Ora Lassila's Selected Presentations

Nearby: Publications, Ora Lassila's home page.

Listed on this page are presentation not necessarily associated with a (print) publication. You may have heard me present, but if there was no associated published paper, the talk can in all likelihood be found on the list below. Otherwise, go here.

2025

• Ora Lassila: "Symbolic AI in the Age of LLMs", presentation at AWS re:Invent 2025 (Amazon Web Services' customer conference), Las Vegas (Nevada), December 2025. (video)
• Ora Lassila: "Crafting RDF - Generating Knowledge Graphs from Legacy Data", presentation at Connected Data London 2025, London (UK), November 2025.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web standards and a little bit of Python go a long way", final presentation at the 2025 OMG Semantic Augmentation Challenge (winner), July 2025. (competition submission)
• Ora Lassila: "All the 'Vs' of Big (Graph) Data", invited talk at the Data-Centric Architecture Forum 2025, Fort Collins (Colorado), June 2025.
• Ora Lassila, Adrian Gschwend & Pierre-Antoine Champin: "Next Version of RDF, or: Reification Considered Annoying", presentation at KGC 2025, New York (New York), May 2025.
• Peter Rivett, Ora Lassila & Margaret Warren: "How to Choose an Ontology". presentation and workshop at KGC 2025, New York (New York), May 2025.

2024

• Ora Lassila: "Thoughts about RDF/LPG alignment", talk at 19th LDBC TUC, London (UK), December 2024.
• Ora Lassila: "Browsing RDF - take 4", presentation to the Dataworthy Collective, December 2024.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web and AI: Can we finally realize the vision?", keynote address at the 23rd International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC 2024), Baltimore (Maryland), November 2024. (video)
• Ora Lassila: "The Past and the Future of the Semantic Web - A Personal Journey", invited lecture to Bloomberg Semantic Guild, New York (New York), October 2024.
• Ora Lassila: "Aligning RDF and LPGs - A Status Report of the OneGraph Initiative", invited talk at the 18th LDBC Technical User Community (TUC) meeting, Guangzhou (China), August 2024.
• Ora Lassila: "Reflecting on the Semantic Web Vision", keynote address at the Zazuko Knowledge Graph Forum 2024, Basel (Switzerland), May 2024. (video)
• Ora Lassila: "Schema language for both RDF and LPGs", presentation at KGC 2024, New York (New York), May 2024.

2023

• Ora Lassila: "Why limit yourself to {RDF, LPG} when you can do {LPG, RDF}, too", presentation at the 16th LDBC TUC, Seattle (Washington), June 2023.
• Ora Lassila: "Thoughts about interoperability and open standards for knowledge graphs", invited talk at the NSF Open Knowledge Networks workshop @ KGC 2023, New York (New York), May 2023.
• Ora Lassila: "Alternative Facts: Knowledge Graphs in the Age of Large Language Models", keynote address at the NLP4KG Workshop @ WWW 2023, Austin (Texas), May 2023. (video)
• Ora Lassila: "Reimagining the Semantic Web - a retrospective", keynote address at the 12th Conference on Semantic Web Applications and Tools for Health Care and Life Science (SWAT4HCLS), Basel (Switzerland), February 2023. (video)

2022

• Ora Lassila: "From raw bits to knowledge", keynote address at the 4th Ibero-American Knowledge Graphs and Semantic Web Conference (KGSWC-2022), Madrid (Spain), November 2022.
• Ora Lassila: "All the World's Data as RDF? Towards a Unified Language for Data", keynote address at the 4th US Semantic Technologies Symposium (US2TS 2022), East Lansing (MI), September 2022.
• Ora Lassila: "Will knowledge graphs save us from the mess of modern data practice?", keynote address at the 4th Knowledge Graph Conference, New York City, May 2022. (video)
• Ora Lassila & Mark Myslin: "Yes, you can use knowledge graphs in real life!" presentation at the 4th Knowledge Graph Conference, New York City, May 2022.

2021

• Ora Lassila: "On the broad applicability of Semantic Web technologies", an invited lecture in the EU COST-DKG series of talks about distributed knowledge graphs and related Semantic Web research, December 2021. (video)
• Ora Lassila: "Graph Abstractions Matter", presentation at Connected Data World 2021, December 2021.
• Ora Lassila: "Extensibility: a little bit of reasoning goes a long way...", position statement in the panel "The Momentum Behind Semantic Reasoning and Why It's Here to Stay" at Connected Data World 2021, December 2021.
• Ora Lassila & Charles Ivie: "A knowledge graph is more than just a graph database", presentation at the 2021 Knowledge Graph Conference, May 2021.

2020

• Ora Lassila: "Are knowledge graphs a good thing? (and what does it take to create one?)", presentation at the 2020 Knowledge Graph Conference, May 2020.

2015-2019

• Brad Bebee, Karthik Bharathy, Ora Lassila: "Deep dive on Amazon Neptune", presentation at AWS re:Invent 2019, Las Vegas (NV), December 2019.
• Ora Lassila: "History of the SemanticWeb, and some words about the future of AI", keynote address at LDAC2019, Lisbon (Portugal), June 2019.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantics, Sharing and Permanence", invited lecture at the Inter-American Development Bank, Washington (DC), February 2017.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web - Software View vs. Math View", invited lecture at Dickinson College, Department of Mathematics, Carlisle (PA), October 2016.
• Ora Lassila: "Digital Permanence (or: Apps Considered Harmful - Again)", invited lecture at Aalto University, School of Art and Design, Espoo (Finland), November 2015.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantics and Shared Data", invited talk at Nordea Bank, Helsinki (Finland), September 2015.

2010-2014

• Ora Lassila: "Size does not matter (if your data is in a silo)", keynote address at the First International Workshop on "Semantic Technologies meet Recommender Systems and Big Data" (SeRSy 2012), Boston (MA), November 2012
• Ora Lassila: "Love Thy Data (or: Apps Considered Harmful)", keynote address at CIDOC 2012-conference, Helsinki (Finland), June 2012
• Ora Lassila: "Accessing and Querying Semantic Web Data", invited talk at the Seminar on New Trends on Intelligent Systems and Soft Computing, University of Granada, Granada (Spain), February 2012
• Ora Lassila: "Introduction to Context Awareness", invited "teaching sample lecture", Aalto University, Espoo (Finland), February 2012
• Ora Lassila: "Introduction to Context Awareness", keynote address at Pitney Bowes' "Mobile Day", Stamford (CT), October 2011.
• Ora Lassila & Amit Sheth: "Semantic Web for 360-degree Health: State-of-the-Art & Vision for Better Interoperability", invited talk at the US Dept. of Health and Human Services' workshop on "Next Generation Interoperability for Health IT", Washington (DC), January 2011.
• Ora Lassila: "Internet jolla on merkitystä - Semanttinen Web visio, kehitys ja tulevaisuus", keynote address at the ICT 2010 -event, Helsinki (Finland), April 2010.

2005-2009

• Ora Lassila: "Does Your Mobile Device Need to be Socially Aware? A Semantic Web Perspective", keynote address at the Workshop on Personal Identification and Collaborations: Knowledge Mediation and Extraction (PICKME 2008) (PICKME'08), Karlsruhe (Germany), October 2008.
• Ora Lassila: "Some Personal Thoughts on Semantic Web and 'Non-Symbolic' AI", keynote address at the Fourth International Workshop on Uncertainty Reasoning on the Semantic Web (URSW 2008), Karlsruhe (Germany), October 2008.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web Approach to Personal Information Management on Mobile Devices", invited talk at the IEEE International Conference on Semantic Computing (ICSC 2008), Santa Clara (CA), August 2008.
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web Platform for Personal Information Management", invited talk at Semantic Days, Stavanger (Norway), April 2008
• Ora Lassila: "The Semantic Web, Why the Open-Source Community Should Care, and Other Thoughts...', keynote address at ApacheCon US 2007, Atlanta (GA), November 2007
• Ora Lassila: "Setting Your Data Free: Thoughts on Information Interoperability", keynote address at CAiSE'07, Trondheim (Norway), June 2007
• Ora Lassila: "From Semantic Web to a Broader Vision of Personal Computing", keynote address at ESTC 2007, Vienna (Austria), June 2007
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web, Web 2.0, and Beyond - Why All This Really Matters", keynote address at the 2nd annual CELTIC Event, Berlin (Germany), February 2007
• Ora Lassila: "The Future of the Web: Looking Beyond Web 2.0", invited talk at the 2007 NECINA Technology Conference, Cambridge (MA), February 2007
• Ora Lassila & James Hendler: "Current Status and Future Promise of the Semantic Web", keynote address at Semantics 2006, Vienna (Austria), November 2006
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web, quo vadis?", keynote address at the Scandinavian Conference on AI and the Finnish AI Symposium, Espoo (Finland), October 2006
• Ora Lassila: "Building Policy- and Context-Aware Support for Semantic Web Applications", keynote address at the 5th International Workshop on Web Semantics at DEXA 2006, Krakow (Poland), September 2006
• Ora Lassila: "Identity Crisis and Serendipity", invited 'lightning' talk at the W3C Advisory Committee meeting, Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), May 2006

2000-2004

• Ora Lassila & Lutz Heuser: "Semantically Augmented Mobile Access for a Service-enabled Enterprise", invited talk at SAP 'Sapphire' (SAP Users' Conference), New Orleans (LS), May 2004
• Ora Lassila: "Sharing Meaning Between Devices, Systems, Users, and Cultures", keynote address at the French-Finnish Symposium on Digital Semantic Content Across Cultures, Le Louvre, Paris (France), May 2006
• Ora Lassila & James Hendler: "Semantic Web @ 5", keynote address at the Semantic Technology 2006 conference, San Jose (CA), March 2006
• Ora Lassila: "Applying Semantic Web in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing: Will Policy-Awareness Help? ", invited talk at the Semantic Web Policy Workshop at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference, Galway (Ireland), November 2005
• Ora Lassila: "Using the Semantic Web in Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing", keynote address at 1st IFIP WG12.5 Working Conference on Industrial Applications of Semantic Web, Jyväskylä (Finland), August 2005
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web & Mobile Information Access", keynote address at Wireless Connections 2005, Calgary (AB, Canada), May 2005
• Ora Lassila & Lutz Heuser: "Semantically Augmented Mobile Access for a Service-enabled Enterprise", invited talk at SAP "Sapphire" (SAP Users' Conference), New Orleans (LS), May 2004
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Gadgets: Device and Information Interoperability", invited talk at Ubiquitous Computing Environment, Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland (OH), October 2003
• Ora Lassila: "Common Lisp Support for Semantic Web Programming", invited talk at the International Lisp Conference, New York (NY), October 2003
• Ora Lassila: "Towards the Semantic Web", keynote address at the W3C Semantic Tour, London (UK), June 2003
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web and UbiComp Research at the Nokia Research Center", invited talk in the USC/ISI AI Seminar, Marina del Rey (CA), May 2003
• Ora Lassila: "Towards the Semantic Web", keynote address at the XML Finland 2002 conference, Helsinki (Finland), October 2002
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Gadgets: Pervasive Computing Meets the Semantic Web", invited talk at the Third Annual NIST Pervasive Computing Conference, Gaithersburg (MD), October 2002
• Ora Lassila: "Some Requirements for RDF and Semantic Web Applications", presentation and position statement at "RDF Applications for the Real World", panel discussion at the 11th International World Wide Web conference (WWW 2002), Honolulu (HI), May 2002
• Ora Lassila: "Knowledge Assembly for Life Sciences", panel discussion at the BioIT World 2002 conference, Boston (MA), March 2002 (position statement: "It's Just Semantics")
• Ora Lassila: "The Semantic Web", panel discussion organized by Mass eComm, Framingham (MA), October 12, 2001
• Ora Lassila: "The Semantic Web Elephant: What Do The Blind Men See?", panel discussion at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI'01), Seattle (WA), August 2001 (position statement: "Semantic Web: Hopes and Fears").
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Web: What Does It Mean?", invited presentation at the Boeing Shadow Works, Bellevue (WA), August 2001.
• Ora Lassila: "Emerging Semantics", panel discussion at the First Semantic Web Working Symposium (SWWS'01), Stanford University, July 2001 (position statement: "Semantic Web: Can I be Optimistic and Cynical at the Same Time?")
• Ora Lassila: "Unwiring the Web", panel discussion at the Interface 2001 conference, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh (PA), March 2001
• Ora Lassila: "Semantic Gadgets - Extending the Semantic Web to Physical Devices", invited lecture at the Stanford InfoLab seminar, Stanford University, November 2000
• Ora Lassila: "Nokia RDF Software", presentation at the DARPA Agent Markup Language program kickoff meeting, Cambridge (MA), August 2000.
• Ora Lassila & Henry S. Thompson: "RDF: A Frame System for the Web", presentation at the workshop on "Semantics for the Web" at Schloss Dagstuhl, Wadern, Germany, March 2000

1990-1999

• Ora Lassila: "Resource Description Framework", presentation at the XML'99 Conference, Philadelphia (PA), December 1999
• Ora Lassila: "Why Your Microwave Oven Needs (to Surf) the WWW", invited talk at the 3rd Annual Nokia Wireless Data Conference, San Francisco (CA), June 1999
• Ora Lassila & Franklin Reynolds: "Composite Capability/Preference Profile", presentation at WWW8 Conference in Toronto, May 1999
• Ora Lassila & Robert Schloss: "Metadata, RDF, and Dublin Core", tutorial given at the XTech'99 XML Developers Conference, March 1999
• Ora Lassila: "Web Metadata: A Simple Matter of Semantics", invited lecture at the W3C Advisory Committee Meeting, CERN, Geneva (Switzerland), June 1998
• Carl Lagoze, Eric Miller, Ora Lassila, Ralph R. Swick, Renato Iannella, Robert Schloss & Stuart Weibel: "Using Web Metadata", tutorial given at the WWW7 conference, Brisbane (Australia), April 1998
• Ora Lassila: "Resource Description Framework - what is it?", presentation given at the MCC/OMG/DARPA Workshop on Compositional Software Architectures, Monterey (CA), January 1998
• Ora Lassila: "Mobile Communication Services of the Next Century: the Internet Approach", presentation at the IBC Mobile Internet conference, Orlando (FL), February 1997
• Ora Lassila & Seppo Törmä: "Using a Distributed Frame System to Implement Distributed Problem Solvers", presentation at the International Working Conference on Cooperating Knowledge Based Systems (CKBS-90), University of Keele, Keele (Great Britain), October 1990; published in report form as [Lassila & Törmä 1991]
• Martti Mäntylä & Ora Lassila: "Object-Oriented Programming", invited tutorial at STeP-90, the Finnish Artificial Intelligence Symposium, Oulu (Finland), August 1990