From a Little Semantics to Just Enough Ontology | Jim Hendler & Deborah McGuinness | KGC Community

What does it actually take to make knowledge graphs work in the real world? Two of the most influential figures in the history of the semantic web sit down for a candid AMA with the KGC community. Jim Hendler, Professor at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and co-author of the original Semantic Web article in Scientific American, shares the origin of his famous saying "a little semantics goes a long way" — and how it grew from a DARPA research program in the early 90s into the foundations of OWL and the modern knowledge graph ecosystem. Deborah McGuinness, Professor at RPI and formerly of Stanford's Knowledge Systems Lab and Bell Labs, talks through the concept of "just enough ontology" — why clients who think they need a full ontology often need something far simpler, and how finding the right level of representation is the real skill. Together, they cover: How LLMs are changing the way ontologies are built and used The relationship between semantics, ontologies, and enterprise AI What 40+ years of collaboration between a bottom-up and top-down thinker actually looks like Practical advice for practitioners navigating the taxonomy to knowledge graph spectrum This is AMA #4 in the KGC Community speaker series, recorded ahead of KGC 2026 at Cornell Tech, New York, May 4-8. KGC 2026 in-person is sold out. Virtual access is still open at $99 with code KGC_VIRTUAL99. Join the KGC Slack community: community.knowledgegraph.tech #KnowledgeGraph #KGC2026 #SemanticWeb #Ontology #JimHendler #DeborahMcGuinness #AI #KnowledgeGraphConference 🔗 Stay Connected with KGC 🌐 Website https://www.knowledgegraph.tech 📩 Newsletter https://info.knowledgegraph.tech/kgc-... 💼 LinkedIn   / the-knowldge-graph-conference   💬 Slack Community https://join.slack.com/t/knowledgegra... 🐦 Twitter   / kgconference   📺 Watch all KGC content on Vimeo https://watch.knowledgegraph.tech/