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Ontolog Forum

ONTOLOG Community & Project Planning Worskhop 2004

Participants Input

Parking Lot

  • Peter / Adam discussion of Ontolog vs UBL project goals
  • Bob's legal "requirements" application

Goals / Expectations for the Nov-2003 Workshop

  • Build rapport between Ontolog members -> effectiveness online
  • See if ontological perspective will help (me / UBL / others)
  • See if Ontolog is jelling; identify role / contribution
  • Identify value for ontology to provide (use cases)
  • Detect inappropriate use of concepts / relationships > guidelines
  • Visibility into UBL work products -> extract semantics
  • Secondary objectives
    • Build political relationship with other committees (courtship -> adoption)
    • Observe & learn from process

From the Facilitated Planning Session by Kurt Conrad

  • Ontolog Forum Planning
    • Core Values
      • Knowledge creation
      • Open
      • Exploration
      • Formal and informal
      • Business-focused
      • Enterprise-focused
      • Global impacts
      • Education
      • Understand applied ontologies (methods, tools, technology, theories, philosophy, people)
      • Community
    • Draft Vision Statements
      • Demonstrate a process that enables users with different needs to agree on an overarching structure for knowledge representation.
      • Suddenly able to connect the dots between two-dozen academic and practical "knowledge silos": BMPL, Open EDI, BPEL, Rosetta Net, International Association of Social Network Analysis, ebXML, UBL, etc.
      • The Ontolog Forum will become a focal point for the development and deployment of open source tools for analyzing and understanding ontologies (singular and multiple)(ontology and Ontology).
      • Be the foremost international open forum on Business Domain ontology -
        • attracting, retaining, [and invigorating] the best minds in this field as members of the community
      • A technical report that analyzes the content of the UBL document set and derives a business collaboration ontology at the business operations level
    • Articulate Goals
      • Task: Draft at least two goals (projects, to do items) & 2 measurable objectives (deliverables) for each goal
      • Budgeted Time: 7 minutes to work independently & 3 minutes to review
      • Actual Time: 30 minutes
    • Force Field Analysis
      • Tabled for 2003.01.08 planning session
      • Task: Brainstorm Drivers and Constraints / Issues / Barriers
      • Budgeted Time: 5 minutes
    • Gap Analysis
      • Tabled for 2003.01.08 planning session
      • Task: Each person votes for 4 most important Drivers / Constraints
      • Budgeted Time: 5 minutes
    • Identify Strategies
      • Tabled for 2003.01.08 planning session
      • Task: Take 2 issues. For each issue, draft a strategy with two measurable objectives.
      • Budgeted Time: 7 minutes to work independently & 3 minutes to review
  • UBL Ontology Project Planning
    • Values
      • Apply our knowledge to organize other's knowledge
      • Detached / Independent / Objective
      • Orchestrate creative result
      • Not fixated on process
      • Create / improve UBL and standards committee alignments
      • Ontology is a solution (range of positions)
        • Evangelical
        • Fantatic
        • Practical
        • Objective
      • Mechanism for global impacts
        • Energized and committed
        • Specific objective
        • Deadline
        • Concrete application
        • Education
        • User needs
        • Add value
  • Draft Vision Statements
    • To get several users with different project goals (within the general area of business transactions) to agree on a single, detailed representation that is suitable for their different applications.
    • Automatically parses a complex 22 page legal agreement into a one-page, time-phased (dec-tree, iscoo, declarative) form / display that is easily read by "average" citizen of UK, Tibet, or or even native speaker of Tlinkit (Alaskan) language.
    • The UBL Ontology Project will provide the UBL committee with the means (tools, analysis methods, and metrics) to analyze the ontological consistency and robustness of the UBL.
    • Our work product becomes, or at least heavily influences, UBL x.0 (say 4.0), and that UBL x.0 actually turns out to be an ontology and gets adopted by the rest of the business world. (comment: direction OK, UBL may or may not be the vehicle. Therefore, a "UBL-like standard" maybe more appropriate.)
    • Articulate Goals
      • Task: Draft at least two goals (projects, to do items) & 2 measurable objectives (deliverables) for each goal
      • Budgeted Time: 7 minutes to work independently & 3 minutes to review
      • Actual Time: 9 minutes to draft, 17 minutes to review
    • Force Field Analysis
      • Task: Brainstorm Drivers and Constraints / Issues / Barriers
        • Drivers
          • UBL committee is being influenced by growing awareness that ontologies have a significant role (but not sure of role, yet)... next killer app... people paying attention
          • every one has a reason for doing this, but not sure that everyone has the same objectives... not all working on this for the same reasons
          • adam very willing to provide help formalizing axioms
        • Constraints
          • Group lacks accepted committments, lack feedback on provided content... need groups that will work together and criticize, need community feedback
          • primary a development effort, not a research effort... we keep confusing the two things
          • some problems with requirements
          • lack solid project plans
          • anyone trying to make solid project plans needs committed resources
          • finances impact ability to commit
          • lack active feedback system (weakness of working in virtual space)... need to learn lessons of those who practice in virtual space
          • not properly organized, yet
          • if this needs to be a paid activity, then need to be up front on that... grant money will likely be a long time coming... (vs do an axiom a day, 10 minutes / day or week)
          • no organizational obsticle to doing something... just do it, would have content to discuss, but no one writing axioms... no one formalized terms coming out of san francisco
          • don't know how to write axioms, learning requirements... no one qualified to do this effort (write kif codes)
          • need agreement on what content to write and how reviewed vs just writing something
          • sbir only $75K for phase 1 ($300K for phase 2), 10% success rate
          • need to know how... learning is very challenging... intimidated to ask for help
      • Budgeted Time: 5 minutes
      • Actual Time: 20 minutes
    • Gap Analysis
      • Task: Each person votes for 4 most important Drivers / Constraints
        • One clear an common goal for group activities (ideal driver)
        • Individual drivers to learn how to create and apply ontologies to solutions (common goal)
        • Lack of organization of the work (not the people)
        • Lack sufficient group skills to work in virtual environment
        • Lack of solid project plan
        • Need workgroups with specific tasks in specific timeframes (e.g., write axioms for list of concepts)... too unbounded... need agreement on content to write (set of intial priorities, not sure where to start) Kurt's strategy
        • Lack effective conflict resolution (how to resolve disagreements)
        • Need efficient way to learn tools and techniques
        • Need explicitly articulated (and agreed to) process for doing work
        • Not properly organized
        • Lack action plan
        • Not adequately funded
        • Not properly trained to implement the methodology which has been adopted
        • Lack a real customer and/or test application software program that uses the ontology Pat's Explanation
      • Budgeted Time: 5 minutes
      • Actual Time: 16 minutes
    • Identify Strategies
      • Task: Choose 3 of the consolidated issues under Gap Analysis. For each issue, draft a description of the issue, one or more strategies to resolve the issue, and at least two measurable objectives for each strategy.
      • Process: Work offline and post to personal input wiki page (listed above)

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real-time session facilitated by Kurt Conrad 2004.01.08 10:35am~12:35pm PST

further updated Kurt Conrad updated 2004.02.05 10:40am~12:12pm PST