An old saying in business is "good ideas" that don't make money are
just "interesting ideas". (01)
On 4 March 2011 18:00, Obrst, Leo J. <lobrst@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> FYI.
>
> In January 2011's Communications of the ACM (which I just began reading),
>Phillip G. Armour has an article entitled The Business of Software: Don't
>Bring Me a Good Idea
>(http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2011/1/103193-dont-bring-me-a-good-idea/fulltext).
> In this, he quotes Jason Kalich, Microsoft's general manager of the
>Relationship Experience Division (whatever that is), to the effect that:
>
> Don't bring him good ideas, nor cost savings. Bring him revenue growth: "new
>value, new products, new customers, new markets ..."
>
> Thanks,
> Leo
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Obrst, Leo J.
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 5:52 PM
> To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion
> Subject: RE: [ontology-summit] [strategy] Blank Stares and Semantic
>Technology: A Semantic Evangelist's ToolKit
>
> I think in general the Linked Open Data movement, along with these relatively
>simple ontologies (FOAF, GoodRelations, product ontology, etc.) will provide a
>ladder (escalator?) for folks, towards understanding the value of ontologies.
>Even though the Linked Data movement represents a tamped-down Semantic Web,
>probably folks have to understand structured data and structural approaches
>(RDF + IRIs) before they realize the limits of those, much like they have to
>go through XML to realize its limits.
>
> Thanks,
> Leo
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>[mailto:ontology-summit-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Bart Gajderowicz
> Sent: Friday, March 04, 2011 4:06 PM
> To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion
> Subject: Re: [ontology-summit] [strategy] Blank Stares and Semantic
>Technology: A Semantic Evangelist's ToolKit
>
> Let me clarify:
>
> BG:
> If we talk to the developers who know their own systems
> inside-and-out, and allow them to incorporate ontologies via tools...
>
> JS:
> Right. But no ontology today will help anybody "build and maintain an
> application quickly."
>
>
> My apologies if I didn't explain myself. I'm not proposing an ontology
> to develop tools, but instead tools that allow developers to work WITH
> ontologies. Speaking their language essentially. The reason I brought
> up open source is because I see why developers and their companies
> have been adopting new open source technologies successfully. Years
> back MVC was only know in the software engineering context, now it's
> known by every developer (give or take).
>
> The more developers adopt them, the more use-cases they produce.
> Companies have been seeing this trend and open sourcing parts of their
> systems, or opening up API's to their data. This only makes those
> technologies (and their owners) richer. To take advantage, developers
> have been learning more and more about data-mining and other ways to
> manage data. My background is in machine-learning so I've seen how
> novice data users approach data-mining. I'd like to see this happening
> for ontologies.
>
> Open Data is an opportunity to promote semantics as well. The OpenData
> repositories, free and pay-per-use, are growing. I'd love for them to
> start supporting the types of semantic tools Bioportal and OOR
> provide. If they provide data via API's that support semantics and
> allow incorporating them quickly, companies will start seeing the
> benefit of viewing them through this "semantic view".
>
> So two ways to help developer adopt ontologies are:
>
> 1) Develop/promote the tools that allow them to work with semantics in
> one shape or another. Whether it's OWL, RDF, etc, these can be the
> steppingstones to the acceptance of ontologies like SUMO and Cyc.
>
> 2) Give them only the parts of ontologies they need and can work with
> right away. Produce subsets of ontologies to solve a particular
> problem in manageable chunks. As simple as they are, FOAF and
> GoodRelations are great examples, and relate to topics their adopters
> understand, personal relationships between people and companies. Let's
> promote the technologies people are using to incorporate these
> ontologies.
>
>
> On 4 March 2011 15:10, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> Bart,
>>
>> The main point I was trying to make is that you can't measure
>> the result of an ontology by itself.
>>
>> For example, you could take an old mainframe application that
>> drives a "green screen", write a new front end, and get a web
>> application. But you can't use an ontology to upgrade any kind
>> of running application. You have to start from scratch without
>> any guarantee that the result will do anything useful.
>>
>>> It's not about promoting specific ontologies, or even ontologies
>>> in general. It's about promoting the tools to use with ontologies
>>> first, and for this audience specifically promoting Cyc or SUMO
>>> is what creates the blank stares in the first place.
>>
>> Historical interlude: Back in the 1990s, Cyc was supported by
>> some large corporations and gov't agencies. They all employed
>> people who had PhDs in comp. sci., even with specialties in AI.
>> There were no blank stares, because they had already bought
>> Doug Lenat's sales pitch.
>>
>> Every one of those groups had a complete set of Cyc software and
>> the full ontology. I talked with some of the people at those
>> companies and agencies. But none of their employees were able
>> to develop a single deployed application. One of them said
>> "Everybody who spent any significant time working with Cyc
>> was let go, and I don't believe that's a coincidence."
>>
>> I admit that Cyc has improved quite a bit during the past decade.
>> But one of the people at a location where Cyc is used said that
>> there is a "huge disconnect" between the skills required to work
>> with Cyc and the skills required for any other software.
>>
>>> Ease of development is what the Ruby on Rails framework provides.
>>> It's very popular only because it allows developers to build and
>>> maintain an application quickly.
>>
>> Right. But no ontology today will help anybody "build and maintain
>> an application quickly."
>>
>>
>> What tools? Where is the ontology equivalent of "Ruby on Rails"?
>>
>> John
>>
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>
>
>
> --
> Bart Gajderowicz, MSc.
> Ryerson University
> http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~bgajdero
>
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> (02)
--
Bart Gajderowicz, MSc.
Ryerson University
http://www.scs.ryerson.ca/~bgajdero (03)
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