesday October 30, I, Robert Engels, and Till Christopher Lech will speak about Topic Maps and Automated Classification at the Topic Maps Users' Group meeting in Oslo.
• February 25-28 2008 is the next OKS course in Oslo.

I will also be speaking at two events in mid-November, but since these are closed I'll just mention them briefly here: the internal BouvetOne conference, and a meeting for the new Norwegian members of the SC34 ISO committee.

Various links

I've also found some Topic Maps-related content in various places recently that you may want to have a look at:

• The keeping track page on the TMRA site has links to content about the conference from various quarters.
• Matthew Hodgson has made a Topic Maps editor.
• ContentAgenda writes about the IndiePix site, which is based on Topic Maps. (Kal Ahmed spoke about it at Topic Maps 2007.)
• Here's another new Topic Maps editor. I haven't actually seen the introductory video, so I don't know anything about it.
• The Cerpus guys are presenting their Topic Maps application BrainBank Learning (warning: Norwegian text!) at an e-learning conference in Murmansk, Russia. Topic Maps certainly do get around.

Cherries near Ponto-cho, Kyoto