Ralph Hodgson

Ralph Hodgson is a co-founder and executive partner at TopQuadrant, Inc, a US-based company that specializes in semantic technology consulting, training and tools. He combines expertise in semantic technologies with over 25 years of experience in business application development and deployment, consulting, software development and strategic planning.

Prior to co-founding TopQuadrant, Ralph has held executive consulting positions at IBM Global Services and was the founder of Interactive Development Environments in the UK, an international CASE tools vendor.

His two most recent books are "Capability Cases: a Solution Envisioning Approach" by Addison-Wesley and "Adaptive Information: Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing, and Enterprise Integration" published by John Wiley.

Synopsis

Semantic Web Capability Cases - making the business case for Semantic Technology

Innovation happens in the creative interplay of solution ideas with the uncovering of business challenges, possibilities and opportunities. Clarity on the business situation comes from understanding forces, challenges and the desired results of stakeholders. Ideas about what to do and what to build can be sparked by stories and scenarios that convey the business case of "interesting" capabilities. We call these "Capability Cases" - patterns for expressing capabilities grounded in defined business situations. Think of Capability Cases as patterns for requirements discovery. Following in the tradition of software development, where design patterns raise the quality, repeatability and predictability of software design, Capability Cases act as catalysts for innovation - supporting "design by analogy". The talk will describe a number of Capability Cases for semantic technology solutions and applications.