Ontology Summit 2007: project kick-off and planning session - Thu 18-Jan-2007    (SLC)

Conference Call Details    (SLG)

Attendees    (SM0)

Background    (SMA)

In an earlier post on the Ontolog Forum last month, we announced the plan for another NIST-Ontolog joint event. We solicited participation and received very positive and supportive feedback from the community. We have decided to call this the "Ontology Summit" and intend to make this into an annual event. We are launching "Ontology Summit 2007" today. This will be three months of virtual discourse that culminates in a two-day face-to-face workshop (April 23 & 24, 2007 at Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA) and a written communiqué that would help clarify what everyone means when they use the term "ontology." We are most fortunate to have assembled a great organizing committee to direct this year's program. At this launch, we will be introducing the "Ontology Summit 2007" objective, organization, process, deliverables and preliminary plans to you, and we welcome your ideas and participation.    (SMB)

See: OntologySummit2007 (home page for the project)    (SMC)

Agenda & Proceedings:    (SMD)

Ontology Summit 2007 Project Launch    (SME)

Topic: Ontology Summit 2007 Project Launch    (SMN)

Building upon the successful model of last year's UpperOntologySummit, co-organizers from NIST, Ontolog, NCOR, NCBO, NIH, W3C, the Web 2.0 community and others (to be confirmed) are initiating a second summit during the spring of 2007.    (SMP)

We are hoping to convene key players in both research and applications who profess in developing or facilitating the evolution of "ontologies" to join us in our Ontology Summit 2007 activity to help answer the simple, yet very important question: "What is an Ontology?". The challenge put before the ontology community this year is to clarify what everyone means when they use the term "ontology". Our objective is to define and agree to a systematic means of categorizing the many kinds of things that are referred to as "an ontology." By doing so, the research, development and Internet communities would have a better way of comparing, combining and mapping ontologies to one another (apples to apples). The range of what people call "ontologies" covers so-called "folksonomies", taxonomies, thesauri, conceptual models, and formal logic-based models to name just a few flavors. The Ontolog Forum plans to initiate a vigorous on-line discussion of promising strawman structures to characterize all of these possibilities, and more, culminating in a face-to-face meeting during NIST's Interoperability Week 2007 (scheduled for the week of April 23, 2007). Similar to last year's summit, the meeting will release a written communique to the international press, laying out the final categorization structure and locating some key ontologies within it.    (SMQ)

Q & A and Discussion:    (SMX)

An Open Invitation    (SXT)

If you do find this initiative interesting or useful, we cordially invite you to join us in the "Ontology Summit 2007" virtual discourse that will be taking place in the next 3 months or so, and to the face-to-face workshops that will be held on 23 & 24-April-2007 as part of the NIST Interoperability Week in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.    (SXU)

Audio Recording of this Session    (SN6)