Guest Talk "Lessons from 20 Years of Building Ontologies and Knowledge Graphs"

Juan Sequeda 

Date/Time: 18.05.2026, 10:30 

Location: TC.3.05 

Abstract 

Knowledge graphs and ontologies are now everywhere and having a moment. But for many of us, this work started way long before the hype.

I started working on ontologies and knowledge graphs (i.e. semantic web) in 2005, developing research-backed approaches to derive knowledge graphs from relational databases. Since then, I've taken that work beyond academia, into startups, products, and enterprises struggling to turn data into shared understanding.

This talk shares the scar tissue. This isn't just a retrospective talk. It's a practical guide grounded in experience, failure, and persistence.

I'll cover the patterns I've seen repeat for 20 years: why efforts succeed and fail, what is still a challenge, why teams underestimate knowledge work and get stuck, how organizations can build semantic foundations without boiling the ocean, architectural approaches…and what I wish I had understood earlier technically, organizationally, and culturally.

If you're building, buying, or betting on knowledge graphs today, this talk is a candid set of lessons learned from someone who's been stubbornly working on the same core problem for 20 years, and is still learning. This talk may save you money and years of pain

See further details here:

https://juansequeda.substack.com/p/the-20-lessons-about-building-ontologies

Bio 

Juan Sequeda is a Principal Data Strategist at ServiceNow, joining through the acquisition of data.world. He holds a PhD in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin. Juan’s research and industry work has been on the intersection of data and AI, with the goal to reliably create knowledge from inscrutable data, specifically designing and building Knowledge Graph for enterprise data and metadata management. Juan is the co-author of the book “Designing and Building Enterprise Knowledge Graph” and the co-host of Catalog and Cocktails, an honest, no-bs, non-salesy data podcast. Juan serves as a strategic and innovation bridge across Product/Engineering, Marketing, Sales, and Customer, ensuring technical insights are aligned with business value.

Juan has researched and developed technology on semantic data virtualization, graph data modeling, schema mapping and data integration methodologies. He pioneered technology to construct knowledge graphs from relational databases starting in the mid 2000s, resulting in W3C standards, research awards, patents, software and his startup Capsenta acquired by data.world in 2019. Juan strives to build bridges between academia and industry as former co-chair of the LDBC Property Graph Schema Working Group, member of the LDCB Graph Query Languages task force, standards editor at the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). Juan continues to be an active member of the scientific community through academic research partnerships, advising students, and member of data and AI scientific conference committees.