Actions

Ontolog Forum

OntologySummit Theme: Community Brainstorm Session - Thu 2015-10-01

Session Chair: MichaelGruninger (IAOA; U of Toronto)

Topic: Brainstorm Session on the OntologySummit2016 Theme: Community Input & Planning

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 01-Oct-2015
  • Start Time: 9:30am PDT / 12:30pm EDT / 6:30pm CEST / 5:30pm BST / 1630 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: ~1.5 hours
  • Dial-in:
    • Phone (US): +1 (425) 440-5100 ... (long distance cost may apply)
      • ... [ backup nbr: (315) 401-3279 ]
      • when prompted enter Conference ID: 843758#
    • Skype: join.conference (i.e. make a skype call to the contact with skypeID="join.conference") ... (generally free-of-charge, when connecting from your computer ... ref.)
      • when prompted enter Conference ID: 843758#
      • Unfamiliar with how to do this on Skype? ...
        • Add the contact "join.conference" to your skype contact list first. To participate in the teleconference, make a skype call to "join.conference", then open the dial pad (see platform-specific instructions below) and enter the Conference ID: 843758# when prompted.
      • Can't find Skype Dial pad? ...
        • for Windows Skype users: Can't find Skype Dial pad? ... it's under the "Call" dropdown menu as "Show Dial pad"
        • for Linux Skype users: please note that the dial-pad is only available on v4.1 (or later; or on the earlier Skype versions 2.x,) if the dialpad button is not shown in the call window you need to press the "d" hotkey to enable it. ... (ref.)
  • Shared-screen support ... (to be advised)
  • In-session chat-room url: http://webconf.soaphub.org/conf/room/summit_20151001
    • instructions: once you got access to the page, click on the "settings" button, and identify yourself (by modifying the Name field from "anonymous" to your real name, like "JaneDoe").
    • You can indicate that you want to ask a question verbally by clicking on the "hand" button, and wait for the moderator to call on you; or, type and send your question into the chat window at the bottom of the screen.
    • thanks to the soaphub.org folks, one can now use a jabber/xmpp client (e.g. gtalk) to join this chatroom. Just add the room as a buddy - (in our case here) summit_20151001@soaphub.org ... Handy for mobile devices!
  • Discussions and Q & A:
    • Nominally, when a presentation is in progress, the moderator will mute everyone, except for the speaker.
    • To un-mute, press "*7" ... To mute, press "*6" (please mute your phone, especially if you are in a noisy surrounding, or if you are introducing noise, echoes, etc. into the conference line.)
    • we will usually save all questions and discussions till after all presentations are through. You are encouraged to jot down questions onto the chat-area in the mean time (that way, they get documented; and you might even get some answers in the interim, through the chat.)
    • During the Q&A / discussion segment (when everyone is muted), If you want to speak or have questions or remarks to make, please raise your hand (virtually) by clicking on the "hand button" (lower right) on the chat session page. You may speak when acknowledged by the session moderator (again, press "*7" on your phone to un-mute). Test your voice and introduce yourself first before proceeding with your remarks, please. (Please remember to click on the "hand button" again (to lower your hand) and press "*6" on your phone to mute yourself after you are done speaking.)
  • RSVP to gruninger@mie.utoronto.ca with your affiliation appreciated, ... or simply just by adding yourself to the "Expected Attendee" list below (if you are a member of the community already.)
  • Please note that this session may be recorded, and if so, the audio archive is expected to be made available as open content, along with the proceedings of the call to our community membership and the public at-large under our prevailing open IPR policy.

Attendees

  • Attended:
  • Expecting:

Ken Allgood

Abstract

The OntologySummit is an annual series of events (first started by Ontolog and NIST in 2006) that involves the ontology community and communities related to each year's theme chosen for the summit. The Ontology Summit program is now co-organized by Ontolog, NIST, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA, NCO_NITRD along with the co-sponsorship of other organizations that are supportive of the Summit goals and objectives.

While the actual events of OntologySummit2016 will be rolled out between January and April of 2016, we have decided we will try to plan for it early. An initial round of input has already been received, as part of the OntologySummit2015 postmortem session on 2015.05.28. During that session, the community also agreed on having today's session, so we can dedicate some quality time to specifically discuss the possibilities and options on the choice of Themes for OntologySummit2016. This session will, therefore, be devoted to explore the theme(s) and topics that would best allow us to leverage next year's OntologySummit.

Ideas and suggestions collected so far are available at: OntologySummit/Suggestions. Members of the community are encouraged to continuously and asynchronously provide further input via this wiki page and via the [ontology-summit] mailing list as well.

See developing details on the next Summit's homepage at: OntologySummit2016

Agenda

Brainstorm Session on the OntologySummit2016 Theme: Community Input & Planning

Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call
    • Objective: Identify a short list of themes from which the Ontology Summit 2016 Organizing Committee will make the final selection.
  • 2. Open discussion: explore the theme(s) and topics that the community would want to see covered in OntologySummit2016 - ALL (60 min.) ...
    • Ontology Learning
    • Challenges for Automated Reasoning with Ontologies
    • Ontology Integration and Interoperability
    • Ontology visualization
    • Coordinating Domain Ontology Development
    • ref. OntologySummit/Suggestions
  • 3 Identifying volunteers/champions and invite them to join us in the organizing committee
  • 4. Next Steps (10 min.)
    • Creation of Organizing Committee
    • Schedule the Pre-Launch session (early December?) at which we discuss the structure of Ontology Summit 2015

Proceedings

2015-10-01 GMT-08:00 [09:28] Michael Grüninger: Ontology Summit 2016 Brainstorm Session, October 1 2015 [09:29] anonymous morphed into Christopher Spottiswoode [09:33] Michael Grüninger: We will be using the Agenda and notes from the meeting page: http://ontolog-02.cim3.net/wiki/ConferenceCall_2015_10_01 [09:35] anonymous morphed into Anatoly Levenchuk [09:36] Michael Grüninger: 2006: Upper Ontologies 2007: Ontology, Taxonomy, Folksonomy: Understanding the Distinctions 2008: Toward An Open Ontology Repository 2009: Toward Ontology-based Standards 2010: Creating the Ontologists of the Future 2011: Making the Case for Ontology 2012: Ontology for Big Systems 2013: Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle 2014: Big Data and Semantic Web Meet Applied Ontology [09:42] Anatoly Levenchuk: Sorry, I can be present only up to 20:00 MSK (have my own webinar since then). But I have my vote to Ontology Learning. Or Ontology vs Epistemology (learning)! [09:42] Amanda Vizedom: Topics that have come up / been suggested (some at last year's Ontology Summit Symposium) include: (1H5) Ontology Learning Challenges for Automated Reasoning with Ontologies (1H5B) Ontology Integration and Interoperability (1H5C) Ontology visualization (1H5D) Coordinating Domain Ontology Development (1H5E) [09:42] Anatoly Levenchuk: Hybrid Reasoning is the same topic. [09:43] Amanda Vizedom: (sorry about purple number inclusion, there. copy+paste from wiki) [09:44] Anatoly Levenchuk: May be 'Ontology and Learning' to cover not only Ontology learning but Hybrid reasoning too. [09:44] Mark Underwood: Sort of a meta-question - What factors should be considering in choosing? E.g., reuse of previous session materials, improved outreach, new topic area, buzz? [09:46] tjkopena: At this year's summit there was a good bit of discussion about a different structure for this year, more project focused with a couple work areas/topics. Is that not under discussion, or would it potentially be folded under an overarching topic? [09:48] Amanda Vizedom: One criterion: We want to advance the field of ontology in some way. This could mean technical advancement, advancement of practices, collaboration on new understanding, and/or advancement of adoption of ontologies and related technologies. [09:49] anonymous morphed into Bobbin Teegarden [09:50] tjkopena: I would also say that a slight bent on the external/internal view is that most of the topics in the past, and all those proposed for next year, are meta topics---how to use ontologies, build, reason with, etc.. Really only this year on IoT has been focused on an application and a specific use area. I think app-oriented topics about how to actually do things with ontologies are critical to reaching a broader audience, as well as driving actual use. Healthcare, finance, cybersecurity, defense, advertising, etc., would all seem like natural significant draws for a larger crowd where there is a lot of ontology interest and applications already, but could stand some push into the mainstream. [09:53] tjkopena: Engineering design of course another area. Biology & medicine another, though fairly well saturated with prominent ontology work so maybe not in need of more attention. [09:53] Mark Underwood: +1 to Joe's outreach aspect as one of the "rating" factors [09:54] Anatoly Levenchuk: Manual ontology building and mapping is prohibitory burdensome for many of applications. Therefore automatisation of it (learning) is a key topic. Since deep learning and word embeddings are available, we can try automate ontology creation and mapping. After this we can return to ontology usage in may industries. [09:55] Anatoly Levenchuk: in many indusries. [09:56] Mark Underwood: I also follow IDESG from time to time; in the Sec and Priv area. See idecosystem.org [09:56] Todd Schneider: What about a challenge project to learn/create a domain ontology from a prescribed corpus of (textual) material? [09:56] Mark Underwood: Ontologies don't seem to be mainstream in the webinars I've participated in [09:56] tjkopena: Construction by any means is critical but basically talked about to death, largely divorced from actual use and therefore all too often irrelevant to developers that actually just want their systems to do something and would use ontologies if they saw an advantage but don't currently see how it applies and could be done easily. That approach of solving construction, *then* focusing on apps, seems too top-down and not organic enough to really be compelling. [09:58] Mark Underwood: lol - for that matter, coding is boring [10:00] Todd Schneider: What about applying ontologies to creation of laws? [10:00] anonymous morphed into Frank Olken [10:01] Leo Obrst: Some partial exceptions of past Ontology Summits to tjopena's comments: ontology and standards, ontology and big systems, with NIST and others strongly supporting the former, and for the latter, the systems engineering community (along with software engineering). [10:01] Michael Grüninger: Analogous to the benchmark problems used in planning and scheduling competitions, we could propose a set of "domain benchmarks" (e.g. healthcare, finance) and have the Summit organized around how people can address the underlying problems within the domain benchmarks [10:01] tjkopena: To ToddS: Ontology applications in law & justice would be pretty interesting [10:02] Michael Grüninger: Another possibility is to select a specific domain (as last year we selected IoT) [10:02] Mark Underwood: Idea: Maybe collaboratively build a portal for use by community of interest? [10:04] Mike Bennett: +1 for application types - can link that to the broader questions of how to build domain ontologies, without the Summit being focused on one domain vertical. [10:04] Mark Underwood: +1 for discovery or compliance - broad applicability; i.e., design patterns if demonstrated could be adopted by domain specialists [10:05] Mike Bennett: Things ontologies can be for: [10:06] Mike Bennett: Integration; model driven development, querying, virtualizing conventional data stores (using R2RML) to provide queryable ontology for reporting; reasoning based applications. [10:07] Mike Bennett: Extraction from unstructured text corpora [10:07] Todd Schneider: What about a project for crowd sourcing ontology development, but with a feedback loop that would explain why a 'suggestion' was not ontologically sound? [10:07] Mike Bennett: Intelligent agents [10:07] Mike Bennett: Business descriptions of applications: [10:08] Todd Schneider: Amanda, legal discovery? [10:08] Amanda Vizedom: My suggestion: rather than a domain area (as in vertical, industry, or field of study), I'd like to see a focus on some application type. Examples include data discovery, semantic search & retrieval, data integration/fusion... [10:08] Mike Bennett: Cost saving in integration; regulatory compliance and reporting; analysis of reported data [10:08] Mike Bennett: Internet of Things [10:08] Amanda Vizedom: @Todd [13:08] that's certainly one kind [10:09] Christopher Spottiswoode: A "long shot" for the coming Summit, but certainly (IMHO, though not so humble) a longer-term future for ontology and moving it into the mainstream: reframing the work of the IDESG (Identity Ecosystem Steering Group) and the NSTIC (the White House's National Strategy for Trusted Identities in Cyberspace) to have ontologies at the center of it. Those bodies are just about to launch their IDEF 1.0 (Identity Ecosystem Framework version 1.0) but are already talking seriously about IDEF 2.0. My plan is to slot in with that in a serious way. It is after all most reasonable for ontologies to frame identities and help structure matters such as access security (Think ABAC - Attribute-Based Access Control), privacy or anonymity. If anyone is interested in becoming part of this work, do please contact me at cms@metaset.co.za . [10:10] Todd Schneider: An ontology for software development? [10:10] tjkopena: You could also make those tracks domain based. Integration in... Healthcare; Cybersecurity; etc. [10:11] Michael Grüninger: If integration is the theme, we could identify specific problems such as data fusion, database integration, software interoperability as Tracks [10:12] Michael Grüninger: Contributions to the Tracks would need to explicitly identify a specific domain in which the work is being applied [10:15] Frank Olken: I like the idea of a theme of information integration. This is an important rationale for NSF interest in ontologies, etc. [10:15] Christopher Spottiswoode: @ToddScheider: "ontology for software development" is one of the central themes in that NSTIC-related story. And of course component reuse and application interoperability should emerge naturally from a properly-structured (read ontology-based) approach. [10:16] tjkopena: Some of this depends on the goal of the summit/organizers. If the intent is to bring in more people and evangelize actual use, the summit framing has to clearly speak to their problem. E.g., "data discovery" is going to be recognized as relevant to their interests by many fewer people than "locate and organize new drug datasheets," to pick a problem from pharmaceuticals/healthcare that I've recently talked with someone about. A summit targeted at a domain seems likely to have a lot more general appeal and draw---"Ontology Integration" vs "Ontologies in Healthcare." That's particularly important if a key goal is motivating broader use. [10:17] Leo Obrst: Healthcare and medical informatics is a strong area for ontology/vocabulary/data integration/mapping. And some folks are ontology-aware. [10:20] Todd Schneider: One deliverable should be a reviewed ontology. [10:22] Michael Grüninger: If we go with a specific domain (e.g. healthcare, finance) as the theme, then technical tracks focus on ontology evaluation, design, integration etc [10:22] Michael Grüninger: as applied to the specific problem [10:22] Mike Bennett: Picking one domain means we can expose a range of uses of ontologies within that domain e.g. reasoning, integration, etc. [10:22] Todd Schneider: If possible, I'd prefer to move away from the 'presentation' basis for the ontology summits. [10:22] anonymous morphed into Gary Berg-Cross [10:23] Mike Bennett: Also demonstrate the lift from ontology compared to vocabularies, data dictionaries, terminologies and the like. [10:26] Mike Bennett: Other possible domains: mil intelligence (STIIDS); Finance. [10:26] Frank Olken: There is already a conference, ICBO, International Conference on Biomedical Ontologies organized by Barry Smith. [10:27] tjkopena: Agree w/ Mike. Healthcare is distinct from bio. [10:27] tjkopena: You definitely can. [10:28] tjkopena: Electronic medical records, drug datasheets, insurance policies, etc., are all very different from bio. [10:28] Gary Berg-Cross: How about the topic of "Training in Ontology" which would appeal to people wanting to get into the subject? [10:29] tjkopena: Lessons learned, technologies, ontologies, etc., from healthcare also have a lot of good crossover to other businesses. [10:29] Leo Obrst: Yes, we are developing a clinical care ontology for VA, for an eventual semantic electronic health record. [10:29] Bobbin Teegarden: The broader subject, like 'Ontology Integration' -- is more interesting to a broader audience, and can focus in subtopics if desired. I think the richness of the past summits has come from a great mix from across industries and practitioners, from conceptual to implementation examples. The presentation format is much better than any other, IMHO; and gives us a wealth of topical correlations for the summaries, across all the presentations. [10:30] Michael Grüninger: Manufacturing is another application domain area [10:30] Mike Bennett: Manufacturing / Automotive; Oil and gas etc. [10:32] tjkopena: The audience is broader with a broader topic, but much less compelling deep into particular areas. Again, it's about goals and strategy toward those goals. If the goal is bringing together ontology researchers, then a broad topic maybe makes more sense. If the goal is engendering wider use, focusing on a specific domain seems more compelling to non-ontology researchers, and therefore perhaps a better strategy. [10:35] Terry Longstreth: What can the various disciplines learn from each other: can Bio ontologies inform manufacturing? can publication ontologies inform data fusion problems? [10:35] Mike Bennett: That kind of cross-pollination makes a lot of sense and would be a valuable output from the Summit as a kind of think-tank / source of knowledge in this space. [10:38] Todd Schneider: Yes, attracting a larger sphere of people has always been a goal of the ontology summit. [10:41] Mike Bennett: Attracting a larger sphere of people should be achievable by describing the business problem, not the technical solution, in our language. But how? We should be able to describe each of the technical things we talk about, in terms of business benefits / ROI [10:41] Mark Underwood: Recap Joe's thread - "Domain focus under an umbrella" [10:42] Todd Schneider: Have to go, and continue integrating ontologies in applications. [10:42] Christopher Spottiswoode: An NSTIC-related identity theme is at the same time thoroughly theoretical, horizontally-applicable, but also central to social media, and what is a broader vertical than that? It's also a great source of integration problems/opportunities. [10:42] Michael Grüninger: tjkopena: Have Integration as a theme, and identify domain tracks (e.g. Healthcare, Manufacturing) [10:42] Amanda Vizedom: A take-away from all of these considerations is that whatever topic we choose, success will require that we do a good job of (a) making sure we focus enough that we can communicate the topic to a broad audience (b) publicizing the topic and subtopics within it, and (c) crafting the summit structure that maintains focus and interest... At *least*. [10:42] Mark Underwood: RE Mike's comment, a group we don't really connect with is business intelligence, oddly, even though they are stewards of house metadata repo's [10:43] tjkopena: Cybersecurity is another hot topic that is relevant [10:43] Gary Berg-Cross: Another domain where things like info integration is under consideration is in the Earth Sciences (NSF Earth Cube for example). [10:44] Bobbin Teegarden: Does Ontology Integration include a discussion of how ontologies and ontology technology fits into larger system architecture? [10:44] Mike Bennett: @Bobbin +1 [10:45] Terry Longstreth: @Bobbin - there were discussions of that in the 2012 and 2013 summits [10:45] Amanda Vizedom: @Bobbin [13:44] - do you mean "ontology integration" or "ontology-based integration"? [10:45] Mike Bennett: ^^ All the above [10:46] Bobbin Teegarden: @Amanda, I would think that ontology integration includes ontology-based integration (larger, smaller ;0). [10:46] Amanda Vizedom: I think we should *avoid* "ontology integration" if we want a broader community involved; that's really a topic that would only interest ontology workers. [10:46] Terry Longstreth: I think each domain theme should include a responsibility to identify informing/informed by domains [10:47] tjkopena: I would support a summit on Integration or Data Discovery as an overall umbrella, that had ~4 domain-specific tracks. [10:47] tjkopena: Agree on Amanda's point on oi vs obi [10:47] Gary Berg-Cross: Agree with Amanda on avoiding Ont Int. [10:48] Frank Olken: Yes. [10:48] Christopher Spottiswoode: Too much ontology integration is Procrustean. A challenge: preventing that phenomenon. [10:49] Bobbin Teegarden: My pet was Ontology Visualization (we do such a poor job), and I think the integration umbrella can include that. [10:50] Amanda Vizedom: @Christopher [13:48] - I prefer anti-Procrustean ontology integration, myself. ;-) [10:50] Terry Longstreth: Highlight uses of ontologies beyond their originally intended domains [10:50] Amanda Vizedom: +1 Terry [13:50] [10:50] Gary Berg-Cross: People often discuss this topic under Semantic Interoperability - a stronger type of data exchange that can use knowledge of the meaning of the data content, usage constraints, and the underlying assumptions. [10:51] Mike Bennett: @Gary hh:50 that might be a better English string with which to identify a Summit on integration. [10:51] Bobbin Teegarden: @Steve So does the integration theme include integrating ontologies in learning systems? [10:52] Gary Berg-Cross: Steve, if we don't have just tracks by domain, you could have one on the role of machine learning to help with the Integration problem, such as bridging different vocabularies. [10:53] Bobbin Teegarden: So one track could be Integrating Ontologies in Cognitive Computing/Learning Systems... [10:53] Mark Underwood: ML does have excellent continuity with Big Data and IoT [10:53] Bobbin Teegarden: Cognitive Ontologies? [10:54] Steve Ray: The only other idea I was thinking about was combining the field of "Machine Learning" as it is understood today, with the application of semantics/ontology. [10:54] Amanda Vizedom: +1 Mark [13:52] (and with data discovery, too) [10:56] Mark Underwood: Integration for ML apps, with domain-specific tracks? [10:57] Mike Bennett: If we use the string "Semantic interoperability" as a business facing way of talking about integration, we could draw in a lot of variables and techniques? [10:57] Christopher Spottiswoode: Michael, that's good thinking-aloud... [10:58] Mark Underwood: Joe - does that sound too echo chamber to you? [10:59] Bobbin Teegarden: Ontology integration could probably attract system architects, also. [10:59] tjkopena: I think my biggest concern is not highlighting the domain-specific tracks enough [10:59] tjkopena: Non-specific tracks make some sense, but dilute the concreteness [11:00] Bobbin Teegarden: Do we advertise to groups like IASA and IEEE? [11:01] Michael Grüninger: Strawman Proposal: Select Integration as the Ontology Summit 2016 them [11:01] Steve Ray: @tjkopena: We could market using domain-specific language, saying it is part of the summit on .... So, we could generate a suite of different marketing messages. [11:02] Mark Underwood: Bobbin - I tried to promote on the IEEE IoT group and didn't get much traction for the effort [11:02] Bobbin Teegarden: We could have sessions like Ontology INtegration: Making the ontology smart/cognitive (machine learning etc), and Ontology INtegration: Making the ontology (and environment) visible ... [11:03] Bobbin Teegarden: @Mark maybe a systems engineering group at IEEE would work? And how about INCOSE? [11:03] Leo Obrst: Got to go. [11:03] Amanda Vizedom: Agree that targeted/crafted publicity would likely be more effective. [11:03] Mark Underwood: +1 [11:03] Amanda Vizedom: We also have room for improvement in the timing of our announcements. [11:04] tjkopena: My apologies, I have to join another call [11:04] Michael Grüninger: Next session: November 12, at which the final decision will be made [11:04] Mike Bennett: Next session Nov 12 (watch out for Ontolog Forum Nov 5 and 19, and Oct 22) [11:09] Christopher Spottiswoode: Thanks Michael, that all sounds good! [11:09] Gary Berg-Cross: Keith Marzullo, who is the new nco director Have to go. [11:09] List of attendees: Amanda Vizedom, Anatoly Levenchuk, Bobbin Teegarden, Christopher Spottiswoode, Frank Olken, Gary Berg-Cross, Leo Obrst, Mark Underwood, Michael Grüninger, Mike Bennett, Steve Ray, Terry Longstreth, Todd Schneider, anonymous, tjkopena

Audio Recording


For the record ...

How To Join (while the session is in progress)



Additional Resources