= About Semantic Days 2009 = Semantic Days in Stavangeris an annual conference that has become a meeting place for industrial use of semantic technologies with contribution from industry, research institutes and universities. Semantic Days 2009 focuses on ontologies based on domain standards and the use and benefits of semantic technologies in:[[BR]]· Oil and gas industry[[BR]]· Defence and defence industry.[[BR]]·  Public sector[[BR]]·  IT industry[[BR]][[BR]]Two tutorials on semantic technologies will be given Monday 18 May, which require no previous knowledge of the subject. === Organizers === Computas, POSC Caesar Association (PCA), SINTEF, The Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF), The Norwegian Defence, The Norwegian University of Technology (NTNU), University of Oslo (UiO), Western Norway Research Institute, World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). === Why semantic technologies? === Semantic technologies emerge from efforts to create a Semantic Web, to transform the current “Web of documents” to a “Web of data”, available to people and to computers alike. It opens up a whole new class of intelligent services and applications, not restricted to the domain of the web proper. Both industry and public services may greatly benefit from the enhancement of human-computer communication, improved information retrieval, data exchange and system interoperability offered by semantic technologies. The semantic technologies comprise a set of standardized formats and languages used to express data on the Web, allowing consumers and businesses to easier find and analyze all kinds of useful online information. The basic technologies are:[[BR]]·  Common languages for representing data that can be “understood” by software systems[[BR]]·  Ontologies – concepts, relations and definitions – that provide common terminologies to interpret data from disparate sources[[BR]]·  Rules that allow software to retrieve and reason about information on the basis of the ontologies === What will you learn? === ·  Introduction to basic semantic technologies[[BR]]·  Why and how industries and research institutions are developing ontologies[[BR]]·  What practical applications ontologies can be used for[[BR]]·  The benefits of semantic technologies for standardized information access[[BR]]·  Availability of IT solutions for integrated work processes === Who should attend? === ·  Everyone wondering how semantic information can support integrated work processes[[BR]]·  Everyone wondering how to achieve interoperability between data sources[[BR]]·  Everyone wondering how to create an architecture for sharing information[[BR]]·  Everyone interested in semantic technologies and the future of the Web