Abstract
Nowadays, most people have limited leisure time and the offer of (cultural) activities to spend this time is enormous. Consequently, picking the most appropriate events becomes increasingly difficult for end-users. This complexity of choice reinforces the necessity of filtering systems that assist users in finding and selecting relevant events. Whereas traditional filtering tools enable e.g. the use of keyword-based or filtered searches, innovative recommender systems draw on user ratings, preferences, and metadata describing the events. Existing collaborative recommendation techniques, developed for suggesting web-shop products or audio-visual content, have difficulties with sparse rating data and can not cope at all with event-specific restrictions like availability, time, and location. Moreover, aggregating, enriching, and distributing these events are additional requisites for an optimal communication channel. In this paper, we propose a highly-scalable event recommendation platform which considers event-specific characteristics. Personal suggestions are generated by an advanced collaborative filtering algorithm, which is more robust on sparse data by extending user profiles with presumable future consumptions. The events, which are described using an RDF/OWL representation of the EventsML-G2 standard, are categorized and enriched via smart indexing and open linked data sets. This metadata model enables additional content-based filters, which consider event-specific characteristics, on the recommendation list. The integration of these different functionalities is realized by a scalable and extendable bus architecture. Finally, focus group conversations were organized with external experts, cultural mediators, and potential end-users to evaluate the event distribution platform and investigate the possible added value of recommendations for cultural participation.
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Notes
For more details on this linking, see the eventsML ontology at http://multimedialab.elis.ugent.be/ontologies/EventsML-G2/v1.0/EventsML.owl
VRT, is a publicly-funded broadcaster of radio and television in Flanders, http://www.vrt.be
Vooruit is an arts centre in Ghent, Belgium (http://vooruit.be/)
Ancienne Belgique is a concert hall in Brussels, Belgium (http://www.abconcerts.be)
UiTinVlaanderen is an online leisure agenda for Flanders and Brussels, founded by the Flemish Ministry of Culture. (http://www.uitinvlaanderen.be/).
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Acknowledgements
The research activities that have been described in this paper were funded by Ghent University, K.U. Leuven, VUB, VRT-medialab, Interdisciplinary Institute for Broadband Technology (IBBT) through the CUPID project (50% co-funded by industrial partners), the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation by Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT), the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-Flanders), and the European Union.
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De Pessemier, T., Coppens, S., Geebelen, K. et al. Collaborative recommendations with content-based filters for cultural activities via a scalable event distribution platform. Multimed Tools Appl 58, 167–213 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-010-0715-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11042-010-0715-8