UpperOntologySummit - Conveners Conference Call 2006-03-02

Agenda & Proceedings

1) Welcome & confirmation of agenda

2) Appointment of secretary to take minutes

3) Roll-call of participants - see above

4) Review of the goals of the Upper Ontology Summit

Steve: identify and articulate to the public that there is hope and a path to link into an upper ontology (without that being a risky endeavor)
Steve: to will need to identify one (or more) avenues to achieve that goal
Steve: maybe we can build the consensus out better with the wiki, in addition to the threaded conversation

5) Enumerating the most promising avenues to achieving the goals

maping approach
common subset ontology - then creating all terms and concepts based on the common subset (PatCassidy)
(MichaelGruninger's) axiomatically driven deductive approach
Linking Ontolgies - partial ordering
(JohnSowa's) Lattice of Ontologies
Nicola Guarino: interrelating, comparing, account for differences ... (Dagobert, Pat & Matthew concur)

Steve: goal - reach consensus on: the custodians commit to identify the commonalities (and map them) and to make explicit the distinction of the different assumptions and design rationale underlying their ontologies
- also: custodians commit to create a map of the landscape of all upper ontologies ... this map will identify the broad areas that are included or not included in these ontologies
- also: need to state all the benefits of UO - starting compiling them at: UpperOntologySummit/UosConvenerMeeting_2006_03_02/UpperOntologyBenefits
- ALL agreed

Other suggestions
- Dagobert suggest we also look into the 'detail maps' after the broad map ... Steve is of the opinion that we should first get this across to the general public first
- Michael Grüninger: please point to axioms whenever available

6) engaging the 'real custodians'

we have less than unanimous participation so far - how can we get everyone engaged?
the fact that everyone has agreed to partcipate and come is a good indication that there is some coherence here
conspicuously needed to engage: Doug, Adam (he's traveling, probably until at least 3/3)
- Steve will e-mail them to bring them into the conversation

7) adopting the list of co-sponsors

need explicit agreement
Michael Uschold - Boeing OK (as long as the 'weak' definition is conspicuously displayed)

8) Public Announcement

Pat: solicit the 'custodians' to review the strawman 'Joint Communique'
we'll put the draft at: UpperOntologySummit/UosConvenerMeeting_2006_03_02/JointCommuniqueDraft

9) Funding possibilities

the IKRIS project - relating PSL to Cyc - is getting trickle funding(may even end in 6 months) but it's a good start
potentials:
- NSF
- John Walker
- Nancy Lawler (ISO 11179)
- new W3C acitivity - to define reference ontology (announcement just came out yesterday) - Leo will try to get more info, we need to participate there, and get those people to participate here
- EU funding - at least to the European participants (Steve: the EC is actually softening the position of 'not funding US projects' which they used to practise before.)

10) Bill: we should also present some empirical data on how upper ontologies have been used

Matthew: we have some farily large deployment in the oil industry
Steve: Doug Lenat or TopQuadrant probably have commerical applications they can talk about
Steve: maybe we can capture as an action item to collect these applications
Bill: we'll try to get a release to share some existing work

11) Action Items - review what needs to be done between now and 3/14/06

Nicola will make an attempt to let EC officers know about this event (although it is a bit late already)
Peter: the Organizing Committee needs to publish the (draft) session agendas so that panelists and speakers can start preparing
- Leo: alternatives - issue oriented (yes); breakout sessions (no); consolidate (yes)
we need to do as much as we can, virtually, before Mar. 14, 2006
ALL: please get back with confirmations of 'co-sponsorship'
ALL: please post to [uos-convene] with the header "ISSUE" or "COMMUNIQUE" ... etc. - go with Nicola's suggestion about the subject lines - ref: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum//uos-convene/2006-03/msg00036.html
Michael Uschold has a suggestion on the next few specific steps (which all agreed) - which he will post to [uos-convene]

13) Next meeting date and adjournment

Next call? will be on Wed 2006.03.08 at 11:00am~12:00noon EST
- goal: reach a degree of consensus on the communique and on the issues that stand before us on connecting the ontologies
call adjourned 7:51 am PST / 10:51 am EST

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above minutes captured in real time on this wiki by Peter P. Yim / 2006.03.02-7:52 am PST