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Re: [ontolog-forum] Start thinking about the 2008 Ontology Summit

To: "[ontolog-forum] " <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
From: "Peter F Brown" <peter@xxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:53:36 +0100
Message-id: <1B2253B0359130439EA571FF30251AAE072C31@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

I would be interested in contributing the work that we are just finalising in the “eGovernment Focus Group” set up by the European standards agency, CEN. In this we have developed a high-level model for sharing information on eGovernment services, between humans and machines using Topic Maps (= “semantic web with a human face”!) and using an ATOM-based protocol for distributing ontology fragments through a decentralised, federated information space.

 

I hope to have something for you for the 3rd Jan call or shortly afterwards. We will be presenting our demo for the first time publicly at the Microsoft Government Leaders Forum (GLF) in Berlin on 22nd January, following initial work sponsored by SUN Microsystems.

 

Regards,

Peter

 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Duane Nickull
Sent: 21 December 2007 17:35
To: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Start thinking about the 2008 Ontology Summit

 

+1 with the following additions (in time but designing a system to support).

+ Free public API’s where organizations with folksonomies (tag clouds often represent these), can link terms in their folksonomies to disambiguate words like “Washington” which may have several meanings.
+ a system architecture with no single point of failure and a flexible service oriented approach to creating a platform for ontology work on the web
+ some artifacts to explain in simple lay terms, how to use the ontology and how to reference items in it from taxonomies and folksonomies with simple context and event declarations.  
+ a strong thrust of work on context.

Duane


On 12/21/07 8:13 AM, "Patrick Cassidy" <pat@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Hi Steve,
    I won’t be able to participate in the Jan 3 call, I have  a conflict.
    For the next ontology summit I would like to once again see if there is a path we can take to get agreement on some common foundation ontology. The first step is to identify some significant part of the ontology community that will make a serious proposal to a funding agency to support the efforts of an effective cross-section of the community of those who have worked on foundation ontologies and those who are building applications that require the reasoning capabilities that a FOL-based  ontology can provide.  I think it would be particularly helpful to have representation from those who are exploring the use of ontologies for natural language understanding in such a project.   We have discussed this issue before, and at this time it would probably take over 5 million to support a basic effort of that kind.  To get that kind of money we will need more of a consensus than has been visible up to now.   But we have learned a lot in the past five years, and the time may be ripe for another attempt.
     The tactic I now think may have the best chance of moving forward is to structure the common foundation ontology as a ‘conceptual defining vocabulary’ that will have all the primitive concept representations necessary to create ontologies in any specialized area, with each element in each domain ontology specified as a combination of the primitive elements.  That’s the goal, and it will be approached incrementally over time as the foundation ontology expands to meet the needs of new applications.  By viewing the foundation ontology in this way, I think it will be possible to keep  the size at a level where it will not be too difficult to master.  Wherever there is some disagreement on how to represent some particular idea, the disagreeing parties effort could focus on describing the differences in terms of formal representations  – and the concept representations they agree on to describe the differences would then be candidates for inclusion in the foundation ontology, with the different views pushed out into extensions (or, if one prefers, different dependent ontologies in a “lattice of ontologies”).    This tactic may increase the ability to agree on the most fundamental concept representations.
 
   The problem of interoperability is still facing us, and from the perspective of getting semantic interoperability at a level that can support automated decisions in a mission-critical application, I don’t perceive any significant progress outside of the limited communities that each have fixed on some common upper ontology.  I think we can do better to move toward a critical mass that attracts vendors of utilities and applications.  As a scientific/engineering community it may be appropriate for us to feel an obligation to seriously explore all the possible ways to improve the utility of our ontologies. My suggestion is to explore the “conceptual defining vocabulary” tactic, and I hope we can have at least a few hour session at the Ontology Summit (or perhaps at FOIS, or both) for discussing that .
 
   If there is anyone else interested in exploring this approach, we can start discussions in this forum to identify the issues in this approach that need to be clarified, so that some portion of our community might be able to come to a consensus on whether or not to make a formal funding proposal.
 
   Meanwhile, have yourselves a Merry Little Christmas.
   
Pat
 

Patrick Cassidy
MICRA, Inc.
908-561-3416
cell: 908-565-4053
cassidy@xxxxxxxxx
 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Peter F Brown
Sent: Friday, December 21, 2007 9:54 AM
To: ray@xxxxxxxx
Cc: [ontolog-forum]
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Start thinking about the 2008 Ontology Summit

Hi Steve:
I look forward to it, and hope to join the call on Jan 3 and submit some ideas then or before…
 
As regards the dates, you might want to take account of the fact that OASIS have their AGM, Symposium and Board meeting in Santa Clara during the week 28 April to 2 May, so the Mon/Tue following would be ideal, at least for me who will be involved in all three, but also many potential participants who may well be at the Symposium at least.
That said, I know from experience that trying to find available time windows is a nightmare….
 
Regards,
 
Peter
 

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Steve Ray
Sent: 21 December 2007 15:45
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: [ontolog-forum] Start thinking about the 2008 Ontology Summit

As we have for the past two years, we are planning on holding a face-to-face meeting of the ontology community at NIST in the spring of 2008. We are ironing out some logistic details, but it is looking like a likely date is late April.
 
The purpose of this email is to solicit ideas for the topic we tackle this year, and then undertake an online discussion culminating in the meeting. One possibility is to arrive at a resolution by the community to support an online ontology repository somewhere. This topic is going to be discussed anyway at the January 3rd Ontolog Forum conference call – you may want to call in. There are numerous other possibilities for the Ontology Summit – please submit your favorites.
 
Steven R. Ray, Chief
Manufacturing Systems Integration Division
National Institute of Standards & Technology
Phone: (301) 975-3524
Fax: (301) 258-9749
Email: ray@xxxxxxxx
Web: http://www.nist.gov/msid
 
 



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