Introduction
I am Brand Niemann, Semantic Community, and recently completed 30 years of federal services at the US EPA as senior enterprise architect and data science. I am interested in the role of ontology in semantic interoperability and the application of semantic interoperability to major applications like Federal Cloud Computing, Enterprise Architecture and SOA, and Knowledge Management and Computational Journalism. Mills Davis and I are restarting the Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice (SICoP) and are trying to do at least one activity each month – please see our Events Calendar at http://semanticommunity.info/#Events_Calendar . We look forward to collaborating with you.
Comments During the First Morning
There are two simple concepts expressed during presentations by the two major government-funded ontology programs (EU and US JPDO) that I have yet to hear mentioned as follows:
1.Ontolog Forum, March 17th, Perspective from the European Commission
SteveRay: Ah - good quote: "The need comes first, ontologies come later"
See Chat Log: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_03_17#nid2QHC
2. Ontology Driven Implementation of Semantic Services for the Enterprise Environment (ODISSEE) Workshop, April 19, 2011
Barry Smith: Too many ontologies are creating semantic silios, we need only one ontology per domain, and can only afford one.
See: http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Ontology_Driven_Implementation_of_Semantic_Services.c2.a0for_the_Enterprise_Environment_(ODISSEE)_Workshop
and specifically Barry Smith at http://semanticommunity.info/Build_TOGAF_in_the_Cloud#Barry_Smith
and the summary slides I sent previously at http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/10494/=BrandNiemann04142011.pptx
So there are questions of sequencing and number of ontologies that need to be addressed.
Grand Challenges
I think the Ontology Community should engage in Challenges and Competitions (not the Grand Challenge) especially say for health data. I have participated in three so far and have not seen any using ontology – see http://semanticommunity.info/Build_the_Health_Data_Infrastructure_in_the_Cloud
Brand