*ANNOUNCEMENT* (01)
We are pleased to announce that Mr. Jack Park (SRI) and Mr.
Patrick Durusau (NCITS/V1) will be presenting to the community on
Thursday, April 27, 2006. Their talk is entitled: "Avoiding
Hobson's Choice In Choosing An Ontology" (02)
This is the 3rd event in our series of talks and discussions the
revolve around the topic: "Ontologizing the Ontolog Body of
Knowledge" during which this community will explore the "what's"
and "how's" to the development of a semantically interoperable
application, using the improved access to the content of Ontolog
as a case in point. (03)
*Conference call-in details*: (04)
Date: Thursday, Apr. 27, 2006
Start Time: 10:30 AM PDT / 1:30 PM EDT / 17:30 UTC
(World Time:
http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=4&day=27&year=2006&hour=10&min=30&sec=0&p1=224)
Session Duration: ~2 Hours
Dial-in Number: +1-641-696-6600 (Iowa)
Participant Access Code: "686564#"
VNC shared-screen support available (05)
Topic: *Avoiding Hobson's Choice In Choosing An Ontology* (06)
*Abstract*: (by Jack Park & Patrick Durusau) (07)
Most users of ontologies have either participated in the
development of the ontology they use and/or have used it for such
a period of time that they have taken ownership of it. Like a
hand that grows to fit a tool, users grow comfortable with
"their" ontology and can use another only with difficulty and
possibly high error rates. (08)
When agencies discuss sharing information, the tendency is to
offer other participants a "Hobson's Choice" of ontologies. "Of
course we will use ontology X." which just happens to be the
ontology of the speaker. Others make similar offers. Much
discussion follows. But not very often effective integration of
information. (09)
In all fairness to the imagined participants in such a
discussion, unfamiliar ontologies can lead to errors and/or
misunderstandings that may actually impede the interchange,
pardon, the accurate interchange information. Super-ontologies
don't help much when they lack the granularity needed for real
tasks and simply put off the day of reckoning when actual data
has to move between agencies. (010)
The Topic Maps Reference Model is a paradigm for constructing a
mapping of ontologies that enables users to use "their"
ontologies while integrating information that may have originated
in ontologies that are completely foreign or even unknown to the
user. Such mappings can support full auditing of the process of
integrating information to enable users to develop a high degree
of confidence in the mapping. (011)
Topic maps rely upon the fact that every part of an ontology is
in fact representing a subject. And the subject that is being
represented is known from the properties of those
representatives. Such representatives are called subject proxies
in the Topic Maps Reference Model. Those properties are used as
the basis for determining when two or more subject proxies
represent the same subject. Information from two or more
representatives of the same subject can be merged together,
providing users with information about a subject that may not
have been known in their ontology. (012)
Park and Durusau explore the philosophical, theoretical and
practical steps needed to avoid a Hobson's Choice in ontology
discussions and to use the Topic Maps Reference Model to
effectively integrate information with a high degree of
confidence in the results. All while enabling users to use the
ontology that is most familiar and comfortable for them. (013)
*About the Speakers*: (014)
*Mr. Jack Park* is a research scientist in the AI Laboratory at
SRI, International in Menlo Park. He works with Adam Cheyer's
integration team on the DARPA-funded CALO project, where he
created the prototype from which the team evolved the IRIS
desktop knowledge workstation. During employment with
VerticalNet, Park served on the XTM Authoring Committee which
created the XTM topic maps specification, now a part of the ISO
13250 Topic Maps standard. In a former life, while serving as the
president of the American Wind Energy Association, Park was
constructing microprocessor-based weather stations used for
siting wind energy farms and in agricultural applications. The
massive amounts of data being collected by those stations led to
investigations into AI applications in data mining and data
organization. Ontologies and inference engines naturally
followed. Park has crafted Java-based inference engines for a
large banking enterprise, a clinical informatics enterprise, and
participated in the construction of the VerticalNet B2B ontology
editor. Park authored _The Wind Power Book_ in 1981, and
co-authored and edited _XML Topic Maps: Creating and Using Topic
Maps for the Web_, published in 2002. He has taught university
courses in renewable energy resources in the U.S., and lectured
on those subjects in the U.S., parts of Europe and Africa. He
spends most of his time now evolving applications for subject
maps related to the Douglas Engelbart call for continuous
improvement of human capabilities. (015)
*Mr. Patrick Durusau* is the Chair of V1, the US Technical
Advisory Group (TAG) to ISO/IEC JTC 1/SC 34, the committee
responsible for the development of the Topic Maps family of
standards. He is a co-editor of ISO 13250-5, the Topic Maps
Reference Model. . . . In the Fall of 2006 he will be teaching
what is thought to be the first graduate course devoted
exclusively to topic maps at the School of Library and
Information Science at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign. . . . He is deeply interested in the
integration diverse information systems (including ontologies)
while preserving the ability of users to identify the subjects of
their conversations in ways that work best for them. (016)
*Refer to details on the session wiki page at*:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2006_04_27 (017)
This will be a virtual session over an augmented conference call.
The session is expected to start with 45 min. ~ 1 Hour
presentation followed by an extended discussion between the
participants and the speaker. The entire session will be recorded
and made available as open content under the prevailing Ontolog
IPR policy (see:
http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid32). (018)
As usual, this Ontolog event is open to all. I look forward to
having you at this session. Please pass the announcement along to
those who might be interested to join us too. (019)
*RSVP* by by emailing me at <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx> offline. (020)
Regards. =ppy (021)
Peter P. Yim
Co-convener, Ontolog
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