OntologySummit2009 Planning Session - Thu 2008-12-18    (1Q08)

Conference Call Details    (1Q09)

Attendees    (1Q1C)

Agenda Ideas    (1Q1Y)

(Please add below, and identify yourself for follow-up purposes)    (1Q27)

Agenda & Proceedings    (1Q1Z)

1. Meeting called to order:    (1Q8B)

2. Roll Call:    (1Q8F)

3. Discussions:    (1Q8H)

5. New Issues:    (1Q8O)

6. Any Other Business:    (1Q8P)

7. Action items:    (1Q8Q)

8. Schedule Next Meeting & Adjourn:    (1Q8R)

 --
 notes taken by: PeterYim / 2008.12.18-12:10 pm PST
 All participants, please review and edit to enhance accuracy and granularity  of the documented proceedings.    (1Q8U)

Transcript of the in-session chat input from the participants:    (1QAA)

Edited to provide better flow of the conversation only.    (1QAB)

 PeterYim: Welcome to: OntologySummit2009 Planning Session - Thu 2008-12-18    (1QAC)
 RexBrooks: One partition that I think would be helpful is a survey of existing ontological 
            representations of standards.    (1QAD)
 MikeBennett: Do you mean industry messaging / data standards like XBRL?    (1QAE)
 RexBrooks: Hi Mike. Yes.    (1QAG)
 RexBrooks: XBRL is especially pertinent.    (1QAH)
 RexBrooks: The OASIS Semantic Execution Environment Technical Committee (SEE TC) released a 
            Pubic Review draft of its Reference Ontology for Service Oriented Architecture 
            recently. see: http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200812/msg00001.html    (1QAF)
 MikeBennett: An interesting challenge - many of the ones in my industry (financial) were developed 
              without defining a technology neutral business view of what they were trying to represent.    (1QAI)
 RexBrooks: Exactly.    (1QAJ)
 PeterBenson: If we are looking at standards we must be looking at conformance clauses and criteria    (1QAK)
 RexBrooks: Indeed. Those may also vary with the representation, e.g. OWL, OWL-S. WSML etc.    (1QAL)
 PeterBenson: starting with defining what is and is not an ontology would be useful    (1QAM)
 DougHolmes: Peter, a previous Ontology Summit has addressed the question you raised on "what is an ontology?";
             the communique is at http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2007_Communique    (1QAN)
 PeterBenson: Thanks Doug, I took a look but could not find a definition.    (1QAO)
 PeterBenson: As in a definition we could add to an ISO standard    (1QAP)
 DougHolmes: We more or less came to the same conclusion.    (1QAQ)
 MikeBennett: Indeed te communique says "The goal of the Ontology Summit is not to establish 
              a definitive definition of the word "ontology", which has proved extremely 
              challenging due to the diversity of artifacts it can refer to"    (1QAR)
 PeterBenson: hmm.. if we can not define it do we know what we are talking about?    (1QAS)
 PeterYim: Q1: who else should get involved?    (1QAT)
 PeterBenson: NATO AC/135    (1QAU)
 MikeBennett: UN/CEFACT    (1QAV)
 PeterYim: BillMcCarthy is already on our organizing committee and will be our liaison to UN/CEFACT    (1QAW)
 PeterBenson: The chair of AC/135 is George Bond he is on our board - so yes I will be glad to contact him    (1QAX)
 RexBrooks: We already have NCOR, but it would be good to have both BarrySmith and MarkMusen.    (1QAY)
 PeterYim: Yes, we do have both of them (BarrySmith and MarkMusen) on the organizing committee already.    (1QAZ)
 DougHolmes: It seems to me that it would be good to have at least some representative 
             of the GIS community [e.g. GML]    (1QB0)
 PeterBenson: If you are looking for UN/CEFACT then you may want to ask TC 154    (1QB1)
 BillMcCarthy: I can talk to my co-convenor for the accounting interoperability summit Roger Debreceny 
               with the purpose of including XBRL    (1QB2)
 MikeBennett: EDM Council of course    (1QB3)
 PeterBenson: TC 37 would be a natural as they deal with terminology    (1QB4)
 DougHolmes: In the spirit of brainstorming, there are also some de-facto standards, such as 
             Dublin Core and FOAF that seem to be "ontological"    (1QB5)
 TrishWhetzel: SKOS is another    (1QB6)
 PeterYim: EdDodds suggested XBRL and UDEF too    (1QB7)
 MikeBennett: SUMO - IEEE    (1QB8)
 DougHolmes: And, a number of architecture standards [e.g. FEAF, DODAF, etc.]    (1QB9)
 TrishWhetzel: Will the ISO groups by default bring in the grid folks, ie caGrid?    (1QBA)
 KenBaclawski: As I mentioned in my introduction, I have been working with the CEA-2018 standard. 
               The standard is a general task planning standard which could have applications in 
               many domains, but was developed for consumer electronics.  My contact with the 
               standards committee is Chuck Rich at WPI, and I will try to get him to participate.    (1QBB)
 PeterYim: Q2: how could we partition this year's discourse? - i.e. framing the conversation    (1QBC)
 MikeBennett: Ontology development methodologies    (1QBD)
 PeterBenson: Does this mean you are keeping "information" in the title?    (1QBE)
 DougHolmes: 1. What is the role of an ontology in establishing a standard?
             2. What kind of constraints or rules [standards?] should be applied to 
                ontologies that are used to establish a standard?    (1QBF)
 KurtConrad: Not clear on what you mean by "partition"    (1QBG)
 PeterBenson: The ISO definition of "data" is the representation of information -    (1QBH)
 PeterBenson: There are no "information standard" that I know of    (1QBI)
 MatthewWest: Standards (amongst other things) provide definitions and authoritative sources for 
              identification of standard objects. Ontology is a natural next step for that, 
              whether the standards are information standards or not. 
              Standards themselves are information.    (1QBJ)
 MikeBennett: You might want to look at a breakdown of the different kind of animals that are 
              referred to as standards in different industries, for example some are message standards 
              (XML or otherwise), some are data models and so on. Should there be a partition on this? 
              Also some standards mandate business workflow and so on.    (1QBK)
 KenBaclawski: A lot of standards are being expressed in XML Schema or RELAX NG.  
               CEA-2018 is expressed in RELAX NG.  Are these already ontologies?    (1QBL)
 PeterBenson: I agree that ontologies could be the next step in the representation of information 
              hence my request for a definition of the term ontology as this may provide the 
              natural partition of the debate    (1QBM)
 PeterYim: input from DavidPrice: what are "today's" (as opposed to "next generation") standards, 
           and which parts of it lends to ontological representation with today's technology; 
           and which parts require research to bring us to the future.    (1QBN)
 DavidLeal: Standards that define a pipe thread or a material test method (two examples at random) 
            are currently expressed as text. We need to educate standardisation communities that 
            are not involved with IT about ontologies.    (1QBO)
 RexBrooks: Earlier in the chat, I suggested: One partition that I think would be helpful is 
            a survey of existing ontological representations of standards. 
            I also cited: The OASIS Semantic Execution Environment Technical Committee (SEE TC) 
            released a Public Review draft of its Reference Ontology for Service Oriented Architecture 
            recently. http://lists.oasis-open.org/archives/tc-announce/200812/msg00001.html    (1QBP)
 PeterBenson: computer processable standards?    (1QBQ)
 PeterYim: Q3: suggestions for developing a "Roadmap" as a key deliverable    (1QBR)
 DavidLeal: Peter - that what I was attempting to say, but most standardisation communities 
            do not know what is possible.    (1QBS)
 MatthewWest: Web 1, Web 2, Web 3 history and predictions, provide a startpoint for a road map.    (1QBT)
 PeterBenson: Sounds like a previous Ontology Summit sought to addressed the question of what is 
              an ontology without coming up with a definitive answer, working towards defining classes 
              of ontologies would be useful    (1QBU)
 RexBrooks: The Semantic Spectrum that Leo introduced several years ago is still viable as 
            a type of roadmap in the sense that we can compare where we are in terms of 
            expressivity versus how computable the otnological representations are.    (1QBV)
 DougHolmes: Peter, I think if you qualify that as an "artifact for defining standards", it might 
             be a tractable goal    (1QBW)
 MikeBennett: That suggests another stream which would be how to present ontology information in a 
              non IT format. Is that something that should be on the roadmap?    (1QBX)
 PeterBenson: He rest of the world is a pretty large audience, can we be a little bit more precise    (1QBY)
 PeterBenson: so explaining what an ontology is would be a good goal    (1QBZ)
 MikeBennett: One possible audience: those responsible for maintaining standards. 
              Specifically industry (content) standards where the business content is often 
              not captured because the technical people developing the standard are not strong 
              on requirements management.    (1QC0)
 DougHolmes: Peter, I think explaining what an ontology is in the context of using it to define 
             a standard is a reasonable goal; if we don't constrain it like that, we'll just 
             repeat the 2007 experience...    (1QC1)
 PeterBenson: By that definition ISO 22745-30 is a specification of how to express an ontology in XML    (1QC2)
 PeterBenson: The ISO 13584 is developing ontoML    (1QC3)
 PeterBenson: The ISO 13584 team is developing ontoML    (1QC4)
 PeterBenson: Doug, I agree with you    (1QC5)
 MatthewWest: We need to look at standards expressed as ontologies as well as standard ontologies.    (1QC6)
 DavidLeal: An area in which it would be good to have a success is LCA (Life Cycle Assessment) data. 
            There have been attempt to create an ontology corresponding to the standard ISO 14048. 
            The team at the EU JRC in Ispra would be interested.    (1QC7)
 BillMcCarthy: The Open-edi accounting and economic ontology (ISO/IEC 15944-4) is expressed in UML    (1QC8)
 MatthewWest: What I mean is that we need to focus on standard expressed as ontologies rather 
              than standard ontologies or ontology languages.    (1QC9)
 PeterBenson: Is everything expressed in UML an ontology?    (1QCA)
 PeterYim: Q4: process suggestions?    (1QCB)
 PeterBenson: if we are dealing with a large group trying to come to consensus a variation of 
              Robert's rules of order may work. The requirement that a motion must be put in 
              play tends to help focus the discussion    (1QCC)
 PeterYim: input from MarkMusen: we should have the Communique pretty much into "final draft" 
           (if not already done) by the time we all walk into the face-to-face workshop 
           ... we could use the F2F time more wisely    (1QCD)
 PeterYim: we should get people to involve early .. and definitely to be cognizant that this 
           is a 3-month affair and NOT a 2-day conference    (1QCE)
 FabianNeuhaus: I support Mark's point, during the last summit people who did not participate 
                until the face-to-face meeting made last minute requests for changes which 
                derailed the schedule for the Summit    (1QCF)
 PeterBenson: Inviting people who may not want to "participate" but may be willing to review 
              the output may be worth considering.    (1QCG)
 KenBaclawski: Capturing the rationales for the parts of a communique would help prevent 
               participants from recapitulating the debate that resulted in the draft communique.    (1QCH)
 PeterBenson: It should be possible to create a "voting" comunity    (1QCI)
 PeterYim: Q5: any other suggestions?    (1QCJ)
 MikeBennett: I think that if you want to have a clear message for industry standards owners, 
              there should be some consistent definition of what an ontology is, including some 
              consistent approach to what would be defined as good ontology for the content of 
              that standard.    (1QCK)
 PeterBenson: absolutely    (1QCL)
 KenBaclawski: Have we started asking individuals to select roles in the summit planning, 
               organization and logistics?    (1QCM)
 PeterYim: we'll be putting up the [ontology-summit] mailing list ... those who are involved 
           (or responded to) today's sesion will automatically be subscribed.    (1QCN)
 DougHolmes: Adios    (1QCO)
 PeterYim: Thanks everyone ... meeting adjourned 2008.12.18-12:06pm PST    (1QCP)
 - end of chat transcript -    (1QCQ)