Dear members and friends of the IAOA, (01)
We have seen considerable growth of the association in all respects
since it began its official life in April 2009. In this newsletter we
would like to give you a brief report on the activities, events and
plans which the association has been concerned with in 2010. Also,
most importantly, we are very happy to report that, at the end of 2010,
the association had reached 150 regular members from all over the
world, covering an extremely diverse range of interests in ontology and
its application. The association is therefore continuing to expand and we trust
that the
equally broad range of activities, actual and planned, that we report
on here appropriately reflects this diversity in our membership. As
set out below, this year we have also begun implementing organisational
structures for the association that will further support direct input
from members, including the formation of special interest groups, of
regional chapters and several other possibilities for direct
participation. All of these will shape the directions in which the
association will develop and so, should you see a gap or an
opportunity, please get involved! (02)
The main event of 2010 for the association was our first public
meeting and election of the association's current Executive Council
at the FOIS conference in May in Toronto. At this meeting we gathered
a collection of possible directions for future development of the
association and the Executive Council has been progressively following
these proposals and implementing them where possible since that time.
Concretely: (03)
* An advisory board has been formed, made up of invited experts from a
broad range of areas related to ontologies, their specifications and
their application; (04)
* Several standing committees have now been started and are actively working
in the following areas; if you are interested in joining in and helping,
please
get in contact with the respective area leader (more info on the 'Ontology
Community' page of the IAOA website). All help is welcome! (05)
* Publicity, Image and Visibility Committee
* International Promotion Committee
* Education Committee
* Ontology Registry and Repository Committee
* Infrastructure (website, etc.) Committee (06)
* In particular, the Education Committee has started planning
an IAOA summer school next year, and an ontology textbook
resulting from a collective effort. This committee is also co-organizing,
in cooperation with the Vespucci programme, the first IAOA
ontology summer institute, to be held in July 2011 in Italy,
focusing on the ontology of processes. (07)
* A first Special Interest Group on Ontologies and Conceptual Modelling
has been established, led by Giancarlo Guizzardi, Oscar Pastor and Yair Wand,
which will be announcing its activities soon; further SIGs are being planned. (08)
* Following a call which received three proposals, we have just selected the
location of the next FOIS conference, which will be held in Graz, Austria, in
2012. The official announcement will be sent around soon. (09)
More details of these and all other events and activities are
available on the association's website, as well as the public reports for all
the meetings of the Executive Council. (010)
The association has also lent its support to several workshops and
conferences, providing further opportunities for networking and
building connections across communities. These have included AOW 2010
(The Sixth Australasian Ontology Workshop), 3rd Seminario de pesquisa
em Ontologia no Brasil (Florianopolis), International Conference on
Biomedical Ontology (ICBO: University of Buffalo, NY), PhiloWeb 2010 -
The First Web & Philosophy International Symposium (Paris), VORTE 2010
- Joint 5th International Workshop on Vocabularies, Ontologies and
Rules for The Enterprise (Vitoria, ES, Brazil), and EKAW 2010 Workshop
on Ontology Quality (Lisbon). Similar support is planned for several
events in 2011, including the Workshop on Modular Ontologies - WoMO
2011 (Ljubljana, Slovenia) and the Formal Ontology Meets Industry
(FoMI 2011) conference (Delft, the Netherland). Further information on
what support by the IAOA means and the circumstances under which
such support can be given can be found on the IAOA website. (011)
Several proposals have reached us concerning the establishment of
regional chapters and of special interest groups. The ways for implementing
these initiatives are currently being worked into an updated version of the
association's bylaws and statutes, which will be made public for
formal ratification by the members later on this year. Currently
regional chapters are being considered for Latin America and for Asia. (012)
The association is also one of the co-sponsors of this year's Ontolog
Summit, which has adopted the theme: "Making the Case for Ontology".
This face-to-face and virtual event will bring together invited
experts in the field to discuss just how the take-up of ontology can
be best argued. Online discussions and weekly open telecons have just
started. See: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011. (013)
On a further organisational note, the association has now restructured
its fees for membership in 2011 to more appropriately reflect the very
varied possibilities of members in different parts of the
world. Membership fees differ according to a country classification
derived from the United Nations' "Human Development Index" and the
World Bank. We hope that this will encourage a fairer geographical
distribution of members worldwide. (014)
Finally, the association website has been growing in leaps and bounds,
with the addition of information about events as indicated above, and
further activities, as well as a membership area for exchanging news
and information about issues of concern to the association and its
members. Free access for members to the journal Applied Ontology and
to IOS Press publications on ontology continues as before. (015)
In short, 2010 has been a year of substantial development for the
association, bringing ontology and its applications into contact with
a variety of other communities, as well as bringing members of the
association together both locally and virtually. We trust that 2011
will be similarly dynamic, with the announcement of further interest
groups and plans for a continuing series of ontology `schools'. To
take this further, we rely on your continued support and look forward
to furthering the cause of ontology and its applications worldwide. (016)
Nicola Guarino and John Bateman
for the IAOA Executive Council (017)
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