ontolog-forum
[Top] [All Lists]

Re: [ontolog-forum] Making the Ontology Summit content Accessible

To: Peter Yim <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx>, "[ontolog-forum]" <ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>, Michael F Uschold <uschold@xxxxxxxxx>
From: Ali Hashemi <ali@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2011 10:22:26 -0400
Message-id: <CADr70E0wWsqDN9PgncpFWsiJ6GvzCCczTTpTh322LtXmTkTVPQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Hi Peter and all,

After a long delay, I am finally capable of committing some time and energy on this effort (micro-tears on ankle ligaments means no camping+cottaging for a few weeks! :D ).

To briefly recap what's written below. 

Ontology Summit 2011 came and went, and was by many measures a success. Many wonderful conversations were stimulated and captured on ontolog wiki and the Communique with its supporting documentation provides a valuable resource to those who wish to make the case for ontology. However, it was noticed by many that the content is not as accessible to a broad audience as we'd like. Moreover, I think it was also noticed that we could derive additional value from the summit by creating a distinct, dedicated website for the work that was developed in the summit. 

As Michael Uschold and others noted, the way that content is presented on the ontolog wiki is well geared for collaboration, editing and creating, but not great for a broader audience. To address this issue, I think a proposal is to have the creation of a Summit Website to be an explicit goal of each summit from here on in.

To put our efforts where our mouths are, I think we can begin by creating a site for the Making the Case. Specifically, I think we can achieve three objectives in so doing:
  1. Present our work in engaging, custom-way way to a broad audience
  2. Actually use ontology to do so
    1. Demonstrate the use of an expressive, technology agnostic, though lightweight ontology in the conceptualization of our problem domain
    2. Demonstrate the mapping of the expressive ontology to a specific technology implementation that fits the needs of the problem domain
Where (2.1) and (2.2) provide two additional case examples of ontology in action.

To wit, in making the case, we considered:
  • Target audiences
  • Values and benefits
  • Case studies
  • Metrics
these each comprised separate tracks, yet any person who wants to use the output of the summit will likely be looking for a specific audience, where that audience values a subset of the metrics and a subset of the benefits, where in addition, only a subset of the case studies actually demonstrate these benefits. So by modeling how the output of the summit fits into the work ecology of our potential audience, we can structure our content in such a way to generate dynamic, custom views to the website users. Moreover, if this summit continues to collect more case studies, we would be able to organically grow the site as we add content with minimal costs. All-in-all, a good demonstration of what we're preaching about ontology, applied to itself - no?

I think (2.1) and (2.2) above demonstrate two uses of ontologies. The first (2.1) captures ontology in a technology agnostic way in an expressive language. I would propose using Common Logic to capture the relationship among the various tracks and our users. The second ontology use (2.2) corresponds to using the tools that are available now -- this involves mapping elements of minimally-defined CL theory to RDF/XML(?) statements that annotate our content + (stored) SPARQL queries that are used to generate the views according to user input. The idea is that the user won't be explicitly writing SPARQL queries, but rather, a nice, clean interface that elicits their specific needs as it pertains to making the case, would execute the queries and generate a dynamic, custom-tailored page.

What do people think? Any feedback?

And more importantly, are there people who would be willing to donate some time to realize this effort? I know Michael U. had wanted to refine our metrics and specifically the benefits that each use case purported to demonstrate. What we need for this effort are:
  • Refined metrics for the metric tracks
  • Standardized benefits in terms of the metrics for each of the use cases
  • Linking the target audiences to types of benefits
  • Minimally specified CL modules that represent the relations between the various tracks
  • A mapping of fragments of the CL modules to RDF annotations and SPARQL queries
  • An actual website that implements SPARQL and RDF/XML
Any volunteers for any of these tasks? Also, please note that CL, RDF and SPARQL are just initial proposals to get the ball rolling, if others feel that something else is more appropriate, please speak up.

Thanks in advance,
Ali


On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 10:09 AM, Peter Yim <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
Great, Ali! ... Forwarding this thread to the Ontolog community now ...

ALL: Let's continue the conversation here (on the [ontolog-forum] list).

Thanks & regards.  =ppy
--


---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Ali SH <asaegyn+out@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, May 25, 2011 at 5:26 AM
Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] Making the Summit Accessible
To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>


Dear all,
Yes, it seems like a good idea to shift the conversation over to the
regular forum.
Unfortunately, I will be without electronic communication until June
6, so I won't be able to contribute until then.
I will catch up then.
Best,
Ali


--


(•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,


On Sun, May 22, 2011 at 2:35 PM, Peter Yim <peter.yim@xxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
> Dear Ali and All,
>
>
> Thank you, Ali ... this is great! ... I concur and encourage everyone
> interested to actively engage in this conversation.
>
> 1.  I agree with you, and am in favor of having *one website* as the
> home to all summit "presentations" year-after-year. (I believe that
> academic conferences have their annual conferences distributed in
> different site-locations are a result of how "ownerships" get passed
> from institution to institution, and not a function of optimal
> design.)
>
> 2.  note that the Ontolog-CWE (collaborative work environment)
> actually have four key components in the infrastructure (a
> portal/website space, a wiki, an archived mailing list and a webdav
> server ... representing four somewhat orthogonal workspaces - a
> presentation space, a collaborative authoring and synchronization
> workspace, a conversation space, and a shared-file repository.) With
> your effort here, looks like we can finally take advantage of the
> portal/website infrastructure that has been sitting around all these
> years.
>
> 3.  since OntologySummit2011 is officially over, and this exercise
> that you are leading is actually using OntologySummit2011 as a case to
> develop something that extends beyond this year's Summit and is
> important to the entire ontology community, you might consider moving
> the conversation to the [ontolog-forum] list, where the reach is wider
> (roughly twice the number of subscribers, and more international
> participation.)
>
> 4.  to augment this threaded discussion, please consider picking one
> (or even several) time slots to run real-time focused discussion
> and/or workshop(s) on this effort, making use of, say, the regular
> Ontolog Thursday event time slot and virtual panel discussion session
> format, as you feel appropriate. Reserve any date that is marked
> "open" on our Ontolog master event calendar - see:
> http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?MeetingsCalls (email me if I
> can be of help to facilitate the organization of such event(s).)
>
>
> Thanks & regards.  =ppy
> --


> On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 9:53 PM, Ali Hashemi <ali@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> > beyond the conclusion of the face-to-face meetings.
> > As a follow up to yesterday's conference call
> > (http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_05_19), I think
> > we agreed on the need for developing something more than a Communique. We
> > need to present the culmination of the summit (Communique + Tracks + Wiki
> > content) in a more effective manner.
> >
> > Specifically, if we're considering putting the creation of a website as an
> > additional explicit goal of the outcome of future summits, then I think we
> > have one of two choices:
> >
> > One central site that contains each year
> > One site for each year (i.e. how academic conferences usually collect
> > material)
> >
> > I think the first one makes more sense, as it provides a more unified view
> > of the progress of ontology and the summits. My personal experience with
> > conference websites (say for IJCAI) is that each year differs highly in
> > quality, they are not presented in a consistent way, and are generally a
> > frustrating way to keep track of conferences over a long period of time.
> > Beyond the above consideration, I would suggest that the purpose of each
> > site should be to support the theme of the summit and mediate the relation
> > to resources developed over the course of the summit in a more accessible
> > manner.
> > I'll use the 2011 Making the Case Summit to illustrate what I mean by the
> > above statement.
> > In this case, we identified a number of tracks tackling different aspects of
> > one problem -- how to construct a compelling, persuasive argument re
> > ontologies. In the course of this process, we collected, developed and are
> > ultimately providing the material for ontology evangelists to make actual
> > cases. Not only that, but the resources we provide include identifying a set
> > of target audiences and broad strategies that evangelists might actually
> > employ.
> > !!
> > The fact that an ontology evangelist would use the output of the summit to
> > make a case should drive our organization and access to the collected and
> > developed material. That is how a site would support the theme of this
> > year's summit.
> > To briefly recap,
> >
> > We identified a number of different audiences
> >
> > who care about a number of different metrics
> >
> > We identified a set of benefits that ontology can provide
> >
> > with corersponding metrics
> >
> > We solicited and collected a number of use cases
> >
> > where presumably, ontology actually delivered those benefits
> > and it is expressible via the metrics.
> >
> > Remembering why an evangelist would be accessing the communique in the first
> > place, this suggests a natural layout... Just to be explicit, an ontology
> > evangelist wants to persuade at least the audiences we identified (+perhaps
> > others that we missed) using at least the resources we provided. So given
> > their audience, they’re interested in only a subset of the benefits, metrics
> > and use cases at any one time. Moreover it would be useful for them to see
> > which use cases and value metrics apply to which audience member.
> > So... We should capture these relations in our content, and provide views
> > into the summit web site according to the evangelist's target audience.
> >
> > (Evangelist (wants_to) convince TargetAudience)
> > (TargetAudiences value Benefits)
> > (TargetAudiences respond_to Metrics)
> > (Metrics measure Benefits)
> > (UseCases deliver Benefits)
> >
> > The ValueMetrics Synthesis (
> > http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011_ValueMetrics_Synthesis
> > ) already largely captures the mapping between the UseCases and both
> > Benefits and Metrics.
> > As Michael Uschold noted in today’s meeting, we should be able to develop an
> > ontology for the usage framework. I believe it is also possible to connect
> > that with the value metrics, and finally connect that to the target audience
> > to create a tight loop to drive the development of our web effort.
> > What we need to do is make these relations a bit more formal (and perhaps
> > machine readable)!  And also, clearly articulate which Benefits and which
> > ValueMetrics correspond to which TargetAudience. Machine readable
> > representations are particularly desirably if we want to grow the usage
> > example collection and provide dynamic views of our resources to the users.
> > With such a structure in place, we can then develop a site that better
> > corresponds to evangelist needs. Though of course, it would also be useful
> > to have a presentation scheme that presents the story of the evolution of
> > the summit as well.
> > Are there any volunteers? Might someone in the ValueSynthesis track be able
> > to extract the relevant bits of the matrix in some formalism? Can we agree
> > on a vocabulary for audience, benefits, metrics and use case types in a
> > machine readable way? <-- This is already informally done in the
> > communique+tracks to some degree. The results of this analysis will at the
> > very least drive the layout of the pages+views, and perhaps facilitate the
> > technology implementation for the delivery of "nuggets" of content that
> > we'll be hosting. We can discuss what a "nugget" of content means for this
> > summit...
> > Best,
> > Ali
> >
> >
> > --
> >
> >
> > (•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,
> >
> >
> > _________________________________________________________________
> > Msg Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
> > Subscribe/Config: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/
> > Unsubscribe: mailto:ontology-summit-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> > Community Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/OntologySummit2011/
> > Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2011
> > Community Portal: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/



--


(•`'·.¸(`'·.¸(•)¸.·'´)¸.·'´•) .,.,

_________________________________________________________________
Message Archives: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-forum/  
Config Subscr: http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontolog-forum/  
Unsubscribe: mailto:ontolog-forum-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Shared Files: http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/
Community Wiki: http://ontolog.cim3.net/wiki/ 
To join: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (01)

<Prev in Thread] Current Thread [Next in Thread>