Re: [ontology-summit] Media Kit?

[Ali Hashemi <ali@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Peter, Nicola, Rex, John and all,

To Nicola and Peter, I would be willing to play a role in taking this initiative forward, though 
my experience in this regard has been limited to assisting the development of media 
strategies (what messages to get across and developing the content 
material), not so much in their execution (contacting the press). 

I believe it is possible to have an active media strategy on a shoestring (or non-existent) budget. Obviously, it is not ideal, but it can help tremendously in preparing the right background that we want. From my observations, the standards for what is publishable are ... very accepting. Really, a good 20%(?) of their articles are little more than re-wordings of press releases by university press offices. 

As mentioned before, the least we can do is provide the requisite background material in a straightforward and easily accessible manner, so that an interested party can write a story or two. Writing an actual press release, would likely get it echoed in many of the above sites.

I notice that few of our sound bites or elevator pitches are explicitly aimed at journalists or lay audiences. A lot of the writing on this forum is written in "academese" which automatically reduces the potential readership. The first four minutes of this talk (while mainly focused on governance and community) touches on little things we can incorporate in both our material and how we publish it, to make follow up easier: http://www.ted.com/talks/dave_meslin_the_antidote_to_apathy.html

Nonetheless, I don't believe that waiting for finding professional help or volunteers should prevent us from getting started . We all know more or less the outline of the message we wish to communicate, and with further discussion can clarify, refine and adapt the content in the communique as key take-away messages for the media, around which we then develop tailored content.

There is the issue that this is a community effort, highlighting an entire field and not a particular company or technology implementation, which is why I suggested we focus on the role of ontolog (and perhaps the IAOA) as the key players. This of course introduces a collective action problem re finding resources, but the community has developed solutions to similar problems in the past. 

I'm sure one of our contributors who is affiliated with a university can consult their press office and see how one gets one of these echo chamber websites to pay us some attention. Though again, afai can tell, eurekalert leads the other sites by a few hours or days, and its bar for publishing an article is hinted at here (they are quite ...welcoming): http://www.eurekalert.org/aboutus.php .

PS - John, to view a post on a facebook page or group, you do not need to login. This is the ontolog facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=184463208664 , I believe you can view all the content there without signing in (btw, the group owners should really get that url changed to www.facebook.com/ontolog it takes about 30 seconds to do so). Of course, there are also aggregators which centralize all of twitter, buzz, facebook etc. into one location, so when you publish a message, it is automatically broadcast to all the tied in sites. For example, http://www.tweetdeck.com/ allows simultaneous posts to multiple social networks - mind you, this technology space is fast evolving, and there are no clear winners or leaders yet. 

PPS - I unfortunately won't be at the summit, but I would like to preemptively thank all those who make sure that the electronified version of the events are comprehensive. They are a very valuable resource - thank you kindly!

Best,
Ali

On Sat, Apr 16, 2011 at 1:41 AM, Nicola Guarino <nicolguar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Folks,

I am forwarding the message below, which Ali Hashemi circulated to the ontology summit mailing list. I believe that Ali's proposal makes a lot of sense also from the IAOA's point of view, let's try to establish the best possible synergies in order to spread the word...

Comments? Ali, are you willing to play a role in IAOA for disseminating information? I remember we set up a committee for this, which is not very active...

Nicola (on my way to the Ontology Summit)


Begin forwarded message:

From: Ali Hashemi <ali@xxxxxxxxx>
Date: 15 aprile 2011 16:42:07 GMT+02:00
To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

Subject: [ontology-summit] Media Kit?

Reply-To: Ontology Summit 2011 discussion <ontology-summit@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>

How would people feel about developing a media kit as a follow up to this year's ontology summit?

While there some articles about the semantic web or specific AI technologies have appeared in the (business and technology) press, the term ontology has not really penetrated popular consciousness in a meaningful way. A vital step in expanding the role of ontology in industry is to familiarize the broader background of the audience, so it is not even an issue to get glazed looks or have to continually run through basic background. The least that can be done is to facilitate the reporting of ontology developments - especially if it is picking up steam. 

As it would apply to the summit, what is newsworthy is the readiness and potential for ontology for industry, as a point of interest to the business and technology press. Ontology is around you, and industry is realizing its value in greater numbers - you should find out what all the fuss is about. 

To wit, outlets such as:

• http://wired.com/
• http://techcrunch.com/
• http://arstechnica.com/
• http://technologyreview.com/
• http://www.physorg.com/
• http://www.sciencedaily.com/
• http://eurekalert.com/ 

among others report on similar developments in other technologies, or simply even published papers. (They often also run articles that are little more than verbatim copies of press releases from a university or corporation.) 

It should be relatively straightforward to provide the requisite material to write a story about the upcoming, emerging wave of ontology (not just semweb) based solutions in industry. What we could provide in such a press kit could include relevant background such as:

• the communique itself
• brief about the summit (why, what happened)
• brief about ontology itself (why all the fuss)
• brief about the community (i.e. role of ontolog and social networking in bringing people together) 
• links to successful use cases
• summary of some of the more exciting, promising potential in cutting edge research

Optionally, we might even provide a press release demonstrating a possible story that could be told with this information.  If there is video being taken at the summit, and if the production values are adequate, the video can be used as supplementary material (or rather, edited 5 minute spurts summarizing key points).

Before developing this idea further on this forum - is there interest and a willingness to commit some time/effort to develop and pursue such an add-on?

Best,

Ali

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