TMRA was a great success! Thanks to Lutz Maicher's organisation and the high quality of the presentations there was a real buzz about the conference. What really struck me about the conference was the growing maturity and diversity of the tools and applications being presented. A few years back we had a poor quality standard and very few tools (let alone good ones). Now it seems there is a growing set of developers and business people who are recognising and exploiting the Topic Maps standard.
For me, TMRA highlighted the diversity and depth of the work being carried out. From the formal reference model work of Robert Barta and Steve Newcomb to the use of subjective and objective measures to evaluate topic map driven search and navigation by Sam Oh, there was a deep held belief that topic maps is the answer to many of the information and knowledge management issues we face. The thing now is, we are proving that hunch through considered and focused works.