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OpenOntologyRepository: OOR "Strategy (and Funding)" Discussion Session - Tue 2012_11_06

Key Topic for Discussion: OOR Strategy and Funding - "A mini Strategic Planning Brainstorm Session"

Session Chair: PeterYim & KenBaclawski

This is also consider a regular monthly OOR Team meeting. Therefore, please refer also to proceedings from last month's team meeting at OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_08_07, and possibly also our last "OOR Funding" session at OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_08_21

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Tuesday, 6-Nov-2012
  • Start Time: 7:30am PST / 10:30am EST / 4:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC
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Attendees

  • Expecting:
    • (please add yourself to the list above if you are a member of the community, or, rsvp to <peter.yim@cim3.com> with the event title/date and your name and affiliation)
  • Regrets:
    • ...

Agenda Ideas

  • Focused discussion on "OOR Strategy (and Funding)"
  • plan, confirm and make additions to the OOR event calendar
  • get a consensus on whether we want to keep the usual meeting time, or move it earlier by one hour
  • ... (add yours!)

Agenda & Proceedings

Archives:

1. Meeting called to order:

  • Ken Baclawski & Peter P. Yim took the chair and welcome everyone
  • Peter P. Yim volunteered to collate the notes, but encouraged everyone to capture their thoughts and document them on the chat board, as usual.
  • review and adopt agenda

2. Roll Call:

  • welcome and intro of new member(s) (if applicable)

3. Key discussion: OOR Strategy and Funding - "A mini Strategic Planning Brainstorm Session"

3.1 The "classic" (7-step) Strategic Planning process:

  • (i) Preparation & planning
  • (ii) Strategic Analyses
  • (iii) Set direction/strategy
  • (iv) Formulate tactics / Plan Actions
  • (v) Communicate Plans
  • (vi) Take action / Implement
  • (vii)Measure/evaluate results and fine tune strategy and tactics
  • re-iterate process

3.2 Let's focus today's discussion on (ii), (iii) & (iv)

3.3 (ii) Strategic Analyses - SWOT: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats

3.4 For (iii) & (iv), let us make sure we stay "relevant" - and shape ours using the Curt Carlson / SRI "NABC" model ...

  • (N) Needs
  • (A) Approach
  • (B) Benefit
  • (C) Competition

3.5 Discussion: strategically, what shall we be doing differently in the next 12 to 36 months

3.6 Discussion: tactically, what shall we be doing differently in the next 6 to 12 months

3.7 Discussion: how shall we get our resources / funding

3.8 Action Plans

3.9 Setting the metrics - what does "success" look like

4. References: most of the content below are inherited from the previous call(s), and will be edited/updated as this meeting progresses ...

  • 4.2 Member activities updates - Review: members and OOR-related activities (2012.07.10) ... (deferred discussion of this item)
    • OOR-sandbox status
    • code repository status
    • NCBO - BioPortal updates
    • NEU - Gatekeeper, ...
    • Raytheon-BBN - federation, ...
    • UToronto - COLORE
    • Bremen - Ontohub
    • Ryerson
    • Mathet
    • SOCoP_INTEROP - SOCoP-OOR
    • DataONE
    • NeOn (KMi and STL)
    • ONKI
    • KBSI
    • MMI
    • Use Cases
    • Architecture
    • API
    • Gatekeeping
    • production OOR instance
    • SIO
    • ICOM / DERI
    • content drive
    • Funding
  • 4.3 Action planning for "content drive" (getting people to upload ontologies) ... (deferred discussion of this item)
    • (discussion 2011.05.06):
      • an adopted Architecture & API is definitely crucial, but that's not all
    • All team members are encouraged to mull over how we can get to that state effectively
      • in particular ... how do we make this a "successful" community-driven, open source project!?
    • (discussion 2011.08.07) ...
      • ref. IAOA Committee and SIG session at FOIS (2012.07.25) discussion:
        • IAOA Ontology Registry and Repository Committee to put focus on contents
        • getting FOIS papers to be submitted with cited ontologies and their metadata, and have those ontologies hosted on OOR
  • 4.5 OOR instances OOR: status update and coordination ... (deferred discussion of this item)
  • OOR: sandbox, devbox, test-instance, socop, colore, ontohub, ornl-daac, mmi-orr, new ncbo-appliance, ... status update and coordination
  • 4.6 Getting us to a stage when we can run a OOR-production box ... (deferred discussion of this item)
    • we need a gatekeeping/policy module in place - [KenBaclawski]

5. IM Chat Transcript captured 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 in-session chat-transcript --

Peter P. Yim: welcome to the

OpenOntologyRepository: OOR "Strategy and Funding" Discussion Session - Tue 2012_11_06

session page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_11_06

Proceedings:

[07:33] Peter P. Yim: Ken is in! Let's get started

[07:46] Peter P. Yim: == brainstorming - on the steps (ii) (iii) & (iv) of a strategic planning exercise

- ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_11_06#nid3HMW

[07:47] Peter P. Yim: ALL: please approach this wearing your hat as a Designer, Planning and Convening

the OOR Initiative

[07:54] Peter P. Yim: personally, I see OOR as a community driven "collaborative" effort in (A)

infrastructure, (B) software/system development, and (C) content

[07:43] Michael Grüninger: What is the role of OOR sessions: (1) distributed software development of

OOR as an artifact. (2) Forum for general issues related to ontology repositories, such as

modularity, provenance, versioning.

[07:47] Ken Baclawski: @Michael I would add these: (3) OOR as a standard API for the purposes of

interoperability and federation (i.e., operationally), (4) Increasing content.

[07:45] Michael Grüninger: With respect to content, OOR will be most successful when it plays a role

in ontology best practices. For example, encouraging authors of ontology papers in conferences (such

as FOIS, WOMO, FOMI) and journals (Applied Ontology, Artificial Intelligence, ...) to submit their

ontologies to an OOR instance.

[07:47] Michael Grüninger: OOR needs to more actively engage other projects that are related to

ontology repositories

[07:45] Todd Schneider: Project Management

[07:46] Bob Smith: What is the primary purpose of an OOR Strategy? (Assumes variety of audience: Such

as Big BUILDING and City DATA MODELS with the Natl Institute of Building Standards' National

Building Information Modeling Standard 3.0 (just starting)

[07:50] Bob Smith: A "current" and perhaps temporary "Threat" to Seaboard Cities such as NYC Atlantic

City, Huntington Beach, San Francisco is Sea Level Rise and rethinking City Building Codes and

infrastructure requirements at Federal, State, Regional, and Local levels. Some States, such as

Calif., have a Chief Enterprise Architect and a Chief GIS Officer with potential great needs for OGC

- like ontology references

[07:48] Cory Casanave: Eventually this would need to be done under some standards org like OMG, W3C or OASIS

[07:50] Ken Baclawski: Related standards already exist: MDR, OMV; and others are in progress: MFI. No

doubt there are others. It should be a standard built on existing standards.

[07:52] Todd Schneider: Cory, couldn't we continue with our development and then at some point in the

future approach a standards body?

[07:56] Frank Olken: Technically, W3C is not an accredited standards organization like ANSI, ISO, or OMG.

[08:04] Frank Olken: Many of the standards organizations (e.g., ANSI L8 and ISO SC32 for Metadata

Registry Std) have preexisting commitments to possibly overlapping standards (such as ISO/IEC 11179

or various OMG standards) which they may want us to conform to.

[07:53] anonymous morphed into John F. Sowa

[07:56] John F. Sowa: The best standards are almost always a clean up of some de facto standard. A good

example is ECMAScript, which cleaned up JavaScript.

[08:08] Michael Grüninger: I'm not sure that OOR should be considered as a standards project. We are

providing infrastructure that uses existing standards for ontology representation and relationships.

[08:09] Michael Grüninger: We only need to guarantee that ontologies in different repositories can be

uniformly accessed and described; standards for these aspects already exist

[08:00] John F. Sowa: I don't believe that any technology should be proposed as a standard until there

are some successful applications. The standards organizations once tried the idea of "proactive

standards". But without some practical applications, it's a bad idea to propose any design as a standard.

[08:01] Ken Baclawski: John, would you regard BioPortal as an example of a successful repository project?

[08:00] Peter P. Yim: who could be our "role models" for (A), (B) and (C)?

[08:01] Peter P. Yim: Mike Dean has suggested, previously, that the Apache Foundation would be a good

role model for (B)

[08:08] Todd Schneider: Have to go. Cheers.

[08:10] Peter P. Yim: update: incorporating Gruninger and Baclawski's inputs above: look at the OOR

Initiative as a community driven "collaborative" effort in: (A) infrastructure, (B) software/system

development, (C) content development, (D) standards (architecture, API, protocol, metadata, etc.)

development, and (E) a community Forum for general issues related to ontology repositories ... (in

no particular order)

[08:11] Cory Casanave: In summary: I support continuing with the implementations track and that

implementation work may best be done under Apache or something similar. These implementations will

use existing standards but may also indicate the need for others. We should consider collaboration

with an SDO and think about the roadmap to do so.

[08:11] Michael Grüninger: To some extent, OOR should be involved in a bit of a culture change --

rather than everyone developing their ontologies in isolation, OOR should provide the infrastructure

that will finally deliver the promise of ontology sharing and reuse.

[08:12] Mike Bennett: @Michael agreed. That seems to suggest two distinct threads of activity:

- 1. syntactic; 2. semantic.

[08:14] Cory Casanave: @Michael: Much of the tooling and infrastructure is centered on developing

ontologies rather than reusing them.

[08:14] Cory Casanave: @Michael: So yes, focusing on the collaboration and reuse is very important

[08:20] Till Mossakowski: OOR has a nice infrastructure diagram (see

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OpenOntologyRepository_Architecture/Candidate03 ), the only

drawback being that it has not been implemented so far. The only existing implementation seems to be

BioPortal, but BioPortal does not follow the OOR architecture. To remedy this situation, we have

started Ontohub (http://ontohub.org - sources at https://github.com/ontohub/ontohub ), which starts

with an architecture simpler than OOR's, but with the goal to be eventually extended to that

architecture. The semantic background is provided by the OntoIOp ISO standard initiative, providing

a semantics for federated ontologies involving different languages like OWL, RDF, Common Logic, UML.

Ontohub.org could be federated with BioPortal in the future.

[08:12] John F. Sowa: I support Till's idea.

[08:13] John F. Sowa: If and when Bioportal is extended to support Ontoiop + Common Logic + other

standards, then it would be a good example.

[08:15] John F. Sowa: There is no difference between development, maintenance, and reuse. All large

development projects build on and extend other implementations.

[08:19] John F. Sowa: I have also spoken with some people in medical informatics, who have been very

unhappy about the "pressure" they have felt to use ontologies in BioPortal. That is a serious danger

of premature standards -- they can block innovation.

[08:26] Michael Grüninger: References to standardization in OOR are premature and/or misdirected. The

only standards that are relevant (for ontology representation, ontology relationships, ontology

metadata) already exist or are under development. We only need to guarantee that ontologies can be

imported/exported between repositories and that there are protocols for software applications to

uniformly access ontologies within ontology repositories.

[08:27] Till Mossakowski: is there a list of these standards (also explaining their use for OOR)?

[08:27] Michael Grüninger: Ontology representation language standards: RDF, OWL, Common Logic

[08:28] Michael Grüninger: Ontology relationship standards (under development): OntoIOp

[08:28] Michael Grüninger: Ontology metadata standards: OMV (?)

[08:31] Till Mossakowski: probably also REST or SOAP for communication among repository components

(although I am not sure whether these are standards...)

[08:31] Peter P. Yim: if we were to tweak our strategy, and bring us from moving toward irrelevance to

moving towards the center of attention - I suggest we re-focus our OOR efforts to revolve around

(hot themes like) (I) BigData-BigSystems (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012 ),

and (II) Ontology-based Standard (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologyBasedStandards )

[08:32] Peter P. Yim: ALL: please suggest how that "re-focus" or "tweak" would look like

[08:32] Peter P. Yim: ALL: also, there may be similar themes that are just as compelling, please suggest

what they are?

[08:49] Mike Bennett: I would strongly support (II) at least

[08:32] Till Mossakowski: sorry, have to leave now, will read chat later, so please go on capturing

the discussion...

[08:33] Peter P. Yim: thanks for joining us, Till. Before you go, please list times on Tuesdays that

might work well for you (1 to 1.5 Hr slots)

[08:33] Peter P. Yim: @Till - we do hope you can join us regularly on future OOR meetings

[08:34] Till Mossakowski: yes, sure. Generally anything before 6 pm CET works for me on Tuesdays.

[08:35] Peter P. Yim: @Till - thanks

[08:35] Frank Olken: By John's logic SQL would have adopted some sort of backward compatibility to CODASYL databases.

[08:38] Frank Olken: Rules folks also have RuleML.

[08:45] Frank Olken: As I recall, Datalog is more expressive than SQL, i.e., with respect to recursive queries.

[08:46] Frank Olken: (ref. JohnSowa's verbal suggestion that the industry should go with "Typed

Datalog") Typed Datalog would be interesting. I am not sure this is the right setting to develop (or

standardize) such a thing.

[08:58] John F. Sowa: ... the typed Datalog would include the SQL WHERE-clause as a proper subset. It

would also include SPARQL as a proper subset -- except for the FILTER and OPT abominations.

[08:54] Peter P. Yim: proposal: we re-focus our OOR efforts to revolve around: (I) BigData-BigSystems

(ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012 ), and (II) Ontology-based

Standards (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologyBasedStandards )

[09:00] Peter P. Yim: we have consensus on the above, but will need to elaborate and work on the details

on how adopting (I) & (II) would impact (A) thru (E)

[09:02] Ken Baclawski: The meeting time was moved to 7:30am PST.

[09:04] Peter P. Yim: [consensus] going forward, regular OOR meetings will be on Tuesdays, starting

7:30am PST / 10:30am EST / 4:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC (like today, which is one hour earlier than

before) - session duration: ~1.5 Hours.

[09:05] Peter P. Yim: no meeting next Tuesday, as ISWC is in session

[09:06] Peter P. Yim: therefore, our next OOR meeting will be on Tue Nov-20, starting 7:30am PST /

10:30am EST / 4:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC ... we will continue today's conversation, and will drill

down (go more granular) until we get to specifics on tactics and action plans given the re-focused

short/medium-term direction

[09:06] Peter P. Yim: great meeting!

[09:07] Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 9:03am PST --

[09:08] List of attendees: Bob Smith, Cory Casanave, Frank Olken, John F. Sowa, Ken Baclawski,

Michael Grüninger, Mike Bennett, Mike Dean, Peter P. Yim, Till Mossakowski, ToddSchneider.

-- end in-session chat-transcript --

6. (Other) Action items:

  • we reached consensus today that we will re-focus our OOR efforts to revolve around: (I) BigData-BigSystems (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2012 ), and (II) Ontology-based Standards (ref. http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologyBasedStandards ) ... but we will need to elaborate and work on the details on how adopting (I) & (II) would impact the various facets of the OOR Initiatives, namely,
    • the different facets of the OOR Initiative (i.e. we can looks at "OOR" as being a project on):
      • (A) infrastructure,
      • (B) software/system development,
      • (C) content,
      • (D) a standard API (architecture, reference model, protocols, metadata standard(s), etc.) and
      • (E) a community Forum for general issues related to ontology repositories ... (in no particular order)

7. Any Other Business:

  • ...

8. Schedule Next Meeting & Adjourn:

  • Next Meetings:
    • 2012_11_08 - Thursday: Joint OASIS-OMG-ISO-IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontology-based Standards" mini-series session-2: Sharing Experiences-II: Exemplary OMG efforts - Co-chairs: Michael Grüninger & Eric Chan - ConferenceCall_2012_11_08
    • 2012_11_13 - No OOR meeting, as ISWC is in session (in Boston, Massachusetts, USA)
    • 2012_11_20 - Tue: "OOR Strategy, Tactics & Action plans - a continuation of today's discussion" - start-time: 7:30am PST / 10:30am EST / 4:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC
    • 2012_12_04 - Tuesday: OOR Project Team Member Conference Call - OOR/ConferenceCall_2012_12_04
    • do we want to keep the usual Tuesday OOR meeting time, or move it earlier by one hour?
      • [consensus] from now on (and until further notice) we will change the regular Tuesday meeting time to: 7:30am PST / 10:30am EST / 4:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC (just like today; one hour earlier than before.)
    • ... please mark your calendars and come!
  • Call adjourned at: 9:03 am PST

--

notes taken by: Peter P. Yim / 2012.10.30-11:57am PST

All participants, please review and edit to enhance accuracy and granularity of the documented proceedings.

Resources

  • the Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series:
    • 2011_10_20 - Thursday: Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-1: Introducing the ISO NP 17347 "Ontology Integration and Interoperability (OntoIOp)" Standardization Effort - Co-chairs: John Bateman & Michael Grüninger - ConferenceCall_2011_10_20
    • 2011_11_03 - Thursday: Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-2: Invited Speaker: Elisa Kendall on "Ontology-Related Metadata Standards" - Co-chairs: Michael Grüninger & John Bateman - ConferenceCall_2011_11_03
    • 2012_07_17 - Tuesday: Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-3: "Standardisation Coordination and Ontology Repositories" - Co-chairs: Michael Grüninger & John Bateman - ConferenceCall_2012_07_17
    • 2012_09_20 - Thursday: Joint IAOA-OOR-Ontolog "Ontologies and Standards" mini-series session-4: "Common Logic" - Co-chairs: Michael Grüninger & John Bateman - ConferenceCall_2012_09_20
  • the OOR-IPR mini-series:
    • 2010_09_09 - Thursday: Joint OOR-Ontolog-NCBO-CC-IAOA-OASIS Panel Discussion - "IPR issues in Ontology and the OOR" session-1: an exposition on relevant IPR regimes - Keynote speaker: George Strawn - Chair: Peter P. Yim - Panelists: JamieClark, John Wilbanks, Bruce Perens - ConferenceCall_2010_09_09
    • 2010_09_16 - Thursday: Joint OOR-Ontolog-NCBO-CC-IAOA-OASIS Panel Discussion - "IPR issues in Ontology and the OOR" session-2: what are the IPR issues relating to open ontology repositories (and ontologies in general)? - Chair: Mark Musen - Panelists: Cameron Ross, Alan Rector, John F. Sowa, Bruce Perens, John Wilbanks, Peter P. Yim - ConferenceCall_2010_09_16
    • 2010_09_30 - Thursday: Joint OOR-Ontolog-NCBO-CC-IAOA-OASIS Panel Discussion - "IPR issues in Ontology and the OOR" session-3: discussion and consensus on licensing arrangements for the OOR Initiative, and positions we might take on related IPR issues - chair: Leo Obrst - Panelists: Peter P. Yim, Mike Dean, Bruce Perens, JamieClark - ConferenceCall_2010_09_30
    • see: the official OOR-IPR Policy as adopted by the team on 2010.12.17 after this mini-series of meetings, consultations and discussions.



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