OntologySummit2007/OrganizingCommitteeMeeting 2007 04 17

Ontology Summit 2007 Organizing Committee Conference Call - Tuesday 01-May-2007

• This session will a 30-minute conference call to do a postmortem and follow-up on the Summit F2F

Conference Call Details

• Date: Tuesday, May 01, 2007
• Start Time: 8:30am PDT / 11:30am EDT / 5:30pm CET / 15:30 GMT/UTC
  • ref: World Clock
• Expected Call Duration: 30 minutes
• Dial-in Number:
  • from US: +1-605-475-8590 (South Dakota, USA)
  • from Europe, call:
    • Belgium 070-35-9989
    • France 0826-100-277
    • Germany 01805-00-7649
    • Ireland 0818-270-034
    • Italy 0848-390-175
    • Switzerland 0848-560-195
    • UK 0870-738-0763
  • callers from other countries please dial into either one of the US or European numbers
  • Conference ID: "5823120#"
  • Direct call from from Skype: +990008275823120

• Shared-screen support (VNC session), if applicable, will be started 5 minutes before the call at: http://vnc2.cim3.net:5800/
  • view-only password: "ontolog"

• RSVP to peter.yim@cim3.com appreciated.

Attendees

• Attended:
  • Olivier Bodenreider (NLM, NIH)
  • Peter P. Yim (Ontolog, CIM3)
  • Steve Ray (NIST)
  • Leo Obrst (Ontolog, MITRE)

• Expecting: ( * = not yet confirmed whether he/she will be dialing-in)
  • FrankOlken* (NSF)
  • DeborahMcGuinness* (Stanford KSL)
  • IvanHerman* (W3C)
  • MarkMusen* (NCOR, NCBO, Stanford SMI)
  • NicolaGuarino* (LOA-CNR.IT)
  • ChrisWelty* (IBM Research)
  • TomGruber* (TagCommons)

• Regrets:
  • BarrySmith* (sorry -- this overlaps with another call if this finishes early I will join in)

Agenda Ideas

• do a postmortem and follow-up on the F2F meetings, and the overall summit
• deliberate if we want to do a "next version" of the communique
• tie up all loose-ends

• ... (please post here; indentify yourself for follow-up purposes)

Agenda & Proceedings

1. Meeting called to order:

• Steve Ray took the chair and welcomed everyone

• Peter P. Yim volunteered to take minutes of the meeting

2. Roll Call:

• see above

3. Issues to be covered today:

• Thanks to ALL for the contribution to a very successful Ontology Summit 2007

• do a postmortem and follow-up on the F2F meetings, and the overall summit
• deliberate if we want to do a "next version" of the communique
• tie up all loose-ends

• (a) a F2F meetings & (b) overall Summit postmortem,
  • what went well:
    • the summit has been co-sponsored by 49 institutions -- which included some of the most prestigious organizations in the broader domain
    • about 400 messages were exchanged on the [ontology-summit] forum since the 1/18/2007 Ontology Summit 2007 Launch (another ~1200 messages were exchanged on [ontolog-forum] between Jan~Apr'07) -- totally unprecedented level of activities
    • 52 people responded to the OntologySummit2007_Survey
    • the OntologySummit2007_Communique has been endorsed by ~50 individuals.
  • what needs improvement:
    • difficult to get people engaged earlier; not until it was almost the last week before the F2F
    • people kept misunderstanding the objective (and theme) of the Summit
      • reason: some had their own preconceived ideas or agenda for the Summit,
      • the voluminous exchange happening in parallel on [ontolog-forum] (which was mainly on fine points of formal ontologies) didn't help the cause
  • what will we do differently next time? ... how? ...
    • getting the strawman out earlier would have helped a lot
    • need to revisit the possibility of branching off a "formal-discussion" only forum (as we move Ontology activities more to the mainstream)

• (c) deliberate on whether we want to initiate an next-version OntologySummit2007_Communique exercise,
  • For doing it:
    • multiple request from community
    • inconsistencies between communique text, diagram & framework slides
  • Against doing it:
    • not the best use of the community's energy
    • too much work (to restart the entire community process) to gain consensus (of 50 or so people, now that they are dispersed)
  • Peter's suggestion:
    • just clean up typos, formatting and inconsistencies,
    • point to diagram and framework (slides)
    • clean up diagram and slides independently
  • Olivier: not uncomfortable with the slight inconsistencies; as the communique should only represent a snapshot of the deliberation upto the end of the Summit meetings
  • All: disposition - we'll:
    • clean up typos and formatting;
    • accept the communique as being a rather accurate snapshot of the state-of-affairs at the conclusion of the Summit;
    • solicit further refinement of the diagram and the framework;
    • make available a section/workspace on the wiki to accept people's suggestions and comments to the communique.

• (d) follow-up actions
  • Peter to post and inform the community of the above disposition
    • also invite continued contribution on refining the framework; metrics and measures for the framework dimensions, and the OntologyDistinctions page that Tom Gruber started off (ref.: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2007-04/msg00185.html), etc.
  • Leo to ping Nicola to see how receptive he is to publish a report on Ontology Summit 2007 (similar to the UpperOntologySummit last year) on the "Applied Ontology" Journal.
    • if so, we'll solicit someone to take the lead to champion the write-up. This person will be lead author (like what Leo Obrst did last year), who will also invite others (who were actively involved in putting together this year's Summit) as co-authors for the report.
    • candidate champions: Michael Grüninger, DeborahMcGuinness & Frank Olken, ...
  • Olivier: another thing that would be worth doing is for someone (or some team) to work up an academic paper that encapsulates the idea of the framework, dimentsions and metrices for Ontologies, and then submit it for publication in the "Applied Ontology" journal. Anyone?

• (e) tying up any loose ends.
  • Peter to postprocess the NIST audio files, and post them
  • start a space to collect news articles and blogs written about the Summit
    • Peter: done! see: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2007#nid10XC

4. Any Other Business:

5. Adjourn:

• this will be the last organizing committee conference call (for this year's Summit).
  • we'll do a similar review exercise with the community at this Thursday's Ontolog call - ref: ConferenceCall_2007_05_03

• Thanks, everyone ... we'll look forward to 2008!

• Call adjourned at: 9:10 am PDT ... great job!

--

notes taken by: Peter P. Yim / 2007.05.01-09:12 PDT

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