Re: [ontology-summit] Ontology Summit 2011: Communique draft review sess

[Michael F Uschold <uschold@xxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks John, for this input.  It is very challenging, as you say.

My 2 cents below.

Michael 

On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 10:54 PM, John F. Sowa <sowa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 4/7/2011 1:20 AM, Michael F Uschold wrote:

Did you get a chance to put together the introduction paragraphs?

I'm still working on it.

As you may have noticed, I can write 3 paragraphs very quickly in
response to an email note.  But trying to think of a good "hook"
for a title of an article or an opening paragraph of the article
is extremely difficult.

I'll sleep on it.  If I can think of anything when I wake up, I'll
type it up.  But right now, I can't think of what to say.

Exercise for the readers:

 1. Can anybody think of some idea that would really grab the readers'
   attention -- i.e., the readers we want to reach.

Start of with seomthign that is surprising, the the reader may not have known.  I'm going to make up some 'facts' below that wodul be good if it were true:

1. 50 Fortune 500 companiese have hired ontologists in  house
2. Company X saves $10/year after a $3m one time investment in ontologies 
3. The nubmer of vendors has increased from 50 to 500 in the past 3 years.

Mills may have some of these kinds of figures at hand.  Ideall we want to pick one ontology application that is exemplary is every way. Suggested criteria for the perfect one:

1. There was a calculated ROI or other well documented benefits 
2. Someone on our team persononally knows someone on the project, so we have more confidence than reading hype form a company pitch.
3. The use of the ontology has to have been critical to the success of the project, not just "one was used, and it helped a bit".  
4. The way that the ontology was used has to be well documented and easy to explain.
5. The company should be a household name, e.g. fortune 500.
6. It is easy for everyone to do their own research on the project from publicly available documentation.
7. The company has at least one full time ontologist on staff, possibley.

We may not find one that matches all of these, but we should aim for the best one.

I woud like to propose the Sallie Mae example that Dave McCoomb talked about.  There was a very substantial ROI, but I do not know details of how or whether it was calculated.  I know the people who worked on the project, we can get details on exactly how the ontology was used.  It was critical to the success of the project.  It is not too hard to explain where the value came from.  A key benefit is flexibility.  They went out and hired a full time ontologist after the project was over, that person continues to talk about ontology projects at SemTech events.   There is some material on this that is publicly available from talks at SemTech. 

Can anyone think of a better example?   SIRI has been proposed.  I would love for this to be our example, but I am doubtful that it meets most of these criteria. They don't talk much about the technology, so we have no idea if they used an ontology or how.  Tom Gruber had a successful company in the travel area. It looked like he could have been using ontologies. I asked him and he said not really, other than having a simple taxonomy to do geo containment reasoning.  I have no information about SIRI, but I would guess the story there would be the same.  The key technology there was voice and NLP and maybe machine learning.  The key to success was the business model, not just the technology.

 2. It's not necessary to phrase that idea in a catchy way.  The first
   thing that comes to mind is rarely a good hook, but it can be a
   starting point to start the thinking process.

Agreed; brainstorming mode.

 

 3. The second paragraph should be the "anecdote", which develops the
   idea.  That could consist of one or more examples of promising
   applications for ontology, along the lines we discussed in our
   previous telecon.

Yes, this would elaborate on the surprising fact stated at the outset.

 

 4. Then the third paragraph generalizes the examples into a principle
   that could be applied to many things similar to the ones given
   in the anecdote(s).

I like this very much.  Working backwards, I would like for the principle to be that "Ontologies provide flexibility". This is one thing that is a) very important b) we can probably all agree on.

 

Notice that I just wrote up the material in this note very quickly.
That is because I was talking about something that I had thought
about years ago.

But as I said in earlier telecons, my mind is a blank when it comes
to selling ontology.  I can write pages and pages *about* ontology,
but I don't really know how to sell it.

John

--
Michael Uschold, PhD
   Senior Ontology Consultant, Semantic Arts

   LinkedIn: http://tr.im/limfu
   Skype, Twitter: UscholdM

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