This deck is about webstorytelling, the travel industry in the digital world, wordlift (our plugin bringing artificial intelligence to web publishers) and linked open data. If you're excited by the many advances in web technologies, rapid changes in mobile and content marketing than this presentation is for you. I've prepared this deck for a workshop held on February the 18th 2015 in Austria at the Semantic Technology Institute (STI) Innsbruck - a world leading research institute working on the Semantic Web.

1. Andrea Volpini
@cyberandy
@STI2 - STI-Innsbruck, Austria
17th February 2015
Digital travelling: interweaving web storytelling and open
data publishing

2. This fine event is hosted
by:
@sti2 - #sti-innsbruck
This workshop is about:
#travel
#webstorytelling
@wordliftit
#semanticweb
Hello, I am:
@cyberandy
UNTITLED - MARK ROTHKO

3. “Stories are important
cognitive events, for they
encapsulate, into one
compact package
information, knowledge,
context and emotions”
Don Norman
Tian Shu by Chinese artist Xu Bing

4. Stories are important
cognitive events, for they
encapsulate, into one
compact package
information, knowledge,
context and emotions
Don Norman
https://flic.kr/p/4J8PR2
Travellers agree that they turn to the web early on
in the travel process.
65% 69%
Leisure Business
data: Google Travel Study, June 2014, Ipsos MediaCT
…reality is that
the path to purchase is still extremely complex.

5. Yes. We have data.
data; IDC I V I E W, 2012
• From 2005 to 2020, the digital universe will
grow in size by a factor of 300, from 30
exabytes to 40 trillion gigabyte (40 ZB).
• From now until 2020, the digital universe will
about double every two years.
• Volumes of data are projected to reach 5.247
GB per person.
• Only 0.5% of this data is used today for
analysis.
• The amount of information individuals create
themselves - writing documents, taking
pictures, recording audio - is far less than the
information being created about them in the
digital universe.

6. Travel booking and shopping process in most
cases begins with an online search.
57%
Leisure
64%
Business
Destinations. Price-related terms. Brands. Activity-related terms
data: Google Travel Study, June 2014, Ipsos MediaCT

7. First things we type in Google when planning a trip.
data: Google Travel Study, June 2014, Ipsos MediaCT

8. Why
Stories are so
important?
http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Eastern_Story_Teller_%281878%29_-_TIMEA.jpg

9. Stories help us deliver information in a deep and
meaningful way.
Science has proved that
character-driven stories do
consistently cause oxytocin
synthesis.
Oxytocin motives cooperation with
others.
Why your brain loves good storytelling - Paul J. Zak (Harvard Business Review)

10. It’s no surprise we haven’t changed much the
way we craft our stories.
People are attracted to
stories as we’re
social creatures and we
relate to other people.
We’ve been communicating with
stories in the last 20,000 years when
our flat screen was a cave wall!
BEGINNING CRISIS CLIMAX REVERSAL END
The Irresistible Power of Storytelling as a Strategic Business Tool - Harrison Monarth (Harvard Business Review)

11. How do we create
engaging stories for
the Web?
Billy Meinke - https://www.flickr.com/photos/67338640@N04/15106864024/

12. New Brain
The new brain is where language is interpreted -
it is the most recent layer and takes into account
culture and tradition
How do we communicate?
The mid brain is
impulsive and it's
where emotions are
processed
What drives us?
Susan Weinschenk - Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?
The old brain is
instinctual and
concerned with our
survival
What is safe?
Old Brain
Mid Brain

13. Online experiences that “speak” to all three
brains (old brain, mid brain and new brain) are
the most effective.
Most behaviour and decision-making isn’t conscious.
When we engage all three brains users magically click!

14. When crafting a successful story for the web
we shall always consider three layers:
CONTENT
VISUAL
USER EXPERIENCESketches by Insideout.Today for Beats
by Demand (5FM South Afica)

15. “Websites are
digital game books”
Denise R. Jacobs
NON-LINEARITY is a FACT.
CONTENT COHERENCE
means creating meaningful
connections between pieces of
information.
To craft our digital game books we
shall connect things and add a context.
WHO WHEN WHERE WHAT WHY

16. What will I remember three days from now?
Innsbruck
It is called PSE = Pictorial Superiority Effect
Combining words with images = 6X better information retention!
Innsbruck
WORD PICTURE WORD + PICTURE
10% 35% 65%

17. A team of innovators led by @reinhardlanner (SalzburgerLand
Tourismus - SLT) have decided to bring digital storytelling for
travellers a step forward by implementing a data driven content
syndication platform to link premium contents with actionable
data (events, booking, facilities, …).
Let’s move now to one of the most affluent
(and gorgeous) regions in Europe for
travellers around the World: Land Salzburg.

18. CONTENT ANALYSIS
LINKED DATA PUBLISHING
1
3
Linked Data Cloud
Technology Stack
Text
Legacy Data
Audio/Images
(under development)
CONTENT DISCOVERY2
• Enterprise
Linked Data
• Content
Enhancement
• Semantic Search

19. Natural Language
Processing
We use it everyday.
[J U RAFSKY & MARTIN, 2008]
a theoretically motivated range of
computational techniques for
analysing naturally occurring
text/speech for the purpose of
achieving human-like language
processing.

20. Features extraction in text/speech.
Levels of knowledge encoding in language data.
INPUT
Morphologic
Syntactic
Semantic
FEATURES
NLP
{
Parser
Lexical DB
Stemming
AnaphoraPos Tagging
NER

21. TEXT
NLP
FEATURES
WISDOM
Making sense of unstructured data with Redlink.
STRUCTURED
DATA
CONTEXT
Combining Semantic Web technologies with NLP technologies.
KNOWLEDGE
{
Semantic Lifting

22. A semantic plugin for
WordLift brings the power of Artificial
Intelligence to Web Publishers, turning editorial
contents into actionable knowledge.

23. The Open Linked Data Strategy
of SalzburgerLand Tourismus
•Liberating legacy data and combine it with
external datasets (GeoNames, Foursquare,
TripAdvisor, …)
•Building an Enterprise Knowledge Graph (EKG)
and making it accessible to everyone as linked open
data
•Implementing automatic interlinking and dynamic
semantic publishing with WordLift
•Adding schema.org markup for events using
JSON-LD
• Drive business by increasing online visibility and
interlinking the booking system

24. The Enterprise Knowledge
Graph (EKG) of SalzburgerLand
Tourismus
•More than 8.000 events constantly
updated
•700 geographical places
•More than 7.000 local business
(hundreds linked to Foursquare and
TripAdvisor):
•1.700 restaurants
•5.000 accommodations
•More than 7.000 entries (events,
accommodations, businesses) with
geographic coordinates
•2.267.332 facts (triples)…growing

25. DATA.SALZBURGERLAND.COM
Pre-configured queries guide developers in getting the
information they need.
i.e. “How many accommodations are in Saalfelden?”
http://data.salzburgerland.com/dataset/accomodations/resource/47d29ca8-
ea29-491e-9c6f-b0a7341339bf
Data in the EKG
can be consumed
from a SPARQL End-point
http://dev.redlink.io/api/1.0-BETA/#linked-data

26. How does Saalfelden look in the SLT EKG?
Visualise Saalfelden with LodLive
Using WordLift SLT can now
organise their stories and
premium contents using
entities and relationships in
the knowledge graph.

27. Editorial Content
(storytelling)
Using dynamic semantic publishing
to remix content and create business value.
Event
Restaurant
Booking
• Pages for events, restaurant and facilities are rendered
dynamically by WordLift using data stored in the EKG.
• Interlinking is semi-automatic and uses the annotations
provided via content analysis API (NLP) of Redlink.
• Dynamic widgets like the timeline keeps pages up-to-date with
latest information from the EKG.
• Automatic interlinking creates meaningful connections (content
coherence) and drives traffic to the booking system.

28. All dynamic pages include schema.org markup.
Events are marked up using JSON-LD to intercept
conversational queries from Google and boost rankings.
(i.e. “what is going on today in Deisenberger?”)

29. Jukebox: a linked data mobile application.
A mobile web app prototype has
been also developed on top of
WordPress to keep travellers up to
date with recents events in
SalzburgerLand.
The app consumes events data
coming from the SPARQL End-point.
As content and data can now be easily
combined it is all about crafting
stories!

30. Hartwig HKD - "Question vanishing" on Flickr
When presenting the SLT Knowledge Graph project I
received all sort of different questions. Here are the ones I
like the most (1/2).
• How can you measure the success of this project?
We’re looking at the following targets (and metrics): reducing efforts (and costs) for content editing, creation
and syndication, increase of direct bookings, increase engagement across all digital properties (+ time
spent, + page views per session, …), qualified search visibility (search phrases, …), better in-destination
services for mobile users.
• Who is currently using SLT data?
The data is a key asset for SLT’s digital strategy for the next 5 years: we expect SLT to re-use its data in the
first place. Concrete interest has been shown by different startups in the travel industry at both local and
global level. Data is also being used in research projects.
• Can a schema.org annotation service be comparable with running
an enterprise knowledge graph?
No. As seen in the Saalfelden example the data in the KG has been interlinked with other datasets and this
enables us to make complex queries over all kind of information. The result of these queries can help us
create meaningful connections among our websites and it is transferred to search engines using the
schema.org vocabulary.

31. Hartwig HKD - "Question vanishing" on Flickr
When presenting the SLT Knowledge Graph project I
received all sort of different questions. Here are the ones I
like the most (2/2).
• How is Redlink/WordLift unique in this sector?
Redlink is at the same time the linked data warehouse for the enterprise knowledge graph and the content
analysis API (NLP) that re-uses the information in the graph for named entity extraction. WordLift enables
read/write access to the graph, annotates contents and links premium editorial content with business
processes such as bookings, event listing and more using dynamic widgets.
• Why in the tourist industry share data as open data is important?
When looking at what data is flowing between an organisation and other groups in tourism the potentials
are enormous (just think of the growing business of online flight booking that became possible when real-
time, worldwide flight status was finally made available). Open data supports different business models that
can be used for generating economical value (open doesn’t necessarily mean free). More info from ODI.
• Can a single operator (an Hotel for example) share its own data as
linked data?
Creating an enterprise knowledge graph only makes sense when we begin integrating different data silos as
the integration costs lower and the possibilities increase. A single operator shall work with organisations like
SLT to becomes an ‘entity’ in the Linked Data cloud. Much like we’ve been creating our own web pages on
social networks we shall now curate our data in data hubs like data.salzburgerland.com.

32. JOIN.WORDLIFT.IT
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