IAOA SWAO SIG-confcall n 19

OntologySummit2015 : Post-Mortem - Thu 2015-05-28

• Summit Theme: OntologySummit2015: Internet of Things: Toward Smart Networked Systems and Societies

• Session Topic: OntologySummit2015 Post-Mortem

• Session Co-chairs: MarkUnderwood and MichaelGruninger

Program:

• Abstract
• Agenda
• Resources
  • Michael Grüninger
  • Audio Recording

Abstract

The Ontology Summit 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.

We are witnessing a new revolution in computing and communication. The Internet, which has spanned several networks in a wide variety of domains, is having a significant impact on every aspect of our lives. The next generation of networks will utilize a wide variety of resources with significant sensing capabilities. Such networks will extend beyond physically linked computers to include multimodal information from biological, cognitive, semantic, and social networks. This paradigm shift will involve symbiotic networks of people, intelligent devices, and mobile personal computing and communication devices (mPCDs), which will form net-centric societies or smart networked systems and societies (SNSS). mPCDs are already equipped with a myriad of sensors, with regular updates of additional sensing capabilities. Additionally, we are witnessing the emergence of "intelligent devices," such as smart meters, smart cars, etc., with considerable sensing and networking capabilities. Hence, these devices -- and the network -- will be constantly sensing, monitoring, and interpreting the environment -- this is sometimes referred to as the Internet of Things. And as local and wide area networks became almost secondary to the WWW (World-Wide Web), users and their usage patterns will become increasingly visible. This will have significant implications for both the market for advanced computing and communication infrastructure and the future markets for nearly 4.5 billion people -- that net-centric societies will create.

Well-designed and constructed net-centric societies will result in better quality of life, reduced threat from external sources, and improved commerce. For example, assume a scenario where people at various locations suffer from flu-like symptoms. In a net-centric society, mPCDs will send vital signs and other associated information to appropriate laboratories and medical centers. These centers will analyze the information, including searching the Internet for potential solutions, and will aid in determining possible causes for this phenomenon. Based on the diagnosis, people will be directed to the nearest clinic for treatment. Here we have several types of information flowing through the net: data from mPCDs; location information; images; video; audio; etc.

Ontologies will play a significant role in the realization of SNSS. For example, a considerable amount of data passes through the network and should be converted into higher abstractions that can be used in appropriate reasoning. This requires the development of standard terminologies which capture objects and events. Creating and testing such terminologies will aid in effective recognition and reaction in a network-centric situation awareness environment. This would involve identifying a methodology for development of terminologies for multimodal data (or ontologies), developing appropriate ontologies, developing testing methods for these ontologies, demonstrating interoperability for selected domains (e.g., healthcare, situational awareness), and using these ontologies in decision making.

In today's session, we will take inventory of the transpired in OntologySummit2015. We will discuss the problems that we encountered (both technical and logistical) and identify ways of improving the Summit. We will also discuss potential topics for next year's Summit.

Agenda

• 1. Summary of Ontology Summit 2015 (Summit Co-Chairs)

• 2. Summary of the Symposium (Symposium Co-Chair)

• 3. Open Discussion
  • What went well?
  • What can be improved?
  • Follow-up activities

• 4. Brainstorming on future Ontology Summit themes

Proceedings

[12:30] Michael Grüninger: Welcome to the Ontology Summit 2015 Postmortem session

[12:31] Michael Grüninger: Agenda:

• Summary of Ontology Summit 2015 (Summit Co-Chairs)
• Summary of the Symposium (Symposium Co-Chair)
• Open Discussion
  • What went well?
  • What can be improved?
  • Follow-up activities
• Brainstorming on future Ontology Summit themes

[12:40] Mark Underwood: John, do you have any artifacts on alarm fatigue? I am proposing some work in pharmacy related to that.

[12:40] JohnHMorris: Hello

[12:41] JohnHMorris: OK let me see . . .

[12:41] Mark Underwood: Wasn't sure - back quote might have been some kind of signal

[12:41] Jack Hodges: url for slides?

[12:42] PaulHoule: who was it that was talking about ISO Common Logic?

[12:42] JohnHMorris: It was Michael G. I believe

[12:43] Mark Underwood: Paul that was Michael G

[12:43] Michael Grüninger: For slides see http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2015/2015-05-28_Postmortem/Postmortem_MichaelGruninger_2015-05-28.pdf

[12:46] Mike Bennett: I have to confess on Slide 3 / IoT that I had a connection in IoT but did not manage to link them up to the Summit when I intended to. The interest is still there.

[12:46] Steve Ray: I agree about the IoT community lack of engagement

[12:48] Mark Underwood: Subtext: Not all chairs would be willing to devote that level of effort both chairing, editing & writing original content

[12:53] Mark Underwood: As discussed: inward vs. outward-looking topics

[12:54] Jack Hodges: This notion of lack of engagement shouldn't be construed as a lack of interest. I for one am buried in IoT work but just cannot break away for summit meetings.

[12:55] Mark Underwood: Jack: Yes, inference-making about the level of engagement is not straightforward

[12:58] Steve Ray: @Jack: From my perspective, the IoT community is very busy on application development, and even on standards, but I have yet to hear mention of ontology in an IoT gathering. Still a challenge.

[13:00] Jack Hodges: I suppose it depends on your definition of IoT gathering. The data-centric and big data folks I would agree with that...

[13:01] Michael Grüninger: Open Discussion: What went well?

[13:01] Michael Grüninger: Quality and relevance of the virtual sessions

[13:02] Jack Hodges: I thought that the depth and breadth of presentations was great. Very informative.

[13:03] Michael Grüninger: Do we want to have more sessions to allow better scheduling?

[13:03] Michael Grüninger: How can we support more flexible scheduling?

[13:03] JohnHMorris: I thought the virtual were very good in terms of practice and theory, and the parallel chat and presentation modes provided a good opportunity to engage.

[13:03] Michael Grüninger: More lead time before the sessions start

[13:04] Jack Hodges: Sometimes it is awkward juggling the views for slides, chat, and audio. Is there a 'clean' way to integrate them or is this format historical?

[13:04] Mark Underwood: E.g., start in December to planning horizon

[13:04] Michael Grüninger: Perhaps have the Launch session in December, with the presentations beginning in January

[13:07] Michael Grüninger: Leo: timing of the Symposium was bad (e.g. during Cherry Blossom Festival, conflicts with other events)

[13:07] JohnHMorris: Congratulations to everyone; my apologies I have to depart. I look to the Ontology Summit to continue the IoT effort -- there's a bit need. Although the IoT community are skeptical of course. But the "variety" and richness of the automatable world needs ontology to manage complexity. When you are automated a thousand boilers in public buildings, you will find dozens or even hundreds of boiler models. Only ontology provides the solid basis for an IoT program for managing boiler service. So, a big success, and keep going . . .

[13:11] Steve Ray: I don't think it's an either/or issue between social networks, and prestige and recognition. I do agree that building in some sort of recognition would be a valuable addition in general.

[13:12] Mark Underwood: Agree, would not want to give up our current invitation protocols

[13:13] Torsten Hahmann: We could always try a hybrid model: continue the current invitation model but reserve a few spots for presentations solicited through an open call

[13:13] Mark Underwood: It was also true in my session - I had reached out to other stds folks in IoT, but it was a slog to get to an agreeable target

[13:13] Mark Underwood: +1 hybridize

[13:15] Leo Obrst: Early notification could really assist with participation of external communities, since they would know way in advance what was coming up, and an invitation to join the planning.

[13:15] Steve Ray: For better dissemination, I suggest we post our slide decks on SlideShare

[13:15] Mike Bennett: +1 for SlideShare

[13:16] Mark Underwood: SlideShare is very well spidered for Google Search- I think I used it for one of mine, not sure

[13:16] Michael Grüninger: What can be improved?

[13:16] Mark Underwood: Another reason to clear the permissions issue, since some speakers plaster their decks w/ proprietary notices

[13:17] Michael Grüninger: Organization, Logistics, Content ...

[13:17] Mike Bennett: I think we are making a kind of transition from us having our own "social" networks in the old sense of the word, to figuring out how to make more formal use of Social Networks in the current landscape.

[13:17] Michael Grüninger: Shared screen support for presentations

[13:17] Torsten Hahmann: I like the SlideShare idea, but what is the copyright once slides are posted there? Do they authors retain copyright?

[13:18] Steve Ray: @Torsten: I believe we have already released copyright on our presentations, haven't we?

[13:18] Mark Underwood: +1 for prestige-enhancing strategies

[13:19] Torsten Hahmann: @Steve: yes, I think so. But we wouldn't want SlideShare to suddenly assume copyright.

[13:19] Mark Underwood: Torsten - yes, Peter reiterates this, but we just need to remind the authors in a systematic way (some of us, ahem, tend to clone a slide here and there)

[13:20] Ram Sriram: Last year I presented the summary of the 2014 Ontolog Summit Symposium at the IEEE Big Data Conference (you can view that at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv5Hiak3-g0). May be we can do the same again this year.

[13:20] Steve Ray: One idea for shared screens: perhaps we could get a donation from some professional grade service, as a community service (also good advertising for them).

[13:20] Mark Underwood: Michael reminds us there was a lot of lateness on the F2F meeting decks

[13:21] Michael Grüninger: Torsten: less European participation this year?

[13:23] Michael Grüninger: Should we move the sessions to 1130 Eastern Time to help with European schedules?

[13:23] Jack Hodges: even earlier than 8:30 would be ok for me

[13:24] Michael Grüninger: Steve Ray: should we move to other days of the week (e.g. Monday)?

[13:25] Mark Underwood: Suggest: Socialization to other groups; benefits obvious; concerns

[13:25] Ravi Sharma: Mondays many people have weekly meetings.

[13:27] Steve Ray: +2 on Mark's comment about baseline awareness of ontology issues.

[13:27] Ram Sriram: I am logging off

[13:27] Mark Underwood: Take care, Ram

[13:27] Ravi Sharma: thanks ram

[13:28] Ravi Sharma: Thanks Ram

[13:28] Jack Hodges: Bye Ram

[13:29] Mark Underwood: The F2F support we get from Nitrd is very hard to improve on

[13:29] Steve Ray: @Michael: Which tool are you talking about?

[13:29] Michael Grüninger: We need to make Team M more active, with clear responsibilities and backup roles

[13:29] Mark Underwood: I find that this Soaphub thing freezes up - some sort of brute force throttle thing

[13:30] Mike Bennett: I think we should stick with Thursdays (possibly earlier time) since people are accustomed to it, and there is a current risk of people thinking we have gone away.

[13:30] Mark Underwood: Sue suggests 30 min session

[13:30] Steve Ray: Agree with shorter presentations.

[13:31] Torsten Hahmann: Also agree with shorter sessions - some went over 90min this time around.

[13:31] Michael Grüninger: Judith: Shorter presentations, with stricter enforcement of time constraints

[13:31] Mark Underwood: Sorry Judith!

[13:31] Ravi Sharma: 30 minutes is fine but please increase question answers

[13:31] Mark Underwood: Correction: Judith not Sue

[13:32] Michael Grüninger: more time for discussions after presentations

[13:32] Michael Grüninger: we need to inform the speakers of the time constraints

[13:34] Bobbin Teegarden: I just hopped in to add two requests for the subject of the Summit next year:

• Ontology visualization (including visualization of morphing ontologies, IoT like);
• Executable ontologies, adding process (e.g. executable IRIs?) into ontologies.

Sorry, have to go back to another meeting...

[13:34] Mark Underwood: Stu poses question of what changes, improvements types of messaging should/could be considered

[13:35] Ravi Sharma: Can we also allow questions after each speaker as we sometimes loose track of topic if multiple topics and speakers speak and Qs are lumped at the end?

[13:35] PaulHoule: the situation is so bad we almost need a whole new vocabulary when it comes to ontology -- people in the RDF community have been driven crazy by the popular interest in Neo4J which is actually a pretty awful product

[13:35] PaulHoule: today i talk about taxonomy -> ontology -> theory in the sense that a theory is able to actually make decisions about a domain

[13:36] PaulHoule: another issue is that OWL is not a basis for reasoning in general, it can't do simple things like convert temperature from centigrade to fahrenheit

[13:36] Steve Ray: We need to get the message about "What problem is solved using ontology?"

[13:37] Jack Hodges: Onto-FAQ 2016!

[13:37] Ravi Sharma: Is there a page or web site where we are putting post-summit work or info about work.

[13:37] Mark Underwood: Both subjects are worthwhile, but my remark was about socializing the group and the year's symposium

[13:39] Steve Ray: +1 on an FAQ page.

[13:39] Ravi Sharma: thanks Steve and Mike

[13:39] Torsten Hahmann: Sorry, I have to leave now. Good and productive discussion though!

[13:40] Michael Grüninger: @Ravi: we need to create a page on the Summit wiki for ongoing work

[13:40] Mark Underwood: Thx Torsten

[13:41] Michael Grüninger: Follow-up sessions in Ontolog Forum in September?

[13:41] Mark Underwood: +1 if we can manage another meeting or two; can't hurt either facets of the socialization challenges

[13:42] Michael Grüninger: Brainstorming on future Ontology Summit themes

[13:42] Ravi Sharma: Also Ontolog-Forum and Summit appear to be loosely connected! we need and also I agree that we need more inter communication among multiple forums to have mutual synergy and awareness!

[13:43] Steve Ray: Might be helpful for people to look at http://ontolog-02.cim3.net/w/index.php?title=OntologySummit&oldid=15705#hid1B to see what the past topics have been.

[13:43] Mark Underwood: FYI Baseline for GoToMeeting up to 100 participants is 69/mo or 56/mo billed annually

[13:44] Jack Hodges: I would be very interested in a summit (has it been done already) on integrating domain ontologies (like what was done with SSN at a higher level). This would include matching, mapping, data migration, etc.

[13:45] Mark Underwood: Judith: Ontologies & Alternative Approaches to Them

[13:45] Ravi Sharma: Ontology and Big Data integration and tools?

[13:45] Jack Hodges: Like code?

[13:46] Jack Hodges: That kind of goes back to the notion of Onto-FAQ. We should have answers to these questions out there all the time.

[13:46] PaulHoule: if a system is build "on code" or "the old fashioned way" there IS an ontology behind it, but that is spread out in people's heads and throughout lots of codes...

[13:47] Jack Hodges: Sort of, but it is in one person's head and not shared, so very brittle. But this isn't news to anyone here.

[13:47] PaulHoule: from the viewpoint of a technology user integrating stuff you can build an ontology that models the properties of a system which is not ontology-based

[13:48] Mark Underwood: Ontologies for Domain-Specific Work (or some variant)

[13:48] Ravi Sharma: Can Ontology help reduce efforts in processing big-data (e.g. SPARQL)?

[13:48] PaulHoule: problems solved: (1) has a whole bunches of devices from different vendors and needs them to work together; (2) doesn't "know how to code" but wants the blinds to close when the sun shines in and needs a simple way to express that

[13:49] Mark Underwood: TODO An FAQ

[13:50] Steve Ray: Here's just a thought: Consider flipping the emphasis to be centered on a series of Hackathons on carefully considered challenge problems.

[13:51] Ravi Sharma: @Mike and @Leo - we need more continuity during the year, may be less frequent in summers, but not only focus on the summit as single event for our work, keep us informed on other interesting topics!

[13:51] Leo Obrst: We had Ontology Summit 2011: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011, "Making the Case for Ontology", which is similar to some suggestions made.

[13:52] Mark Underwood: Another summit topic suggestion: Social Networks and Ontologies (related to Ram's windmill-tilting for IoT)

[13:53] PaulHoule: so far as big data, the elephant is the room is that 80% of the effort in a *commercially viable* project goes into data cleaning and data integration that data scientists, business people and such don't want to do. all the vendors are piling on to the problem of the other 20% of the work, but even if you made the the work people want to do go away you can at best reduce cost by 20%. If you can get a 75% cut in data prep time, cost savings are better than anything that could be done by every joe dick and harry who has an analytic database or batch or stream processing solution could ever give

[14:00] Mark Underwood: Ontologies for WordPress - an out-there thought

[14:00] PaulHoule: hackathons are part of the problem instead of part of the solution -- somebody has to do the 80% of the work to make a minimum viable product rather than 20% that makes a demo that impresses people who went a whole weekend without sleep

[14:03] Jack Hodges: Thanks all!

Conference Call Details

• Date: Thursday, 28-May-2015
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