Kaizen Bits

I have updated the Wordpress software to 2.7.1. It was very easy and straightforward and I should have done it before. On Jan, 2008, the blog was hacked and was announcing some German hackers congress. Last February, I was also warned by Dreamhost (where this blog is hosted) that my outdated Wordpress installation was being used and abused by some others.

That´s why, after some blogging stalled time because of massive amount of work, I have just upgraded it and now things are fine…

I am just back from Lisbon, where I was attending the WEBIST09 and I can´t help scribling here a few thoughts about Lisbon, and in general, about Portugal.

I think the best way of describing the relationship between Portugal and Spain was a motto which become popular end of the eighties in a tourism campaign: “Portugal, España. Tan cerca, tan lejos” (Portugal, Spain. So near, so far). Usually, neighbour countries detest each other. That is a fact. They fought, they had wars and problems, they shared resources. But with Portugal, very differently to France, Spain simply ignores the country. Not hate. Simply oblition. I am not sure what is worse.

Portugal is still quite behind, in my opinion. It is a ten million people country and a service economy, fair enough, but you can still see many signs that is backward, let´s just mention three: a) Paying with credit card was not normal and they always had to bring the VT and look awkward, b) Cars (specially taxis) were Mercedes from the 90s and c) parts of the city look real shabby.

On the other hand, I loved Lisbon. It´s a really cool Mediterranean-style city, with its bohemian areas, like the Bairro Alto, a marvel of small tascas and restaurants with vibrant nightlife. Also, la Baixa and the area of the Catedral de la Sé were very enthrilling.

It is a great place to visit for a few days. IMO, there are much better places to stay longer but of course, like most traveling destinations it is a great experience to get to know and chat (or blog) about .

I was at the WEBIST09 in Lisbon and I´ve got a couple of things to say. Apart from Dieter Fensel (who was my former boss and also I had to pleasure to spend some time with) keynote, I did not see much of semantics. Actually, I was there to present our MEDFINDER paper  and it was only in that very session where similar approaches were presented. Particularly, we got quite a lot of feeback, summarized as follows:

1- There was quite a lot of feedback and energy about the paper. People understood its use and potential, the feeling was very good.

2- Question 1: Why not create a Pain Ontology bridging from the Symptoms to the Diseases?

3- Question  2: Why not having a twitter-like interface? Patients could already be addressed before entering the hospital

4- Question 3: In France, before going to a specialist you must address a general doctor first. Is it not this the role of ODDX / MEDFINDER?
In a nutshell, the conference was good, but for being a conference about Web Information Systems, I think that Semantic Technologies lost some stream.

According to McKinsey, these are the most important innovation clusters. As usual, neither Spain nor Ireland, nor Austria (countries I lived for quite a long time and worked on innovation) exist.

To me that is find, I am kind of used to this, but I strongly disagree. Startups are growing in these countries and, following the Friedman concept of “The World being Flat”, we should forget a bit about Silicon Valley (where things are always so perfect) and look around.