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Ontolog Forum

Ontology Summit 2011 review and follow-up action planning ("postmortem") session - Thu 19-May-2011

  • Chair: Dr. SteveRay and Dr. NicolaGuarino

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 19-May-2011
  • Start Time: 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT / 6:30pm CEST / 5:30pm BST / 16:30 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: ~1.5 Hours
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  • Please note that this session will be recorded, and the audio archive is expected to be made available as open content to our community membership and the public at-large under our prevailing open IPR policy.

Attendees

  • Expecting:
    • ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above; or e-mail <peter.yim@cim3.com> so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...

Resources

Abstracts

  • Session Topic: "OntologySummit2011 (postmortem) review and follow-up action planning"
The goal of this session is to revisit the last Ontology Summit and plan ahead for the future. We will discuss what worked and what can be improved during the 3~4 months of Ontology Summit 2011, and get ideas on how to make next year's Ontology Summit even better. This meeting gives us an opportunity to develop some plans and initiatives for action that will move what we have achieved beyond the 3-month Summit itself. Further, this meeting is also an opportunity to suggest topics and themes for next year's Ontology Summit.

Agenda Ideas

  • Review what worked and what didn't this year
  • Good ideas, suggestions and possible action that arose
  • Follow-up Action planning
    • Documenting Ontology Summit 2011
    • Ongoing collection of Applications Cases and value they bring
    • Getting the word out
  • Suggestions (e.g. topics and themes) for Ontology Summit 2012
  • ... (please insert below, anything else you may suggest)

Agenda & Proceedings

  • Session Format & Agenda: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call:
    • 1. Opening - co-chairs: Steve Ray & Nicola Guarino ... [ slides ]
    • 2. Open discussion: "How did it go? what worked? what needs improvement? how can we take this further?" - All (~30 min.) ... please refer to process above
    • 3. Some follow-up action plans ... Steveray, Michael Uschold, Ali Hashemi (5 min. each) ... [ slides ]
    • 4. Open discussion: ideas and themes for Ontology Summit 2012 - All (~20 min.) ... please refer to process above
    • 5. Once again ... a solicitation to endorse the Communique if you haven't already done so
    • 6. Conclusion / Follow-up - co-chairs: Steve Ray & Nicola Guarino

Transcript of the online chat during the session

see raw transcript here.

(for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)

Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

-- begin of chat session --

Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the

Ontology Summit 2011 review and follow-up action planning ("postmortem") session - Thu 19-May-2011

Please refer to details on session page at:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_05_19

.

anonymous morphed into vnc2

Ali Hashemi: Does vnc work for anyone?

Peter P. Yim: @Ali - no ... you will have to call out the advance, and I will advance the slides for you

Peter P. Yim: session starts ... How did Ontology Summit 2011 go?

Steve Ray: Matthew: Went well - maturity of how participants approached the topic

Michael Uschold: Was it anyone's job to get media coverage? IF not, that is the explanation.

anonymous morphed into Fabian Neuhaus

Steve Ray: In the future, need a publicity chair (Uschold, Obrst)

Peter P. Yim: +1 on Gruninger's point about the panel at the Symposium - I agree it went real well and

provided a good range of perspectives

Steve Ray: Gruninger: could have done better on the challenge problems

Peter P. Yim: @Steve - vnc still working properly here

Steve Ray: VNC is back for me - it hiccuped and required me to log in again.

Fabian Neuhaus: I am basking

Peter P. Yim: presentations continued - [ 1-Ray ] (slide#8 now)

Steve Ray: Michael: Can't help observing that we're really in an Epilogue, rather than a Prologue as

noted on your slide. (Shocking misuse of a term for an ontologist!

Peter P. Yim: == Michael Uschold presenting == [ 2-Uschold ]

Leo Obrst: I think that Michael's Ontology Usage Catalog could also become part of the Open Ontology

Repository, at some point, since the points on his slide 2 are largely also addressed by the OOR.

Steve Ray: Michael: What is the relationship between your work and the Open Ontology Repository?

Rex Brooks: Sorry I'm late folks-conflicting telecon, about an emergency management ontology.

Peter P. Yim: Nicola Guarino: in favor of Michael's proposal ... cataloging is good, but qualifying it as

"exemplary" could be dangerous

Ali Hashemi: With respect to the summit, it is also an issue of how suitable the example ontology is

for making a case.

The OOR encompasses a broader range of ontologies

Nicola Guarino: According to the authors, "An exemplary ontology is one that can serve as a model

that can be imitated or leveraged by ontology engineers in the future. The most fundamental property

of an exemplary ontology is being well designed for its intended purpose". This is risky.

Michael Uschold: Agree with Nicola about having a way to enter things into a repository, without

having to commit to it being exemplary. I agree. The exemplary ontology catalog is just an example

of a semantic-form based catalog. An ontology usage framework could use a similar approach. Whether

or not we choose to rate the quality of ontology uses is a discussion about just one attribute of

the ontology usage, not a big issue per se.

Matthew West: Apologies, but I have to leave now.

Peter P. Yim: bye, Matthew

Michael Uschold: @Nicola: can you comment on the publication of ontology usages in AOJ (the "Applied

Ontology" Journal) according to some kind of standard format?

Rex Brooks: I'll give the standing use-case library some thought. I promised other groups that I

would catch up on work that took a lower priority before the summit, so I can't commit now, but I

may commit after those projects are up to date.

Leo Obrst: Maybe AOJ could institute a kind of New Ontologies of Interest section? Brief descriptions

of ontologies and their use cases?

Nicola Guarino: @Michael: definitely we are open to publish ontology usages on the AOJ, but honestly

I have no idea of the proper format (there was some discussion with Michael Grüninger at the summit)

Michael Uschold: I could not agree more with Ali Hashemi that there needs to be a better way to show

off the results of our work. I do not like sending people to our working wiki site.

Nicola Guarino: @Ali: I definetly support the idea of a nice (non wiki-based) website, certainly it

would be great to point at it from the IAOA.org web site (and from MANY different places).

Peter P. Yim: == Brainstorm on possible theme for next year's Ontology Summit ==

Leo Obrst: Jumping ahead a bit, Potential Topics for Ontology Summit 2012: 1) Ontology Best

Practices, Methodologies, Evaluation, 2) Ontology Self-Correction, Automated Growth, Ontology

Learning. To some extent both of these were mentioned at the Symposium.

Nicola Guarino: (of course we need some way of quality evaluation, of course)

Rex Brooks: Thought for next year's Summit: How do we make people aware of ontology by saying "Did

you know that YOU have an ontology?

Rex Brooks: The point is showing how there are implicit ontologies everywhere, and making people

aware of it. What are the consequences of willy nilly ontological practices?

Rex Brooks: How to put that into a a Summit Theme is a good question.

Michael Uschold: I propose "Ontology Engineering best practice"

Michael Uschold: I think that Ontology best practice is too big.

Michael Uschold: I think ontology learning is too small a topic, very important, but represents small

part of the community

Michael Grüninger: Rather than ontology learning the topic can be broadened to ontology acquisition

e.g. extracting ontologies from unstructured knowledge

Peter P. Yim: it was suggested before (in previous years) the theme of "Ontology and Software

Engineering" - and create a platform to pull together these two communities

Steve Ray: @Peter: or..."Ontology and Systems Engineering"

Leo Obrst: Perhaps related to "Ontology and Software / Systems Engineering" is "Developing Ontology

Applications".

Rex Brooks: "Solving Problems with Ontology"?

Michael Grüninger: Challenge Problems for Ontology Design and Applications

Leo Obrst: I agree that Evaluation is a potentially big topic, as that NIST workshop made clear: many

approaches.

Fabian Neuhaus: I agree with Nicola, when I said "Best Practices" I should have said "Best Practices

& Methodologies"

Peter P. Yim: a possible theme that came across (when Matthew and I were doing "Strategies") is "Making

the Case for Ontology Research"

Nicola Guarino: @Peter: BTW, "Making the case for ontology research" is a GREAT topic, although

perhaps less popular than best practices & methodology

Nicola Guarino: Also: research challenges for ontologies

Ali Hashemi: Ontologies as Part of Knowledge Systems (how it fits into other technologies)

Peter P. Yim: +1 on Ali's "Ontologies as Part of Knowledge Systems"

Yuriy Milov: alternatives ... "challenges for ontologies" I agreed

Rex Brooks: Similar to Best Practices and Software Engineering, and building on this year's topic, I

would suggest something along the lines of "What is Ontology Good For? it breaks down into Tracks

for things like performance, collateral benefits, etc.

Fabian Neuhaus: For the record, I suggested to distinguish "Ontology Best Practices, Methodologies"

and "Evaluation of Ontologies" as separate topics

Ali Hashemi: Ontology acquisition might also resonate broadly, as it would help communicate how

people who didn't realize they could use ontologies, could.

Terry Longstreth: Back to its roots: Ontology usage for Philosophy and the Humanities

Peter P. Yim: Nicola / Steve: ask people to continue to contribute ideas (brainstorm on topics) -

conversation can and should continue on the [ontology-summit] list

Peter P. Yim: Home page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit

Leo Obrst: Adios!

Peter P. Yim: Steve suggest adding a link on that page to a place where people can suggest "future

themes"

Peter P. Yim: sure ... send us your suggestions here -

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit/Suggestions

Nicola Guarino: @MichaelUschold: once the communique is ready (with endorsement), submit it to

Applied Ontology so we can publish it soon

Ali Hashemi: Thank you all.

Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 11:00am PDT --

-- end of chat session --

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Audio Recording of this Session

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  • Conference Date and Time: 19-May-2011 10:36am ~ 11:00am Pacific Daylight Time
  • Duration of Recording: 1 Hour 23.5 Minutes
  • Recording File Size: 9.56 MB (in mp3 format)
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