Ontolog Members

More information is available at www.topicmapping.com.

My name is Jan Algermissen, I am working as an independent consultant for information organization and search technology. My primary focus is on topic maps and recently their combination with RESTful web services.

I think that topic maps are a promising technology to describe web services, especially for the use of integrating cross plattform business applications. I want to exploit and contribute to the 'ontological layer' that is needed for such an integration.

• Topic maps
• REST web services
• Information retrieval
• Text mining
• Thesaurus/ontology construction and integration
• Programming

I'm a consultant / system designer working in Portland, Oregon, specializing in modeling and database design. I spend a lot of time trying to figure out how to raise the awareness of the importance of language within businesses. I think that one of the main reasons IT has been a disappointment to businesses over the last 40 years is because far too many folks are focused on TECHNOLOGY (hence the name IT) and failing to realize that systems are really all about language. Until we make strides promoting more universal language, we're going to continue to be disappointed by what we get out of our systems.

Also, it seems like systems keep modeling variations of the same concepts over and over again. Let's cut out all of this rework and develop universal models that are commonly accepted and used.

Those are my interests and why the forum caught my eye. I'm not too sure what I have to offer, but I thought I'd come along and observe and learn and try to stay up to date with where this kind of thing is heading. Who knows? Even if we can never get people to understand each other 100%, maybe machines will be able to speak semantically pure and therefore they can be our salvation-- by cutting fallable humans (and their misunderstandings) out of the information loop! :)

• Learn
• Keep up to date with development of a Universal information model

• Standard ontology
• Developing ways for humans to gain equivalent understandings of terms. We have vague understandings for the most part, yet we still manage to communicate fairly well. The miscommunications still prevalent, though, are killing system effectiveness.

• Common understanding of language
• Universal Business Ontology

You can find more about my background at www.sgml.u-net.com/mtb.htmland find details of my research interests at www.sgml.u-net.com/home.html

Hi, I'm Martin Bryan. I was one of the editors of the ISO 13250 Topic Map standard, and have been involved in promoting the use of multilingual e-business ontologies within CEN. I currently spend most of my time tracking the development of Information Society standardization projects for the European Union as part of the IST Diffuse project.

My interest in participating in Ontolog is to ensure that proper consideration is taken of the problems with describing ontologies both multilingually and "naturally". In both these cases terms have multiple meanings, meanings overlap and conflict. Problems with defining things using terms such as "but not" or "within domain x" or "in Spain" are often overlooked, yet these terms are vital in understanding why people from different cultures have misunderstandings despite the best will in the world to cooperate.

Scoping and assigning roles to associations are key techniques for differentiating between the use of words in specific contexts that I have been exploring.

Another key interest is how to automatically identify the contexts that apply where terms have been used with specific meanings within electronic resources.

Among the areas of discussion I would like to see encouraged are:

• The linking of resources to multiple ontologies
• Identifying relationships between ontologies
• Defining the area of overlap of multilingual terms

• Ph.D. (Chemistry) 1971
• Biochemical and microbiological research at Merck & Co. 1967-1993
• Ontologist at VerticalNet 2000-2001
• Involved in building ontologies since 1992, primarily working independently.

To participate in construction of a reference upper ontology that could serve as the logical defining vocabulary for any domain or specific application -- to promote efficient re-use of research results and application interoperabilty.

My ongoing interest is in the development of natural language understanding systems. I believe that the development of an ontology that can serve to define the concepts in a computational lexicon is a necessary preliminary to the problem of achieving human-level language understanding. Developing such an ontology that is in practice widely used is in consequence a necessary preliminary to the efficient conduct of such research by promoting re-use of results among multiple research groups.

I believe that the development of a widely-used upper ontology is likely to require substantial funding, and I am now exploring with others the best mechanism to obtain funding for such a project.

There has been ample discussion of formats for ontology description in other fora; I hope that any discussion of formats will not be redundant with those discussions. What I think would be valuable at this point are:

1. Accumulation of a set of examples where ontologies have been used in practical applications, with some evaluation that could allow an estimate of how much money was saved by the use of the ontology as compared with alternative resources for data storage (e .g. a traditional database). This could provide the evidence of benefit necessary to convince potential users to adopt ontologies, and potential funders to allot more money for research.

2. Maintaining a list of applications that use ontologies, are available to the public, and could serve as test programs to evaluate alternative ontological theories.

3. A discussion aimed at gaining some degree of agreement on the content of the top two levels (and some additional detail) of an upper ontology that could serve as the highest level of any application ontology. This would require that the participants in this discussion suggest those highest-level concepts that they feel are necessary to represent their domain concepts, and then discussion could focus on the question of whether those proposed upper-level concepts are logically contradictory, or could in fact be accommodated within a single logically consistent ontology (which may have some redundancy). Where logically contradictory representations appear necessary, the next question would be how to include such alternative theories while minimizing the differences with other ontologies. This would help us to learn how to maximize interoperability even when logically contradictory representations are desired by different developers.

   This could help answer an important question: whether the differences in existing ontologies are due to a true need for logically contradictory representations, or in fact arise as an accident of independent development and individual preferences of the developers. A related question is whether one representation may be preferred because it allows more efficient computation than another, rather than being uniquely necessary for representation. Having example applications that could be tested with different ontologies would help to resolve such questions.

   The IEEE-SUO project conducted related discussions, but ultimately did not focus on determining the maximum degree of agreement obtainable at the highest level. Such a narrower focus for this group would not be redundant with the IEEE discussion group effort. The structure of the SUMO (Adam Pease's Teknowledge ontology) and Open CYC would be initial candidates for discussion, but others need to be considered in order to determine whether a single set of upper concepts would not be incompatible with the many existing ontologies.

My bio is published in Diversity Careers Magazine Sept, 2000. (scroll down to the middle of the article to read my bio) www.diversitycareers.com/articles/pro/aug-sept-00/asianameng.htm

My responsibility at Boeing is in the area of XML Data Interchange which enables system interoperability and eBusiness.

I participate in several standards groups, in particular, I use the Boeing example to prove out the standards work and recommend improvements:

• ebXML, UNCEFACT - Prove ebXML architecture, define standard business process (BP), and core components (CC) supporting the business process. Register common BP & CC in public registry for reuse across industry. Boeing example documents is publicly available.
• OASIS-UBL - Define standard eBusiness documents by reusing ebXML core components. Have completed purchase order and purchase order response documents. Available from OASIS UBL site. An example from Boeing is in work, available in Nov. OAG (Open Application Group) - provides a set of XML documents. Boeing contributes to the OAG extensions white paper, it is available from OAG site.
• AIA (Aerospace Industry Association) - moving towards XML. Applying UDEF to solve the interoperability problem between different data element names from different standards.
• ATA (Air Transportation Association) - moving towards XML. ATA XML is used in the Boeing ebXML example above.

To achieve interoperability, there needs to be a "SINGLE" standard, however, XML language is so flexible, every standards group creates their own. Developers needs to continue mapping to yet to another "standard". Can we apply ontology to align the different yet similar data elements defined in these standards?

1. The relationship and difference in ontolog, top maps, semantic web.
2. For system interoperability, the focus is on data elements, what is the right approach?
3. For document centric application, the focus is content, what is the right approach?

Lots more info available at www.adam.cheyer.com

Adam Cheyer is Vice President of Engineering at Dejima, a provider of solutions for enterprises and service providers that need to arm mobile employees and end-users with direct access to critical data.

As the former Vice President of Engineering at VerticalNet, Mr. Cheyer was responsible for development organizations delivering products for consortium marketplaces, private markets, and extended enterprise solutions. Mr. Cheyer has 15 years experience in a variety of roles, including software engineer, research scientist, consultant, lecturer, and technical manager.

In the areas of distributed computing, intelligent agents, and advanced user interfaces, he is the author of more than forty-five peer-reviewed publications and nine patents. As Senior Scientist in the AI Center and co-director of the Computer Human Interaction Center at SRI International, he lead a multi-disciplinary team of researchers exploring web-services, distributed knowledge, and pervasive computing. While at Bull S.A., he was lead developer and architect for NOEMIE, a configuration expert system used to manage Bull's line of 30,000 hardware and software products worldwide.

Adam received a bachelor's degree with highest honors from Brandeis University and was awarded "outstanding master's student" from UCLA.

• Interested in mechanisms for enhancing productivity of distributed teams through methodologies and technologies such as knowledge management, ontologies, web services.
• Know and respect some of the founders of Ontolog group.

I am a lawyer practicing in Los Angeles primarily in e-commerce, software and data privacy. After spending some years as a lobbyist and then a few in law school, I started out as a finance lawyer working on complex deals for one of the largest Wall Street firms. Eventually I moved West and into e-contracting issues, becomnig first a partner in a Los Angeles corporate law firm and then general counsel to a small healthcare oriented EDI company.

I am a co-author of business process standards for the joint ebXML project and a member of its coodinating committee, a frequent apeaker and consultnt on HIPAA and EDI implementations, and current chairman of the American Bar Association's business law subcommittee on electronic commerce. I was not active in UBL (from which I gather this group emerged) but have generally followed its work.

1. Automated business requires transactors to constrain reality to a stated model; so inaccuracies or biases in the model can radically affect the user's outcomes. What cautions should users take? Who is responsible for failures of model isomorphism or model bias?
2. The potential for lightweight methods for augmenting data with object/relation metadata for KR and computability purposes.

SagebrushGroup.com/pdfres.htm

I've come into the world of ontological engineering from my work involving SGML, XML, and the design of markup languages for knowledge representation.

I started studying and applying ontological engineering principles to my consulting since 1998. At that time, I was working on an SGML initiative that identified classes of metadata (mostly involving products and technologies) that needed to be standardized at a corporate level.

It quickly became apparent that not only did basic terminology need standardization, but that common definitions needed to be negotiated and articulated so that the controlled vocabulary could be implemented consistently across a wide variety of organizations and systems.

• Advance understanding of mechanics and limits of ontological engineering
• Foster an open conversation that is independent of and not subordinated to any specific commercial, technology, or standards-development initiative
• Expand commercial opportunities

Formalization and representation:

• The relative strengths and weaknesses of different formalization models
• Optimal levels of formalization for different types of agents and processes
• The practical limits of formalization and engineering

The human and social dimensions of ontological engineering:

• The impact of ontologies (formalized or not) on such behaviors as awareness, data selection, interpretation, and decision making
• The mechanics of conceptualization and conceptual change that occurs within individuals
• The underlying dynamics that influence and constrain the integration of multiple individual ontologies within groups
• Strategies for maintaining adequate alignment in the face of conceptual change

• What is an ontology?
• Identifying usage patterns in natural language that point to new conceptualizations or shifting meanings for previously-defined terminology
• Case studies
• UBL issues and recommendations

www.daconta.net/Resume.html

My name is Michael Daconta and I am the Chief Architect for the DIA's Virtual Knowledge Base Project. I don't have a resume online but have quite a few online articles and a few interviews. I have authored or co-authored technical books on C, C++, Java, and XML.

We are creating an IC [Intelligence Community]ontology for the VKB that unambigously describes the subjects of resources in the knowledge base. My participation in this group is to share any ideas to help improve that ontology.

• Discover practical applications of Ontologies
• Learn best practices for building ontologies
• Share experience with other members

• Ontologies, taxonomies
• RDF Topic Maps
• RDF, Rules
• Java programming
• OWL Programming APIs (specifically Java)
• Integration with XML Documents

• RDF Syntax
• The suitability of RDF as the foundation for ontologies.
• The distinction between ontologies and topic maps (Topic Maps versus RDF/S OWL).
• Linking to Ontologies
• Similarity measures for linking free-text concepts to ontology classes.
• Best Ontology editor
• Future of Ontologies
• ...lots more...

www.marcdegraauw.com/aboutme.htm

I am Marc de Graauw , I work and live in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, as an independent IT consultant with over 14 years of experience.

I have studied Philosophy of Language and have been working in IT since 1988. I am an independent consultant since 1998 and specialize in B2B information exchange.

• Study interoperability between diverse ontologies
• Learn about other aspects of ontologies

My main area of interest is described in my recent XML.COM article (www.xml.com/pub/a/2002/08/21/topicmapb2b.html): interoperability between B2B vocabularies.

My focus here is on short-term working solutions for ontology interoperability, in particular enabling human business analysts to make ontology-to-ontology mappings in a quick, robust and structured manner.

I studied Philosphy of Language long ago, and so there is also a long-term general interest: the working of natural language and knowledge representation, both within and without computers.

On XML 2001 I presented a paper on the relevance of Frege and Wittgenstein for problems we encounter in contemporary B2B applications (www.marcdegraauw.com/files/whatisis.pdf). A relevant general area of interest is using computers to leverage human intelligence instead of using humans to leverage computer processing capabilities.

Interoperability between diverse ontologies, B2B ontologies, Topic Maps, KR general issues.

30 years in technical positions, from programmer to CTO. Currently Director of Product Management for TIE Holding, I am responsible for ensuring business objectives are appropriately interpreted as technical specifications for product development, and that developed product is described for and targeted to an audiance that can appreciate its application and value.

• Practical applications of ontology as it relates to electronic messaging
• Universal models that are commonly accepted and used

Automated messaging and intelligent adaptation (software)

I'm a Phd candidate at Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China.

Main focus of my research includes product knowledge representation and sharing using ontology,semantic web,description logic.

• ontology application in information system
• product knowledge representation

• semantic web & ontology in manufacturing information system
• Description Logic & applications
• Product knowledge representation

I have attached an HTML version of my resume, and you may find it online at seeker.dice.com/util/resultResume.epl?DOCKEY=3303892ef51b6122842b3db4 77c8f2dc

I have been involved in mission critical internet applications design and development for 7 years, for a wide variety of purposes and vertical markets: HealthCare, Insurance, Financial, Retail, E-Marketplaces, Manufacturing, Mobile Phone/Web, and others. My experience spans both Java and Microsoft based architectures, and XML / Web Services engineering. I am currently serving as Technical Advisor to the Electronic Enterprise Working Group of the Aerspace Industries Association, and as Co-Chair of the Metadata Harmonization Project for AIA.

• Metadata, Semantic and Ontological models, Web Services architectures
• linkage between disparate e-business standards

I'm open on this, I want to become more familiar with the current discussions the group is involved in.

A primary need is to identify mapping/linking schemes for data element concepts in cross-standard and cross-industry documents.

Clarify the meaning and usage of the word "Ontology" and "Ontological Behavior": An ontology is a shared vocabulary that describes a concept (in our case, a data element concept). Ontological behaviour is to provide a specification or representation of a data element concept(s).

I am a partner and co-founder of TopQuadrant, Inc., a consulting company specializing in knowledge-based solutions, the semantic WEB and ontology engineering. I have some 25 years experience in the United States and internationally in enterprise systems design, consulting, software development and methodology development and deployment. Prior to launching TopQuadrant I was an Executive Consultant at IBM Global Services from 1994 to 2001 where I was a founding member of Portal and Java and Emerging Technology practices. Prior to IBM, I was European Technology Director, founder and Managing Director of an international CASE tools vendor.

I have an interest in software technologies for intelligent systems and real time enterprises. I am a member of the "Intent Alliance", an organization that was formed to promote the value of systems thinking for intelligent enterprises. I have an MSc in Digital Electronics at Herriott-Watt University in Edinburgh (1974), studies towards a Ph.D. in the properties of materials in high-intensity magnetic fields at Southampton University (1971) and hold a BSc with Honors degree in Physical Electronics from Northumbria University (1970). I am a published author, with some 30 papers and 6 chapters of books and have been a speaker at international software engineering conferences.

As a consulting company, TopQuadrant (www.topquadrant.com) is serving as a "trusted intermediary" helping companies assess technologies and vendors of knowledge technologies. Traditionally understood as ways of connecting people with knowledge, with the advent of web services and the importance of application integration, a new role has emerged for knowledge technologies - shepherding the knowledge that resides and moves between systems. We are finding that successful applications of knowledge technology range from search and asset reuse to semantic mapping and data integration.

In order to help companies understand semantic technologies we provide consulting services for technology appreciation and solution envisioning for defining systems. Our approach is based on what we call "Capability Cases". A Capability Case is a way to express a solution idea through stories of real (or envisioned use) within a business context. A galllery of some capability cases nased on ontology engineering and semantic technologies can be seen at out web-site.

We have worked and are currently working on 2 ontologies. One for NASA to do with using ontology to improve integration in CAD/PLM application areas. The other is for eGovernment where we are creating a pilot for the use of Semantic Technologies to support the Federal Enterprise Architecture. In the case of the NASA work, we are interested in finding and encouraging the creation of ontologies for engineering domains and for engineering and work processes (this work is for the Space Shuttle and potentially the Space Station). In our eGovernment work, enterprise models are of interest. In particular, those that relate to governance and performance modeling of lines-of business and the concept of 'service' as used in government agencies.

I hope that the ontology-forum will provide a way for us as a new company to connect to other professionals in industry that have an interest in semantic technologies, tools and ontologies. I am also hoping to benefit from sharing ideas on ontologies for engineering and for eGovernment as described above.

www.etopicality.com/index.shtml#people

I am an "old-time" SGMLer and have been working with markup technology for over 10 years with large information owners and publishers (legal, medical, aerospace).

Recently, I've been working with Topic Maps. I am a founding member of TopicMaps.Org, which developed the XML Topic Maps (XTM) specification; a co-author of the XTM 1.0 DTD for topic maps; and a co-author of the current draft of the ISO Reference Model for topic maps. I was the technical editor of "XML Topic Maps: Creating and Maintaining Topic Maps for the Web", from Addison-Wesley.

I head a consultancy whose service offerings include topic maps, content analysis, and DTD development and co-founded of GooseWorks project for creating open source topic map tools (www.gooseworks.org).

Philosophically, I am a fan of the later Wittgenstein (the one who said that "language is a form of life"). Often, in the computer world, we mistake the "objects" that we create for living things in the real world, which is a lot more complicated and intertwingled than our objects can be. There are times when I think that the very use of the word "ontology" is an example of this.

And I believe that clear, clean prose is at the foundation of every tower of abstraction that we build. Prose has status equal, if not superior to, the concepts we throw around for a living. "Prose poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world." ;-)

Understand ontologies and the ontology community.

• Understand the language of ontologists and the concepts of ontology
• Listen for pragmatic applications of ontologies
• See if topic maps can be used to represent and interchange ontologies

• Markup, topic maps, Python, open-source software, collaborative learning environments, conversation, standards, standards work, clear clean prose.
• Can the topic map paradigm and the topic map syntax be used to make ontologies more widely distributed?
• All things practical with ontologies. How can I use them to help customers? Especially, how can I use them to help customers by using generic, markup-based tools, and the RESTful web architecture?
• Can ontologies become something that consumers use as tools to think with, in a collaborative environment?

Master in Education; BSc (Hons) in Computer Science with Business Studies. Presently working at HP Far East as Storage Training Manager. Working experience in ERP/MRP2 project implementation.

Did an expert system (PROLOG) project in first-aid on diagnosing victim's condition and interested in knowledge acquisition of intelligent systems. Wanted to know how XML and knowledge engineering could deploy in the area of e-learning. Would like to see how I am able to identify areas where such technology could be used in business.

I have involved in information standards development and implementation activities for over ten years, primarily in the ISO-10303 suite of product data standards sponsored by ISO SC4-TC184. Recently I am invovled in developing the ISO-10303-239, Product Life Cycle Support application protocol, particularly, in drafting the data model representation of logical constructs for "condition" and "condition evaluation" subjects.

To observe and help clarify foundation concepts for usable standards development.

Information modeling, information system implementation, meta-information languages.

1. The SC4 developed data model schema covering "expressions" for mathematical and logical structures (ISO 13584-20) www.steptools.com/sc4/archive/PLIB/13584-020.exp (The site only contains the up to date "express code" for the data model. The standards document is ISO copy righted and please inquire your own library for availability.
2. Clarify the meaning and usage of the word "Ontology" and "Ontological Behavior"

Broad based business, technical and communications background in engineering (aerospace), manufacturing, and solutions development.

Seek innovations and ideas that promote business efficiency and effectiveness.

Shared collaboration

Business entities at the higher-collaboration process level (also support others suggestions).

• 35 years in fields that are related to knowledge and information.
• Degree and a decade of experience in library science.
• Database and business system development in telecommunications, insurance, financial, manufacturing, travel, and other industries.
• Articles and methods for semantic rigor for business applications

Tim is recognised as a leader in the introduction of Internet technologies to the EDI and e-commerce marketplace in Australia. More recently, Tim led the Quality Review Team for the ebXML initiative, was a member of the ebXML Steering Committee and is a co-author of Professional ebXML Foundations from Wrox Press. Tim is currently the Chair of the Library Content subcommittee of the OASIS Universal Business Language (UBL) Technical Committee.

I join the group as a veteran software developer (I am semi-retired), whose work experience includes 40 years experience in software development:

• Application developement
• Compiler & runtime development
• Database software development (co-authored both a DBM and a DBML)
• Code generators
• EDI translators and other third party EDI software

I am actively involved in efforts to define EDI standards, including EDI standards based in XML syntax. Prior Chair X12C Communciations & Controls. Active participant in ebXML and X12 efofrts to define standards for use of XML to represent eBusiness transaactions.

I've found that most of my EDI colleagues do not recognize the need to systematically examine EDI artifacts, to discern an ontological framework into which such information can be collected and organized. As a result, we are paying little more than lip service to our goal of interoperability among implementations of Electronic Data Interchange.

With my reduced work schedule and commitments, I will likely be more an observer than an active participant. But note that I've not been a silent observer on any listserv to which I've subscribed, and I'm not likely to be silent on this one.

• Improve capture of eBusiness metadata
• Increase awareness of Ontology tools
• Application of Ontology tools to eBusiness

Interoperability of eBusiness systems, and integration of eBusiness messages into eBusiness applications.

• Ontology Languages Which to use (when)
• eBusiness metadata How best represent
• Storing/Locating eBusiness metadata (gets into higher order metadatas)

groups.yahoo.com/group/KMTech/

Computer programming and escalation into computer science with a mad doctor, now in the intelligence world supporting a domestic spy network.

I contributed an implementation of the Prueitt categorization and emergence technique (www.ontologystream.com), and continued original work, inspired by a sea slug (topological morph) to produce a binary-tree of complicated-lists, as a least-common-denominator of repeating information streams - a self-assembling technology, capturing ontology in the history of capable-human-moments, perceived by process-model visual abstraction.

Inventor of a Knowledge Operating System (KOS), named by hired scientific advisor, Paul S. Prueitt, Ph D. (Undisclosed advances held toward corporate exploitation. Inquiry invited.)

• Simplification of computing systems to cognizant model
• Reduction of commercialization of computer science to cataloged copyright - ban software patents, protect your copyright of craft by license -- the global semiotic solution
• Artifactual Intelligence (my term), a responsive, contextually capable semiote

• Cognizant systems study. Semiotic agencies as a responsive semiote (SEEM ee Oht - my term).
• Semantic topologies as a parsed artifact of regular datum streams by a semiotic-ground (socially valued protocol of complicated syntax, not complex dependency).
• Social engineering, and the urgent need to stop Mad Cowboy Disease.
• Staying out of prison due to the courage to speak like this in an Orwellian world (I hate it that my software was demonstrated and accepted by retired Vice Admiral John Poindexter).
• Earning a living and amasing a retirement by honest and ethical means for my supporting wife, Christie, and I, and as many as we may find ways to help.

• Where are numbers in nature? (Or, aren't numbers and "facts" mere human correlate?)
• How many ways are there to flip a bit?
• Why throw away interstitial computations, just to re-compute the same in the next millisecond?
• Personal ontology: why paint the industry into a group ontology corner, when only personal communication is the issue?
• Plausible computing, and the cognizant, capable moment of gesture-anticipation?

www.coolheads.com/srn.cv.htm

• Co-editor, Topic Maps standard, ISO/IEC 13250:2002
• Co-editor, HyTime standard, ISO/IEC 10744:1997

I've been involved in Topic Maps from the beginning (1992), but my passion for self-describing information paradigms began with a very unpleasant experience in 1981. I lost the value of five years of work when Control Data Corporation changed the PLATO system, in an arbitrary and pernicious decision, in such a way as to make my interactive tutorial in sixteenth-century counterpoint unpublishable. A few weeks later, vowing never again to invest development effort in systems controlled by untrustworthy social structures (such as for-profit corporations), I learned C.

In 1986, when SGML became a standard, Charles Goldfarb and I launched a music-representation standardization effort that ultimately resulted, in 1992, in the HyTime standard. (That's a bizarre story, but much more fun than my gastric misadventure with CDC.)

So I guess I came into the knowledge-rep area by way of thinking about how to make hyperlinks self-describing, and therefore self-disqualifying.

I'm still wondering how to make serious thinking about knowledge integration self-supporting, but lately we've been having more luck with that particular problem. In my wife's (Vicky's) consulting company, Coolheads Consulting, we're doing knowledge integration work for the Internal Revenue Service. Michel Biezunski (mb@coolheads.com) is in charge of that project.

My recent writings (that might be interesting to participants in this forum) include:

• Draft ISO Reference Model for Topic Maps (with Sam Hunting and Jan Algermissen) www.isotopicmaps.org/rm4tm/
• Economics of the Draft Reference Model for Topic Maps slides: www.coolheads.com/SRNPUBS/xml2002-econ/paper: www.coolheads.com/SRNPUBS/xml2002-econ.htm
• Forecasting Terrorism: Meeting the Scaling Requirements www.coolheads.com/SRNPUBS/extreme2002/forecasting-terrorism.htm
• Preemptive Reification www.coolheads.com/SRNPUBS/preemptive-reification.htm
• Topic Maps for the Web (with Michel Biezunski) www.coolheads.com/SRNPUBS/ieee-mm-topicmaps-article.pdf
• "A Perspective on the Quest for Global Knowledge Interchange", Chapter 3 of "XML Topic Maps - Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web" (Jack Park and Sam Hunting, eds.), 2003: Addison-Wesley. The publisher makes this chapter available free at www.aw.com/samplechapter/

To take Kurt Conrad's advice

You've got to be kidding. The only thing I'm *not* interested in is sweet potatoes, which I loathe and despise, especially when served with melted marshmallows.

The privileging of some subjects over others (such as ontological subjects). I consider such privileging pernicious.

The majority of my writing, my Knowledge Sciences Blog, and a few other misc items can be accessed via my personal home-page www.3-cities.com/~bonewman/

My name is Bo Newman and I am the founder of the original Knowledge Management Forum, one of the first virtual communities of practice in the field of Knowledge Management. My personal research focuses on the dynamics of the knowledge to establish improved models for understanding the ways knowledge is developed, stored, transferred, and used within organizations.

Recent research products include; the Knowledge Management Characterization Framework (1999), Critical Alignment Path Analysis (1999), Knowledge Flow Theory and Analysis (2000, 2002), and on-going work on Long Term Knowledge Preservation. I was the co-author of the primary postgraduate course on knowledge management fundamentals at George Washington University as well as course-work on the Knowledge Management Characterization Framework. I was a contributing author to The "Handbook of Knowledge Management" to be published this month.

My over-arching goal is to strengthen the theoretical foundations for the practice. My specific interest is to examine characteristics of ontologies, the process of ontology development, issues of ontological alignment, and it we get to that point, something called trans-navigational ontologies.

I'm looking forward to some good discussions.

Knowledge Sciences (ontology, epistemology, alignment theory), Knowledge Engineering (Knowledge Flow Analysis, ontology analysis), Long-term Knowledge perpetuation, Project and Process Management.

I am a senior AI scientist at the MITRE AI Center in Northern Virginia (www.mitre.org) and the technical coordinator for knowledge representation and semantics, involved in projects on context-based semantic interoperability, ontology modeling of complex decision-making, conceptual information retrieval, community metadata and semantic markup, and semantic mapping/brokering. I was recently Director of Ontological Engineering at VerticalNet.com, a department I formed to create ontologies in the product and service space to support Business-to-Business e-commerce.

My PhD is in theoretical linguistics with a concentration in formal semantics from the University of Texas-Austin. I have worked nearly 20 years in computational linguistics, knowledge representation, and in the last seven years in ontological engineering.

I am a member of the W3C Web Ontology Working Group (www.w3.org/2001/sw/WebOnt/) and the IEEE Standard Upper Ontology working group and am currently the assistant technical editor for one proposed standard upper ontology candidate, the Information Flow Framework (suo.ieee.org/). In addition, I participate in the OntoWeb network (www.ontoweb.org/index.htm).

My general research interests include formal models, the semantics and pragmatics of natural language, ontology representation and reasoning, the Semantic Web, constraint and logic programming, intelligent agents, and category theory. I am currently most interested in the formalization of context for ontology mapping and integration, and semantic mapping methods.

Some recent or forthcoming publications:

• The Semantic Web: The Future of XML, Web Services, and Knowledge Management [Book], forthcoming, 2003.
• Obrst, L., H. Liu, R. Wray, L. Wilson. 2002. Ontologies for Semantically Interoperable Electronic Commerce. In the Proceedings of ICEIMT’02, International Conference on Enterprise Modelling and Enterprise Integration Technologies (ICEIMT), and the Conference of the EI3-IC Initiative (Enterprise Inter- and Intra-Organisational Integration ­ International Consensus), Valencia, Spain, April 24-26, 2002, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2002.
• Obrst, L., R. Wray, H. Liu. Ontological Engineering for B2B E-Commerce. In the Proceedings of The Second International Conference on Formal Ontology in Information Systems, October 17-19, 2001, Ogunquit, ME. www.fois.org/fois-2001/index.html
• Obrst, L., H. Liu. Knowledge Representation, Ontological Engineering, and Topic Maps, chapter in XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web, Jack Park, ed., Addison-Wesley, 2003 (available July, 2002).
• Obrst, L., P. Carbone. Situating Knowledge Management on the Interpretation Continuum, AAAI Spring Symposium on Bringing Knowledge to Business Processes, April, 2000, Stanford University.
• Tyler, J., L. Obrst, D. Pack, E. Peterson. Knowledge-Based Agents for C2 Decision Support, September 14-16, 1999, Simulation Interoperability Workshop, Fall, 1999, Orlando, Fl.
• Obrst, L., E. Peterson, J. Tyler. Ontologies and Complex Command and Control Decision-making Behavior Modeling, AAAI Workshop on Ontology Management, Orlando, FL, July 19, 1999.
• Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. Semantic Context for Object Exchange, AAAI Workshop on Context in AAI Applications, Orlando, FL, July 19, 1999.
• Obrst, L., G. Whittaker, A. Meng. Semantic Interoperability via Context Interpretation, submitted to Context-99, Trento, Italy, April, 1999, invited poster session.
• Smith, K., L. Obrst. Unpacking The Semantics of Source and Usage To Achieve Semantic Reconciliation In Large-Scale Information Systems, SIGMOD special issue on Semantic Interoperability, March, 1999, A. Sheth & A. Ouksel, eds.

Working with Australian government and industry on a number of projects to facilitate interoperability, including a pilot ebXMLrr and an ebXML integration toolkit/module targeting small business software community.

Practical plans/strategies for promoting and rolling-out UBL to small businesses and their support communities. How do we turn abstract B2B concepts (eg. ontology, isomorphism) into a practical introduction for these groups, to get them to make a substantial culture change?

My CV is at http://home.earthlink.net/~adampease/professional/

My company, Articulate Software works in logic and knowledge based systems.

Our focus currently is on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology www.ontologyportal.org: a free, formal upper ontology, expressed in first order logic, and in OWL. It has been mapped to all the WordNet nouns and verbs, several free domain-specific ontologies have been created from it, an open-source browser is available and format files supplied with the browser allow logic statements to be presented in both English and Czech as well as logic. SUMO has also been subjected to formal consistency checking with first order logic theorem provers.

I'm interested in applying ontology to real-world applications and working with a group of people on common ontology content so application ontologies are reusable.

Formal ontology content, and it's application

What are particular domain ontology content needs that people have?

www.mulberrytech.com/people/piez/wapresume.html

BA in Classics (Ancient Greek, 1984); Ph.D. in English (1991); working with markup technologies since 1994.

Although mindful, in general, of the pivotal importance of work on ontologies, and interested, in principle, in its progress, I have hesitated to post to this list out of a lack of confidence in my experience and authority in this area. I come from a rather different background from many of you (though possibly not all): originally I was trained in Classical Philology and Poetics, and turned from that to get a Ph.D. in English (literature and critical theory), which I received in 1991. Since 1994 or so I have been working with markup technologies (SGML, XML, XSLT), especially in their applications to publishing and to other uses particularly of interest to humanists (such as textual analysis and hypermedia). Since 1998 I have been at Mulberry Technologies, a small but active firm in the markup languages industry. Our work for clients includes both design and design-related services, and "softer" work helping to plan and make transitions, including providing training, independent design reviews, vendor-neutral advice on implementation, and so forth.

So although this has given me (so far) little exposure to formal ontologies as such, the work I have done may be as near to them as might be without being actually among them. I confess this may make me something of a skeptic, since I tend to be fairly demanding in my assessment both of the practical aspects (the hands-on problems) and of the philosophical assumptions built into any technological approach to a problem. Nevertheless I hope to be an open-minded and forward-looking skeptic: without feeling able to say more, I can certainly assert that ontologies address one of the core problems in information processing, and that many of the visionary ideas now circulating will be impossible without robust and well-managed ontological frameworks.

Readers of this list may be interested in a couple of papers I've written on some of the theoretical problems facing markup language designers: please see www.piez.org/wendell/critique.htmor www.idealliance.org/papers/extreme02/authors.html(under "Piez", naturally).

Tracking/observation

Markup language design; interface design; see lmnl.org for more cool stuff.

• Bachelor of Science, Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering (Ship Design), Webb Institute
• Masters of Science, Computer Science, The Johns Hopkins University
• Employed by CSC Advanced Marine Center in Washington, DC, USA
• Provide support for the U.S. Department Of the Navy Member of OASIS WSRP TC

• I hope to keep an eye on what's happening in the Ontology area

rykov.narod.ru

I am IT engineer. Got my diploma in 1971 at Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (MIPT - www.mipt.ru - there's Engl version). Then I shifted to Computational Linguistics and got my PhD in 1986 in Moscow State University. Now I read lectures in Computational Linguistics and Knowledge Management back in MIPT, take part in various info projects - mostly in NLP and Business Intelligence.

• upgrade my competence level in Business Intelligence
• upgrade my competence level in ontology related domains

Computational Linguistics, Semiotics, Business Intelligence, Ontology

• Ontology-RDF relation
• Ontology-RDF-Prolog relation
• DB mapping ontology
• meta data mapping ontology
• meta ontology

Responsible for information system engineering and architecture projects at NASA Headquarters and participates in many NASA information systems projects.

• Rendering data elements as knowledge
• Management of extreemly large data sets
• Knowledge distribution across geo-political boundries

Networks, privacy, knowledge structures

• M.S. - Facilities Management 1978
• B.S. - Mechanical Engineering 1972
• Active Duty Air Force - Officer 1972-1981
• Martin Marietta (now known as Lockheed Martin) - Systems Engineer 1981-1989 - Information Systems Systems Engineer (Data Standards Consultant) 1989-present
• Co-Chairman of the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) Electronic Enterprise Working Group (EEWG)
• Chair of the AIA Metadata Harmonization Project - a major project within the AIA EEWG
• Previously - Chair of the CALS effort that developed the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF)

My interest in this subject is driven by the belief that the Universal Data Element Framework (UDEF) could be applied to the Ontology discussion and perhaps become the foundation for the Semantic Web. Although many might question the notion that any single framework could be robust enough to handle any data of interest to any enterprise, that is the claim that I make and I welcome the opportunity to demonstrate/prove it.

A brief glimpse of the UDEF can be obtained from www.udef.com/

In addition, the attached briefing provides a UDEF Primer (ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/2002-10/ppt00000.ppt). The Primer was used to conduct UDEF training within the Aerospace Industries Association (AIA) Metadata Harmonization Project.

I've worked for MITRE Corp (a not-for-profit corporation working in the interest of the American public) more in the systems analysis and project management areas than in technical development--the fun stuff.

Currently, I am also a doctoral student at George Mason University, Fairfax, Virginia.

My dissertation is in the area of metrics of ontology developments that will support identification of quantifiable and qualitative benefits and costs of ontologies.

• What does it cost to develop an ontology?
• What are the cost drivers of an ontological development?
• What are the benefits of ontology-based systems?
• How do we validate an ontologies integrity to ensure accuracy?
• Etc.

In other words, I'm looking at ontology developments from a program manager's and/or decision maker's perspective. Any metrics or data information anyone has would be greatly appreciated and also, would be kept confidentially.

• Identification of lifecycle process for developing ontology-based systems
• Identification of metrics that provide information on how well an Ontology-based system will support system requirements
• Identification of quantified and qualified benefits and costs of using ontologies in systems

• Lifecycle process for incorporating ontologies into system developments.
• Metrics, benefits, and costs of using ontologies in support of decision making

• Processes for developing ontologies especially within the context of a larger system
• Metrics that provide insight into an ontology-based systems integrity, capabilities, usability, maintainability, etc.
• Quantifiable and qualitative benefits and costs of developing ontology-based systems
• Decision points relative to ontology development
• Approaches for discerning which level of the Obrst Ontology Spectrum might best suit a specific application of ontology-based systems

Ph.D., UCI; Professor Emeritus, California State University (LB); Chair, AI and Expert Systems Council- CSU; Organizational modeling; "Intelligent" IT Audits; Crises Response Systems.

My background involves 30 years as a University Professor in Management Science-Ops Research, AI, Expert Systems, HazMat Response, business strategy, and the many legal economic issues in software engineering.

The vision of an intelligent web service as a strategic support element for small and medium sized business is compelling. Actions expanding this vision demand attention and project execution.

• Interested in roles that Semantic Web technologies can play in making effective and transparent interorganizational and intraorganizational decision making
• Balanced external economies and price structures

Collaborative technologies and visualization tools to achieve a balance of Goals 1,2, & 3 above

• Repository structures and policies for Large, Medium, Small sized organizations
• Price-Performance-Investment issues for the "top ten" Ontological Tools listed in Denny's XML Survey
• Technology Choices Roadmap of next 4 years related to Semantic Web based technologies
• Metrics for organizational workflow ontology studies