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.
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! :)
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:
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:
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.
Maintaining a list of applications that use ontologies, are available to the public, and could serve as test programs to evaluate alternative ontological theories.
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 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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
Formalization and representation:
The human and social dimensions of ontological engineering:
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.
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.
My main area of interest is described in my recent XML.COM article
(
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
(
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.
Automated messaging and intelligent adaptation (software)
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.
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 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 (
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.
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.
I join the group as a veteran software developer (I am semi-retired), whose work experience includes 40 years experience in software development:
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.
Interoperability of eBusiness systems, and integration of eBusiness messages into eBusiness applications.
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:
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.
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
(
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:
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 group works in logic and knowledge based systems.
Our focus currently is on the Suggested Upper Merged Ontology
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?
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
Tracking/observation
Markup language design; interface design; see
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.
Computational Linguistics, Semiotics, Business Intelligence, Ontology
Responsible for information system engineering and architecture projects at NASA Headquarters and participates in many NASA information systems projects.
Networks, privacy, knowledge structures
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
In addition, the attached briefing provides a UDEF Primer
(
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.
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.
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.
Collaborative technologies and visualization tools to achieve a balance of Goals 1,2, & 3 above
I am Kevin T. Smith, and I am the Chief Security Architect of the DIA's Virtual Knowledge Base Project.. I don't have a resume online, but have authored a few books on XML and Java, have spoken at technical conferences (JavaOne), and am currently co-authoring a book on the Semantic Web with Mike Daconta and Leo Obrst.
We are creating an ontology for our project that unambigously describes resources in the Virtual Knowledge Base. Most of my work is security-focused, controlling how information in the knowledge base can be accessed, and describing the security requirements of data sources in the registry.
Web Services Security, Java Programming, XML
I am an Principal Information Systems Engineer with the MITRE Corporation with over 30 years experience. My experience is broad, having supported US government agencies ranging from the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), National Cancer Institute, and Department of Defense and associated agencies. Currently I am supporting the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA) in activities supporting their mission relative to Homeland Security.
I hope to gain a better understanding of ontologies and how they can be used in the information systems that will evolve to support "first responders" and those that support them in training, planning, and responding to crises, both natural and man-made.
I am the founder of Intrinix Networks. Intrinix Networks provides
e-business application development services. I have been in software
development for over 17 years and has successfully implemented many projects
over the years. I have been focusing on Internet related software development
since 1997. My business contact information is provided below. I am also an
exco member of the XMLOne User Group (
Since I am new to the field of Ontology, I am joining as an observer and hope to participate actively in the later stage.
I have startup a special interest group to focus on applying XML and its complimentary standards in SCM applications. The purpose of this XML-SCM, Special Interest Group is to provide a forum for companies and individual to meet and discuss about technical issues and other related subject regarding XML and its application in the area of supply chain management. My area of interest is to explore XML and its complementary standards in B2B applications. I am actively promoting the use of XML in data exchange.
I founded CIM Engineering (in 1984) and is still operating it -- doing business as CIM3.COM/.NET/.ORG We provide infrastructure and professional services to communities of practice, and to high performance project team, while keeping an "open knowledge" profile. I'm a member of the OASIS UBL TC and one of the co-conveners of this forum
Collaboration processes and technology, and to carry on the
"Bootstrap" mission that Doug Engelbart had started back in the 1960's. (see
While we shall continue to hold online discussions and address
issues that fall within our charter
Since we are just starting with a charter membership at this point, this is the best time to really get involved. This way, we can all influence the direction and approach of this community as a whole.