OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 - "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009    (24LY)

OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"    (24LZ)

Conference Call Details    (24M0)

Attendees:    (24N0)

Resources    (25KJ)

Topic: OntologySummit2010 - Creating the Ontologists of the Future    (24NL)

This is our 5th Ontology Summit, a joint initiative by NIST, Ontolog, NCOR, NCBO and IAOA with the support of our co-sponsors. The theme adopted for this Ontology Summit is: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future."    (25KX)

Increasingly, major national and international projects centered on ontology technology are being advanced by governments and by scientific and industrial organizations. This brings a growing need for ontology expertise and thus for new methods and institutions for the training of ontologists. The 2010 Ontology Summit will explore strategies to address this need in terms of curriculum, establishment of new career tracks, role of ontology support organizations and funding agencies, as well as training in the analysis and comparison of methodologies for designing, maintaining, implementing, testing and applying ontologies and associated tools and resources.    (25KZ)

In this session, we will describe the mechanisms by which we shall facilitate the discourse and elicit input from the community. We will be engaging the participants, at the session, to provide some real-time input and insights to help us shape and refine the survey instruments we will be using during the course of this summit, so we can collectively survey the landscape and the possibilities.    (25L0)

See also: OntologySummit2010 (home page for the project)    (25L1)

Agenda & Proceedings:    (24NK)

Ontology Summit 2010 Launch    (25L2)

Transcript of the online chat during the session:    (24NM)

 see raw transcript here. 
 (chat-transcript below has been re-organized and lightly edited for clarity.)
 Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.    (25LA)
	PeterYim: Welcome to the OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 
	- "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009    (25NT)
	OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"    (25NU)
	* OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 Topic: "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities"    (25NV)
	* Co-chairs: Dr. SteveRay & Dr. AmandaVizedom    (25NW)
	* On the Panel: SteveRay, AmandaVizedom, ArturoSanchez, ElizabethFlorescu, PeterYim 
	and other Summit Track co-champions    (25NX)
	* See details on session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_12_17    (25NY)
	.    (25NZ)
	anonymous morphed into SteveRay    (25O0)
	anonymous1 morphed into AntonyGalton    (25O1)
	anonymous morphed into BernardUlozas    (25O2)
	ArturoSanchez: Hello there Antony. Are you in the call now?    (25O3)
	AntonyGalton: Just about to dial in.    (25O4)
	anonymous2 morphed into Tom Dale    (25O5)
	anonymous1 morphed into ElizabethFlorescu    (25O6)
	anonymous2 morphed into Lisa Zilinski    (25O7)
	RaviSharma: Arturo: we need categories on semantics, tagged web pages, Linked -open - data, Vocabularies, 
	terms, data dictionaries, philosophy and math or specific like CL etc.    (25O8)
	ArturoSanchez: @Ravi: are you referring to the survey? If so, what specific page in the survey are you 
	referring to?    (25O9)
	FabianNeuhaus: suggestion to arturo and antony: could you include the examples for program/course/course 
	that includes ontology related concepts that arturo just used to explain the slide    (25OA)
	ToddSchneider: Will a set of definitions be developed to help with the terminology differences?    (25OB)
	ArturoSanchez: @Fabian: good idea ... will do ...    (25OC)
	KenBaclawski: Even in the US, terminology can vary from institution to institution. Sometimes programs are 
	divided into majors and majors into concentrations.    (25OD)
	ArturoSanchez: @Todd: do you mean as part of the survey?    (25OE)
	ArturoSanchez: @Ken: these would be 'programs' (collectively referred to as ...)    (25OF)
	PeterYim: A note on the event calendar ... the Thu 2010.02.11 date for the "Quality" Track Panel Session is 
	still tentative (and is subject to change)    (25OG)
	RaviSharma: Arturo and Antony: we have slight preference in the survey for academic courses leading to 
	degree but there are courses or tool based or technologies based training programs that we all might be 
	surprise at in terms of numbers of practical ontologists and semantics professionals that these tracks might 
	be able to generate. These could include categories in the surveys such as: Vocational, Tool based, 
	Migration in to ontologies from Bio, bioinformatics, IT, Standards that can use or that are based on 
	ontologies, etc.?    (25OH)
	GaryBergCross: Does the "survey" process plan to include ontology modules/courses which are in Departments 
	of Theology/religion. Ontology is often discussed there.    (25OI)
	ArturoSanchez: @GaryBergCross: yes ... hopefully respondents will identify these types of programs, and you 
	can send the link to your colleagues working in these areas (good point!)    (25OJ)
	PierreGrenon: Arturo / Antony: while universities might be the main institutions concerned, can we make 
	provisions for 'professional certification'?    (25OK)
	PierreGrenon: Also, what do i do if i know of programs that are not hosted by my institution?    (25OL)
	ToddSchneider: Peter, how do I mute the phone?    (25OM)
	SteveRay: *2 to mute    (25ON)
	ToddSchneider: Thanks Steve.    (25OO)
	FabianNeuhaus: @Pierre: professional certification is definitely within the scope of this survey    (25OP)
	RaviSharma: Further my observation of the fields of IT, Data management, information processing etc have the 
	trend thatg based on new opportunities and solution discoveries many traditional professionals switch to 
	newer fields such as ontologies, how will we then capture such potential ontologists going forward?    (25OQ)
	ToddSchneider: Arturo, not as a question or questions in the survey, but first for the community and this 
	effort, secondly as "guidance" for those filling out the survey.    (25OR)
	PierreGrenon: @fabian, i think so, but th    (25OS)
	PierreGrenon: sorry.. just that the questions are very university biased    (25OT)
	KenBaclawski: @Arturo: My suggestion is to adjust the definition of "program" to make it clear that it 
	includes majors and concentrations according to the terminology employed at the institution.    (25OU)
	RaviSharma: Pierre: kindly see my lengthy comments I agree but it is a good beginning.    (25OV)
	FabianNeuhaus: @pierre: you are right. we should try to make it more open to non-university programs    (25OW)
	PierreGrenon: @Ravi: going through it, thanks. @Fabian    (25OX)
	PeterYim: *3 to unmute, Elizabeth    (25OY)
	ElizabethFlorescu: I am unmuted on my phone, maybe u didn't unmute me    (25OZ)
	ElizabethFlorescu: Peter, I am here, but i think u didn't unmute me    (25P0)
	PeterYim: *3 on your phone pad    (25P1)
	BruceBray: It would be useful to request submissions of syllabus documents for existing courses/modules - to 
	obtain a more complete description of content.    (25P2)
	SteveRay: In fact, if people have links to course materials, perhaps we could include a place to list 
	them.    (25P3)
	ArturoSanchez: @PierreGrenon (first comment): Yes, good point. How do you suggest we change the questions to 
	capture this?    (25P4)
	RaviSharma: Steve: great idea and also a mechanism to keep track active links after 2010 summit.    (25P5)
	KenBaclawski: @Arturo: Another issue concerns the granularity of accreditation. The institution as a whole 
	can be accredited, but one can also have accreditation at the department level. A department can offer 
	several programs most of which are not individually accredited. It would help if the question on 
	accreditation would make it clear how specific the accreditation is.    (25P6)
	ArturoSanchez: @PierreGrenon (second comment): You can either (1) send the survey link to colleagues in 
	those institutions; or (2) answer on their behalf (or both! )    (25P7)
	ArturoSanchez: @KenBaclawski: Yes, good point ... will do    (25P8)
	PierreGrenon: @arturo: comment 2, easy then let me think about #1...    (25P9)
	RaviSharma: Arturo and Anthony: Similar to Professional Training we also identify shorter courses that may 
	not mean any degree. You already possibly have this in the survey checklist.    (25PA)
	ArturoSanchez: @BruceBray: yes, that is why we are asking to include web references when describing courses 
	... but if you have suggestions for the language to use, please let us know    (25PB)
	RaviSharma: Peter: you are referencing probably the realtime Delphi which would imply online analytics and 
	display and updated of display results being new and in 2004 but i participated in DELPHI surveys for the 
	space program as early as 1960's or early 1970's?    (25PC)
	RaviSharma: Peter and Elizabeth: sorry saw the RAND link later, ignore history comment.    (25PD)
	ToddSchneider: A note of caution, a survey of this type can't be too long or imposing or people will not 
	reply. It may be necessary to conduct a focused second survey or e-mails based on the results of the first 
	survey.    (25PE)
	ArturoSanchez: @SteveRay: OK ... I see, a specific area to include links ... let me think how this can be 
	done in a simple way (so respondents do not feel overwhelmed ...)    (25PF)
	ArturoSanchez: @KenBaclawski (granularity of accreditation): Yes, that is right ... we will think about how 
	to do this (BTW, this would probably only apply to the US, which brings up another issue ...)    (25PG)
	GaryBergCross: I do worry about trusting the opinions of "experts" since they can be subject bias like 
	anyone else. This is pointed out in "How we Decide" by Lehner p202 Experts and pundits often suffer from 
	cognitive errors in that they selectively interpret the data so that it proves them right. They'll distort 
	their thought process until it leads to the desired conclusion. Some data is presented on p207 In an 
	experiment, 284 people who make a living offering political and economic advice were polled on their 
	predictions. This led to 82,361 different predictions... They tended to perform worse than random chance, 
	and selected the right answer only 3.3% of the time... The most famous in the study tended to be least 
	accurate. Why? False certainty which led the experts to mistakenly impose top down solutions    (25PH)
	ArturoSanchez: @ToddSchneider: Yes, very good point ... which is why I would rather keep it simple ...    (25PI)
	ToddSchneider: The survey will need some contextual introduction i.e., Why is the survey being conducted. 
	Which raises another point, what is the intent of this survey or, more importantly, what will be done with 
	the gathered information?    (25PJ)
	RaviSharma: Elizabeth: THis mechanism includes incremental learning in realtime as well as the influence 
	(social and Psychological or also depending on the wiond the lobby or persuation of powerful professionals 
	on the independent answers that perhaps more ignorant but unbiased professionals would have otherwise 
	provided. This has positive and negative benefits for example convergence to community views is advantage 
	and bias to dominant view is disadvantage, have these factors been studied and isolated in the statistic. 
	And you use the word Cohort, can you further explain this in this context?    (25PK)
	BonnieSwart: I do want to volunteer to help with the survey or any other summit activities and I'd like to 
	revisit the idea of building an ontology of the "Ontologist Profession"    (25PL)
	ArturoSanchez: @BonnieSwart: Thank you for offering ... there will be different surveys for different tracks 
	... which one would you like to help with (hopefully the one Antony and I are putting together is one of 
	them ). Also, as I mentioned last Thu. I like very much the idea of building an ontology for the "Ontologist 
	Profession" ... Somebody (or a small group) must be the "chief engineer" ... would you like to be it?    (25PM)
	ToddSchneider: Arturo, I asked Barry Smith to develop an ontology for training ontologist back in October; 
	Haven't heard back about that. I vote for Barry to be the "Chief Engineer".    (25PN)
	SteveRay: @Amanda: I will need to leave in 5 minutes. Can you take over chairing?    (25PO)
	AmandaVizedom: Steve: yes    (25PP)
	SteveRay: @Amanda: Great. Thanks much.    (25PQ)
	PierreGrenon: @arturo: re.1 university biase. Maybe it's just a matter of having a more inclusive 
	terminology... as a first stab, suggestions could be something like: 1) broaden/qualify the terminology, 
	perhaps using examples, following Fabian's suggestion, might be enough. 2) slide 8, question on degree, add: 
	professional certification' or some such? 3) slide 9, re. level, add something like 'professional' or 
	vocational' or some such, if it makes sense. 4) disciplinary association might not work be easily elicited, 
	i don't know whether the best would be to ignore it or add something less academic? e.g ICT? Will keep 
	thinking...    (25PR)
	ArturoSanchez: @Pierre: Thanks! I appreciate the input ... we'll keep it in mind as we put together the next 
	version.    (25PS)
	ArturoSanchez: @ToddSchneider: OK ... we can add this at the beginning ... as for "Why is the survey being 
	conducted", our intention was to explain this in slide 3 of our presentation today, in the context of the 
	Summit's theme, which is further elaborated in http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010. 
	what will be done with the gathered information? The information from our survey (Curricular Content & 
	Quality Assurance--Presently) will be presented to the community as part of the summit to attempt to 
	characterize the current 'state of the art' for these two tracks.    (25PT)
	ArturoSanchez: @ToddSchneider + @BonnieSwart: Well, in that case, I would suggest for Bonnie to get in touch 
	with Barry to see if he's still insterested/has time for that. I am also interested, but I am not an 
	Ontologist myself ... I am a Software Engineering mainly interested on what to do with the Ontologies to 
	solve practical problems ...    (25PU)
	BonnieSwart: @Arturo: I'll take on "chief engineer" duties ... who else is interested in the ontology? Ravi 
	expressed an interest last week -- since he's more familiar with the Ontolog procedures,    (25PV)
	ArturoSanchez: @Bonnie: great ... see my suggestion above as a response to ToddSchneider's suggestion ... 
	please keep me in the loop    (25PW)
	BonnieSwart: Ravi, would you help me organize the ontology work?    (25PX)
	BonnieSwart: @Arturo: I'll get with Barry on the ontology ... re. Surveys, I'm actually more interested in 
	the info you're collecting to formulate the queries -- that knowledge and the modeling required to build the 
	ontology have a significant overlap. Also, the ontology would allow the survey data to be stored as RDF, 
	either directly or converted    (25PY)
	AntonyGalton: I have to go now.    (25PZ)
	ArturoSanchez: @AntonyGalton: Antony, let's keep in touch via email ... please drop me a line to let me know 
	when/if you will be able to meet next week ... Best!    (25Q0)
	PierreGrenon: @todd: do you need help for your ontology?    (25Q1)
	ArturoSanchez: @ToddSchneider: "The curriculum developed for training ontologists will overlap that of 
	systems engineering and most likely software engineering" ... current curricula already overlap ...    (25Q2)
	ToddSchneider: Pierre, what ontology?    (25Q3)
	PierreGrenon: ontology for training    (25Q4)
	ToddSchneider: The curriculum developed for training ontologists will overlap that of systems engineering 
	and most likely software engineering. It could be argued that if a school has a department of/for systems 
	engineering that department could run such a program.    (25Q5)
	PierreGrenon: @todd: (not that i know what you're onto)    (25Q6)
	ToddSchneider: Pierre, I'm not developing an ontology for the training of ontologists, I'm recommending 
	Barry Smith for this effort.    (25Q7)
	RaviSharma: Peter: slide number?    (25Q8)
	--    (25Q9)
	+PeterYim: (slide#12 ) @All - Q0: please state what prespective are you representing? 
	[ the market | the educator | the ontologist ]    (25QA)
	JoelBender: I am representing an "ontologist wannabe"    (25QB)
	BruceBray: University educator    (25QC)
	CameronRoss: Market    (25QD)
	MichelleRaymond: representing viewpoint of Market    (25QE)
	MichaelGruninger: University educator    (25QF)
	PierreGrenon: i'm taking the ontologist role    (25QG)
	FabianNeuhaus: educator    (25QH)
	BillHogan: ontologist    (25QI)
	KenBaclawski: educator    (25QJ)
	GaryBergCross: Aspiring Ontologist    (25QK)
	Tom Dale: Tom Dale: individual    (25QL)
	ArturoSanchez: @PeterYim: Role == Software Engineer / Software Developer / Business Analyst    (25QM)
	LeoObrst: Role: multiple: market, educator, ontologist.    (25QN)
	+ToddSchneider: besides markets, consider also adjacent markets    (25QO)
	--    (25QP)
	+PeterYim: using the futurists' definition of "developments" - where a development is an event or a fact that 
	could have a significant impact on the future of a field, sector, world or a domain    (25WM)
	PeterYim: Q1: What major "development(s)" (please express in one statement) do you foresee happening to the 
	domain of Ontology or to the Ontologist profession over the following 20 years? (e.g. ontology gets accepted 
	by the scientific community as a science, like physics, chemistry, biology, psychology)    (25QQ)
	PierreGrenon: Development: ontologist make a decent living    (25QS)
	PierreGrenon: First development: ontology not as a discipline (because it's not, it's a fusion of 
	disciplines) but recognised as useful to disciplines, e.g. demand for ontology training from biology, 
	medicine, humanities or social science people    (25QX)
	PierreGrenon: Second development: ontology as a multi-headed discipline with specialisms of its own    (25R7)
	PierreGrenon: Development: Ontology as part of industrial standards life-cycle (all standards, inter alia, 
	in ontology form + ontologisation as part of QA)    (25RY)
	RaviSharma: Q1: Market and Academic as well as Ontologist all three: all the disciplines as indicated and 
	Applied Math/ Engineering, Government including security, IT tools for application to variety of 
	Disciplines, Ontology by itself as a , DoD, Space, Information Integration and information Exchange etc.    (25QR)
	RaviSharma: Peter: it would be beneficial if you allow answer of what you have in slidesas Q 1 to... for 20 
	years.    (25QT)
	MichelleRaymond: Ontology will become as broad a spectrum of service and study as Computer Science and as 
	such will require many specialized/focused areas of study. The need is now. The resulting spectrum of 
	supporting professionals will become identified in 5-10 years and available in 10-20 years.    (25QU)
	JoelBender: (1) In twenty years there will have been a revolution in the tools that an ontologist uses to 
	build an ontology, and that will change the relationship between ontologists and their clients, changing the 
	way systems engineering and software design is done.    (25QV)
	GaryBergCross: Ontology becomes separated from Philosophy as a scientific method the way the Psychology did 
	in the late 19th century    (25QW)
	FabianNeuhaus: Ontology will become a standard course in teaching bioinformatics.    (25QY)
	ArturoSanchez: Q1: The domain of Ontology will be established as an (mostly) Engineering discipline that 
	cross-cuts other disciplines    (25QZ)
	LeoObrst: Q1: Market: accepts need for ontologists now, though skills are ill-defined. Education: is behind, 
	will catch up within next 2-5 years. Ontologist: the working ontologist recognizes need for training, 
	certification now, expects accredited programs within 2-5 years.    (25R0)
	--    (25R1)
	PeterYim: Q2: What do you see as important emerging trends concerning ontology, ontologists or ontology 
	training/education over the next 20 years?    (25R2)
	RaviSharma: Q2: as all three: Inferencing and Search, Predicate Calculus and Prdicate (Relationships in 
	ontologies and RDF OWL sense) as well as affinity analysis in the sense of depth or strength of 
	relationships and models and tools required to do that.    (25R3)
	CameronRoss: The field of Ontology will transcend domains/markets etc.    (25R4)
	BillHogan: Routine use of ontology will enable a revolution in the flexibilty of information systems to be 
	expanded beyond their original purpose    (25R5)
	KenBaclawski: In 10 years, ontology engineering will be accepted as an engineering discipline like 
	electrical engineering or software engineering.    (25R6)
	MichaelGruninger: Ontologies will be a foundational component for semantic technologies and knowledge-based 
	systems    (25R8)
	TerryLongstreth: Important emerging trend in next 20 years (or a hope?)- techniques to eliminate cultural 
	bias from ontological methods    (25R9)
	MichelleRaymond: Emerging trends concerning ontology training are that many domains are piecing together 
	content to "meet-the-need" in an ad-hoc manner now.    (25RA)
	FabianNeuhaus: Ontology will separate itself from the Semantic Web buzz    (25RB)
	NancyWiegand: In 20 years, ontology might just be background information that everyone is used to.    (25RC)
	GaryBergCross: A standard text becomes available for the core course in the same way that this happened for 
	Cognitive Psych in the 1960s. This identifies the core topics and issues and addresses them in a standard 
	way.    (25RD)
	JoelBender: The field will be opened up, will not be as bound to FOL constraints as is currently presented.    (25RE)
	CameronRoss: Tools/technologies/best practices will (continue) to emerge to support the field.    (25RF)
	MichelleRaymond: Trends for ontologists are many "related" fields are claiming the capabilities and will 
	consider to do so until a formalized credentialling is available.    (25RG)
	KenBaclawski: Ontology will become an accepted part of software engineering processes.    (25RH)
	BonnieSwart: Emerging trends in ontology and semantics: convergence with cloud computing (see 
	BrandNiemann's presentation from the 12/15/09 DC Semantic Web meetup 
	http://federalcloudcomputing.wik.is/@api/deki/files/132/=BrandNiemann12152009.ppt)    (25RJ)
	ArturoSanchez: Q2: Ontologists will be formally trained professionals that will be able to develop 
	ontologies (as software/hardware artifacts) which can be seamlessly consumed by various software/hardware 
	artifacts    (25RK)
	LeoObrst: Q2: Market, education, ontologist: certification and academic programs at MS level will emerge 
	within 2-5 years. Education, ontologist: PhD programs will emerge in 5+ years. Training for all three roles 
	will be recognized as requiring: 1) background in logic, semantics, formal ontology/philosphy; 2)at least 2 
	years of computer science; 3) hands-on training in ontology development and ontology application 
	development.    (25RL)
	--    (25RM)
	PeterYim: Q3: About how many "ontologists" (or professionals doing work that requires an "ontology education 
	or training") do you estimate the world might need over the next 20 years?    (25RN)
	RaviSharma: Q3: all three perspectives: at least One million assuming the current population growth, in 20 
	years.    (25RO)
	JoelBender: Q3: no answer.    (25RP)
	GaryBergCross: Depends on the type of world we have, but I'd say if we have 4-500 now we would have 4-5,000 
	by then since we would have 5 years or more of graduates from accredited programs.    (25RQ)
	MichelleRaymond: The equivalent number of data base professionals, data-model professionals, AI 
	professionals, and mathematicians needed today are the number needed within 10 years.    (25RR)
	KenBaclawski: Q3: At least 5-10% of the personnel on a software engineering project will be required to have 
	significant ontology training, and a larger number will need some background in ontologies.    (25RS)
	ArturoSanchez: Q3: Half of the number of Engineers    (25RT)
	LeoObrst: Q3: Quantity of ontologists over next 20 years. Market: current: 1k; 20 years: 10k; Education: 
	current: 100; 20 years: 1k; Ontologist: current: 1k; 20 years: 10k+.    (25RU)
	--    (25RV)
	PeterYim: Q4: What are the potential futures of ontology in academia? (e.g. university departments, 
	mandatory credit courses, undergrad, grad, PhD, etc)    (25RW)
	RaviSharma: Q4: all 3 perspectives: Ph.D. and grad School Courses and Professional and tool certifications 
	will begin immdiately in more advanced or academic countires and will continue to permeate down over the 
	next 20 years, thus at the end of 20 years you will see ontology courses similar to choosing "world History" 
	today.    (25RX)
	RaviSharma: Peter: I can not limit my thinking only to a time window so let me provide as I get the answers 
	or responses and we can parse them later!    (25S1)
	ToddSchneider: Ken, ontology development paradigms and precepts will permeate to all engineering 
	disciplines.    (25RZ)
	BillHogan: Per Barry Smith, there will be Departments of Ontology that perform a service function not unlike 
	that of Departments of Biostatistics, in Schools of health sciences (like medicine, pharmacy, nursing, etc)    (25RI)
	MichaelGruninger: Ontological engineering will be an undergrad minor and a specialization stream at the 
	graduate level.    (25S2)
	JoelBender: Q4: I see it incorporated into existing plans, replacing systems design as an evolutionary step.    (25S3)
	GaryBergCross: In 20 years there may still be more inter-disciplinary programs with Ontology as part of 
	that, than pure Programs.    (25S4)
	MichelleRaymond: Doctorate degrees in "Ontology" with specialized areas of study within 10 years.    (25S5)
	FabianNeuhaus: I expect the first master programs in ontology within the next 10 years.    (25S6)
	KenBaclawski: Q4: In 10 years there will be many departmental groups for ontologies, but not many full 
	departments.    (25S7)
	ArturoSanchez: Q4: There will be degrees which will focus on Ontology Engineering. There will be courses on 
	Ontologies offered by programs in Computing, Engineering, Medicine, Biology, Philosophy, Library Sciences, 
	etc.    (25S8)
	LeoObrst: Q4: Futures in academia. Education: immediate need for an ontology dept that offers undergraduate 
	and postgraduate degrees. My guess is that from now to 2 years, these will be interdisciplinary degrees at 
	postgraduate level; at undergraduate level, there will be minors (i.e., a few courses in computing, 
	philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science programs). In 5 years, there will be ontology departments.    (25S9)
	--    (25SA)
	PeterYim: Q5: What needs to happen between now and the day when we will have "ontology departments" in 
	universities and enterprises?    (25SB)
	RaviSharma: no please parse the answers later    (25SC)
	PierreGrenon: we need convincing applications    (25SD)
	FabianNeuhaus: Ontology needs to become a mature engineering discipline with an accepted methodology and 
	evaluation criteria    (25SE)
	MichelleRaymond: We need credentialing for employers to weigh professionals against to form Ontology Depts.    (25SF)
	CameronRoss: Q5: Wide spread adoption of semantic technologies in the marketplace will be a prerequisite.    (25SG)
	JoelBender: Q5: There has to be a market recognition that it is something more than systems engineering as 
	it happens now, and not just resume fodder.    (25SH)
	MichaelGruninger: More rigorous foundations and methodology, together with solid applications    (25SI)
	PierreGrenon: it needs to become clear to industry that ontology training is available and a worthy 
	investment    (25SJ)
	GaryBergCross: Chicken and egg issue, but we need an agreement on the field and its relations to other 
	fields, how it fits into IT courses, cognitive science etc. And then we need success avoiding the Cyc 
	phenomena of bit effort with less payoff.    (25SK)
	ToddSchneider: A more pragmatic answer may include the availability of useful and effective tools and 
	services that use ontologies for their operation.    (25SL)
	RaviSharma: Q5: all 3 perspectives: Math, Logic, Philosophy IT and Engineering Department Faculty has to 
	become aware of this emerging powerful knowledge management discipline and their awareness will then 
	converge in a separate course or department and like in Physics and EE they might still teach the same 
	course or its variant.    (25SM)
	KenBaclawski: Q5: We need curricular materials (textbooks, readily available courseware, curriculum 
	guidelines) as well as professional/academic organizations.    (25SN)
	ArturoSanchez: Q5: Exogenous forces (industry/government) endogenous forces (academia)    (25SO)
	LeoObrst: Q5: What needs to happen before we have ontology depts.? Bodies such as IAOA need to establish 
	criteria for knowledge, skills, quality requirements, for personal certification and academic/professional 
	accreditation. Otherwise, these will be based on efforts of "heroes" within universities and companies, 
	which will be typically good but idiosyncratic.    (25SP)
	--    (25SQ)
	PeterYim: Q6: If you were to educate the general public about "ontology," what do you expect them to learn, 
	know or understand?    (25SR)
	MichelleRaymond: The general public would benefit from knowing there is a spectrum in "ontology" per Leo's 
	famous graphic.    (25SS)
	CameronRoss: Q6: The characteristics of ontology that differentiate it from the many other information-based 
	technologies out there.    (25ST)
	PierreGrenon: not much, just that machines are dumb and people need to tell them how the world is    (25SU)
	GaryBergCross: Start in grade school the way we do with computer literacy. Build an apprpeciative public in 
	general. Target undergraduate education leveraging connections to Psychology and SE etc.    (25SV)
	BillHogan: computers don't know what exists in the world, we have to tell them, and we have to be very 
	careful about doing so, because otherwise they draw bad conclusions. And it turns out to be a very tricky 
	thing to do, despite how easy it sounds.    (25SW)
	ArturoSanchez: Q6: Programs in NPR, articles in Scientific American, such as that on Semantic Web by 
	Berners-Lee et alia    (25SX)
	RaviSharma: Q6: all 3 perspectives: I do not yet feel i have reached that stage but i can say that this new 
	practice of old known discipline is beginning to address and solve problems as exemplified in EU and US by 
	the number of problems in Bio, Med, Onco, DHS security and events analysis etc. or for datamining etc this 
	discipline is worth looking at as a component in your self study professional study or formal training.    (25SY)
	PierreGrenon: kids ought to be able to understand ontology    (25SZ)
	MichelleRaymond: The public would also benefit from knowing how Ontology tools help address key issues in 
	technology and understanding.    (25T0)
	JoelBender: Q6: (funny, I'm trying to do this in a standards working group and not making any progress) That 
	by using ontology design principles then better systems can be built, the systems will work together better 
	because the individual components of what something "means" will be better defined.    (25T2)
	FabianNeuhaus: Ontological engineering is a method to represent knowledge in a machine readable way. It 
	allows to separate executable code (written by software engineers) from the knowledge about a particular 
	domain (maintained by domain experts/ontologists)    (25T3)
	NancyWiegand: Ontology is the background terms, concepts, and relationships that describe a domain. 
	Ontologies can help organize information, help in searching, and help resolve multiple terms that are 
	related.    (25T4)
	LeoObrst: Q6: General public knowledge of ontology. I would expect them to know initially (today) only that 
	ontologies are models which are used in computer science and software that represent ways that human think 
	about the real world. So ontologies represent knowledge that humans know about the world and wish to impart 
	to software, so that software can more directly use human knowledge and thus interact with human software 
	users at their level.    (25T5)
	TerryLongstreth: Q6: Ontology is currently an Art, which we hope will evolve into a science, of correlating 
	concepts from across different cultural perspectives    (25T8)
	JoelBender: @Terry: Not just an "art", but it seems to come across as quite a bit of philosophical hand 
	waving    (25TG)
	KenBaclawski: Q6: Just to be a "devil's advocate", why is it necessary to educate the general public? It is 
	rare for someone in the general public to know what linguistics is, but that did not prevent there being a 
	lot of linguistics departments.    (25T1)
	PierreGrenon: @ken: in the UK, we have to explain things to the tax-payers    (25T6)
	JoelBender: @Pierre: lol    (25T7)
	ToddSchneider: Pierre, Ken, around the world you usually need to explain technical things to non-technical 
	people.    (25TD)
	PierreGrenon: @todd: agreed, totally, but we ought to aim for simplicity for starters    (25TE)
	ToddSchneider: Pierre, I concur. But simple is usually hard.    (25TF)
	KenBaclawski: @Pierre: Yes, I can accept the need for that. However, if that is the motivation, then one 
	should focus on the *use* of ontologies rather than what they are.    (25TH)
	PierreGrenon: @todd: right, that's why it's a goal and not a requirement. @ken: the use indeed is important 
	for illustration, the difficulty here is that it's very dependent on people's background. I tend to use the 
	internet with which most people i meet are more or less familiar, but that's very reductive. The other 
	examples are scientific databases. then you can explain expert systems... In the end, with professionals in 
	particular, you actually have to know about their needs.    (25TU)
	GaryBergCross: Ken asked "why is it necessary to educate the general public? It is rare for someone in the 
	general public to know what linguistics is, but that did not prevent there being a lot of linguistics 
	departments." I might think that the public experiences quite a bit about English and language in its 
	elementary and high school education and a modest amount of analagous exposure to semantic issues would be 
	useful in their education and apreciation for what goes on in Ontology work in Universities.    (25TI)
	ArturoSanchez: gotta go ... great session y'all!    (25T9)
	+PeterYim: thank you very much, Arturo    (25TA)
	ArturoSanchez: @PeterYim: My pleasure    (25TB)
	RaviSharma: Peter i have answered all Qs but not in the same sequence as you timed them in your time window 
	sorry you have to rearrange the answers later but i did not want to stop thinking.    (25TC)
	PeterYim: end of "Development" question ... thanks    (25TJ)
	ElizabethFlorescu: Thank you all for your great list of developments! We will distill them and feed back to 
	you the draft for eventual further comments    (25TK)
	anonymous1 morphed into LeoObrst    (25TL)
	PeterYim: Thanks, Leo ... I'll make sure your input does gmake it into today's proceedings as well.    (25TM)
	--    (25TN)
	AmandaVizedom to All: please go to: 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_PertinentQuestions#nid25J9    (25TO)
	RaviSharma: Amanda: Kindly include examples such as you just mentioned such as data modelers etc that are 
	able to use ontology a formal or informal use of capabilities that give them insight to solving current 
	problems, also, many times people do not want to make only one choice.    (25TP)
	MichelleRaymond: An issue with defining who is currently hired to do Ontology work is the fact that 
	employers are asking for the skills of an Ontologist without even knowing what "Ontology" is. Thus an 
	Ontologist has improper labeling such as "Data Modeler" and "Human Factors" with requirements gathering and 
	analysis skills.    (25TQ)
	MichelleRaymond: Of-course there are plenty of "Data Modelers" and "Human Factors professionals" who need 
	ontology skills and don't have them.    (25TT)
	BonnieSwart: the flip side to Michelle's statement is that ontologists go into interviews with companies 
	that say they have an ontology/semantic practice area but don't even begin to understand what that means ... 
	we end up in interviews talking to database people or software engineers that think any file ending in .owl 
	is an ontology.    (25TR)
	RaviSharma: Amanda: would it not be also useful if we could analyze the web (Ontolog) profiles of people in 
	this survey or ask a question to define their current interest areas, job titles or voluntary activities and 
	interests. this might also benefit the Delphi analyses. by cross feedback.    (25TS)
	LeoObrst: When I hired ontologists at VerticalNet in 1999-2000, I looked for people who had experience in 
	formal ontology, formal semantics in linguistics, data modeling, AI (especially in knowledge 
	representation), computational linguistics, and those with experience developing ontologies or complex 
	models.    (25TV)
	LeoObrst: Now, I look for the following:    (25TW)
	LeoObrst: This position would support projects with technical solutions requiring knowledge representation, 
	ontology engineering, knowledge management, and related technical disciplines (e.g., general artificial 
	intelligence, natural language semantics, natural language processing, data and object modeling, enterprise 
	modeling, formal logic, automated reasoning, etc.)    (25TX)
	Desirable attributes: a proven track record developing timely and usable solutions to complex problems, the 
	ability to create enterprise strategies for organizations using ontology-related technologies and 
	knowledge/logic-based applications, solid project management and software development experience, experience 
	building ontologies and knowledge representation systems and applications that use ontologies, 4+ years 
	experience building ontologies for commercial and/or governmental use, interest and experience in the 
	Semantic Web, excellent oral and written communication skills, knowledge of computational classification 
	methodologies, ability to lead and work with a team. Education: Masters or Ph.D degree or equivalent 
	experience: Linguistics, Computer Science, AI, Knowledge Representation, Semantics, Philosophy of Language, 
	Formal Logic, Automated Reasoning.    (25TY)
	--    (25TZ)
	AmandaVizedom: Q: To whom should we be talking? Whom should we be asking to complete this survey?    (25U0)
	NancyWiegand: Are you trying to develop a curriculum in ACM?    (25U1)
	RaviSharma: Funding Agencies, Venture Capitalists, futurists, are our target to get to apprecite the value 
	of ontology but for the survey we should be asking Ontolog, standards bodies and other related Communities 
	including researchers and government funding agencies.    (25U2)
	FabianNeuhaus: For the survey: One company that is offering courses in ontology is Ontology Works Inc.    (25U3)
	MichelleRaymond: Talk with industry labs that have knowledge services sections, automated reasoning 
	sections, and domains that require knowledge analysis.    (25U4)
	FabianNeuhaus: We should circulate the surveys among the bioontology commmunity, e.g. the OBO group    (25U5)
	MichelleRaymond: Also talk with Human Factors (user focused / not ergonomics) professionals.    (25U6)
	CameronRoss: Developers of semantic tooling should be on the list.    (25U7)
	BonnieSwart: survey members of semantic tech interest groups from sites like LinkedIn ...    (25U8)
	PierreGrenon: ask them to ontologists knowledge engineers, information architects etc. You can send this to 
	ICT R&D departments in most major companies, consulting companies, i don't know about computing 
	departments..    (25U9)
	RaviSharma: all speakers in last 5 years who have addressed forums like Ontolog and its connected areas such 
	as Gov KM etc.    (25UA)
	TerryLongstreth: Medlars    (25UB)
	MichelleRaymond: In the Built environment community look to those working with standards: IFC, COBIE, 
	OmniClass, IFD... etc...    (25UC)
	KenBaclawski: Along with all of the other communities already mentioned, there are many government agencies, 
	military departments and the intelligence community that would be very interested.    (25UD)
	GaryBergCross: Use a stratified approach as people are suggesting for strata. Use citation index to find the 
	most published folks and survey them, for example.    (25UE)
	AmandaVizedom: US Air Force    (25UF)
	MichelleRaymond: For built environment (buildings/facilities) contact DeborahMacPherson at Cannon Design.    (25UG)
	PierreGrenon: Do you want actual contacts?    (25UH)
	PierreGrenon: ok, i'll put together a list.    (25UI)
	MichelleRaymond: For Honeywell Labs contact Conrad Bealue(sp.) who is focused on Building Information 
	Modeling. Also Liana Kiff.    (25UJ)
	RaviSharma: DOD DHS NASA NOAA Law and Regulations monitoring (joke to catch Madoffs) and financial analytics 
	and Wall street players are also to be contacted.    (25UK)
	PeterYim: Market: anyone who is a potential employer for people trained in ontology - CIOs, CKOs, 
	software-application Project-Directors, Libraries, professional services firms, systems integrators ... all 
	big IT / System / Professional Services houses - IBM, ORACLE, HP, SAP, CSC, Salesforce.com, [ PWC, BAH, SAIC, BAE, ] ... etc.    (25UL)
	PeterYim: Educators/trainers: Deans of Engineering colleges, College of Arts & Sciences, ... professional 
	services firms that are putting out training courses, ...    (25UM)
	PeterYim: Individuals: those who are already pursuing studies in Computer Science, Information Systems, 
	Philosophy, Library Science, ...    (25UN)
	RaviSharma: there are probably 100 in US alone as interested agencies and UN CEFACT or other UN uses, etc 
	are some others.    (25UO)
	MichelleRaymond: Medical and emergency response call Dr. Duane Cavena. (sp.)    (25UP)
	RaviSharma: It is Dr. Duane Caneva?    (25UQ)
	AmandaVizedom: All of the SemanticWeb meetup groups, Linked Data groups.    (25UR)
	AmandaVizedom: NASA    (25US)
	MichelleRaymond: Further in Built Environment look into the International Dictionary Framework group.    (25UT)
	FabianNeuhaus: For the bio-ontology community: probably the best way is to send the announcement of the 
	queries to their mailing lists, e.g. the Gene ontology mailing list    (25UU)
	PierreGrenon: BT has a bunch of semantic web researchers in their innovation center, SAP has people who 
	could call themselves ontologists, Ordnance Survey (make maps for the Queen) have an strong ontology 
	group... will send names    (25UV)
	RaviSharma: THAT WAY ALL eu ONTOLOGY ACTIVITIES    (25UW)
	RaviSharma: sorry for the caps    (25UX)
	MichelleRaymond: Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley for Location Awareness and Disaster Management. Talk w/ 
	SteveRay.    (25UY)
	AmandaVizedom: Financial industry - Michael Bennett?    (25UZ)
	PierreGrenon: do we have IBM already?    (25V0)
	AmandaVizedom: Library of Congress    (25V1)
	AmandaVizedom: World Bank    (25V2)
	PierreGrenon: @amanda: this is VERY useful, now i know where to send a cv    (25V3)
	AmandaVizedom: Search industry, including Convera.    (25V4)
	NancyWiegand: I'm not sure who you're looking for, but I have names/contacts for the geospatial semantics 
	people from the Terra Cognita workshops at ISWC. There is also GeoS. These are mostly academics, but not 
	all.    (25V5)
	MichelleRaymond: Mondeca had a visual topic-map of professionals working with topic-maps. Their domain 
	specialties would be interesting to look into.    (25V6)
	RaviSharma: All who comile Taxonomies and Digital Libraries FGDC Metadata groups, Knowledge communities    (25V7)
	GaryBergCross: Places like LOB and World Band have done this under taxonomy development. Libraries start 
	this way. So we can retrain librarians!!!    (25V8)
	RaviSharma: Gary: I agree with your comment    (25V9)
	GaryBergCross: You know one way to get at this is to ask the community, "who are your clients?" We're seeing 
	that list appear here.    (25VA)
	AmandaVizedom: Joint interoperability projects    (25VB)
	MichelleRaymond: Standards Development Organizations are discovering the need for more complete and rigorous 
	knowledge models. e.g. OASIS and OGC    (25VC)
	RaviSharma: Geospatial ontologies will probably emerge as one of the most important applications of 
	ontologies as it will tie with DR BC, Events, Pandemics, Significant Events and correlated events as 
	applications.    (25VD)
	GaryBergCross: And sho should be your clients but aren't buying in yet.    (25VE)
	PeterYim: Amanda & Peter to All: once our survey is ready, we will look to folks here to help forward the 
	invitation/solicitation to relevant folks and mailing lists that are close to you    (25VF)
	MichelleRaymond: The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) needs more reasoning support. Contact 
	data.gov.    (25VG)
	CameronRoss: Distributed Management Task Force - Common Information Model - Schema WG    (25VH)
	RaviSharma: Amanda: Will you translate these in to a framework of relevant, directly relevant and may be 
	type of contact categories? Iam ready to assist if required like a spreadsheet linked list etc?    (25VI)
	ToddSchneider: http://datagov.ideascale.com/    (25VJ)
	PierreGrenon: Continuing with the role playing game, it would be a useful resource to have something like a 
	marketplace for onologists, says the ontologist... places hiring, but also for teachers, it would be useful 
	to know of places ready to take students/interns and so on    (25VK)
	BonnieSwart: get the survey into the hands of university professors from IT / CS / Phil / Math departments in time 
	for the beginning of the spring/winter semester/quarter so they can make it part of class participation ...    (25VL)
	PierreGrenon: http://barcelona.research.yahoo.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=yrbpublic:internship_program    (25VM)
	CameronRoss: I still don't have a clear understanding as to what exactly an Ontologist is :-s.    (25VN)
	BonnieSwart: I was half-way through my MS in CS (AI concentration) before I took a class in NLP -- that, 
	combined with graduate courses in AI, data/info management and a liberal arts (pre-law PHIL/HIST/REL) 
	undergrad with a minor in math launched a baby ontologist    (25VO)
	PierreGrenon: @cameron: an ontologist in information science is somebody who makes knowledge accessible to 
	machines, this is a very generous and oecumenical view    (25VP)
	CameronRoss: I believe that "Software Architect" was similarly ill-defined... CMU-ISE has done a lot to help 
	define this discipline http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/ (also for Software Engineer).    (25VQ)
	RaviSharma: Thank you Peter and Amanda.    (25VR)
	RaviSharma: and SteveRay and all who participated.    (25VS)
	PeterYim: voice session adjourned ... 12:31pm PST    (25VT)
	JoelBender: Thank you!    (25VU)
	PeterYim: chat session will remain open until 12:45pm PST    (25VV)
	MichelleRaymond: Ah, I've been remiss. We should have input from library sciences in industry research 
	facilites. I can provide contacts to the Honeywell Labs library staff if desired.    (25VW)
	AmandaVizedom: Thank you all! This is a rich harvest indeed. I haven't been able to track it all while 
	facilitating, but am looking forward to pouring over it tonight.    (25VX)
	PierreGrenon: cheers, good being in such company! will be in touch with names, take care    (25VY)
	PeterYim: @Pierre - Thank you. While you are a member of the [ontology-summit] community, you aren't yet a 
	member of the ONTOLOG community per se ... if what we do aligns well with your professional interest, please 
	conside becoming a member of ONTOLOG - see details at: 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J    (25VZ)
	AmandaVizedom: @Pierre - Great to see you here. I hope you make it a habit.    (25W0)
	RaviSharma: Casmeron and Amanda just capturing the question that i ask my self whether i am an Ontologist 
	and the inner answer is - Not really yet! and the learning effort continues and it is becoming harder as 
	there are sometimes utilitarian pulls that take away from purer learning for own sake pulls.    (25W1)
	AmandaVizedom: @Ravi: I do not have a pre-defined organization of the suggestions in mind. I plan to see 
	whether one or more ways of organizing it fall out naturally. I also plan to bring puzzles, questions, and 
	quandries to the mailing list. But the most important thing, from my POV, is to have all of these leads, 
	even unsorted. We can do and coordinate a good bit of outreach without it. I will add to / enrich the 
	questions, I think, based on some of these suggestions. And certainly the survey questions will need to 
	support, and receive, useful analysis.    (25W2)
	RaviSharma: Amanda We need to create a list of how we perceive contacts list and open process of outreach 
	which of course will be integral to ONTOLOG and ONTOLOGY SUMMIT NIST and collaborating communities agreed 
	usage but will also help us find major gaps by disciplines, by lack on connectivity among practioners, 
	potential beneficiaries etc as we address how to create future ontologists and also will allow us to do ROI 
	and time-scale projections. One such study i did for Technical Education in india where i predicted the need 
	of Software professionals outside the formal track as well as those with Engineering and IT degrees, I 
	predicted ROI to yield $15B/yr from 2010 but india has already exceeded that a few years back! Similar ROI 
	study would help us justify the need for future ontoloists and really the proof of pudding is in the results 
	that the professional fuure ontologists bring to the world of user endeavors, companies, Gov, etc. 
	healthcare, etc.    (25W3)
	RaviSharma: Amanda that study was done in 1994-95 and looked ahead 10+ years.    (25W4)
	PeterYim: chat session ending in 3 minutes ...    (25W5)
	RaviSharma: Amanda: The remuneration for that study was a consulting fee of $100. total paid by those who 
	monitor Indian IITs. FYI.    (25W6)
	CameronRoss: Pierre: By the definition you've given, I would argue that a typical Software Engineer is an 
	Ontologist. That is, they codify domain specific knowledge (software programs) such that it becomes 
	accessible to machines.    (25W7)
	PierreGrenon: @cameron: maybe something about it being declarative has to be inserted then. But I can see 
	why some SE could count as ontologist (because it's part of ontology to develop certain kinds of software), 
	however, I'm not sure I see where the knowledge is in certain pieces of code. Something interesting that 
	people are trying to do (or are moving towards) is to use ontological engineering and knowledge rep to 
	support semi-automated programming, which would be a case in which the ontologist is a SE and the SE is 
	perhaps an ontologist with the domain being that of computer programs.    (25W8)
	CameronRoss: Pierre: Code generation is one of my personal interests in ontology. Domain modeling is an 
	important part of software engineer and there appear to be similarities here... methodologies, tooling and 
	artifacts are different though.    (25W9)
	PeterYim: just fyi ... this chat window probably will not close as long as someone is there (but entries 
	after we close may not make it to today's proceedings) ... our appreciations, once again, to Doug Davis and 
	IBM Alphaworks for providing the soaphub server support    (25WA)
	PeterYim: chat session coming to a close now ... thank you, everyone    (25WB)
	PierreGrenon: thks    (25WC)
	AmandaVizedom: Thanks, Peter.    (25WD)
	RaviSharma: Amanda and Elizabeth: In Contrast the futuristic projects such as Space program and Fusion did 
	not benefit from our Delphi inputs of the 60's namely lack of commitment of congress to continuity of 
	investments in future tehnologies and we only allowed Europe and others to get ahead in those areas. 
	Similarly we have to realistically project the HR Needs of ontologists that can incrementally be funded and 
	sustained by those who are investers and stakeholders (gov for example) and the m    (25WE)
	RaviSharma: Peter: thanks.    (25WF)
	KenBaclawski: Is the survey confidential/anonymous or will the identities of respondants be known?    (25WG)
	PeterYim: @Ken - the survey wil NOT be confidential (in accordance with Ontolog IPR Policy)    (25WH)
	PeterYim: @Ken - as for anonymity, it is "not" the intent ... (that said, by necessity, the RTDelphi process 
	calls for anonymity so that "loud" people don't dominate the conversation)    (25WI)
	KenBaclawski: @Peter: It is such a common practice for surveys to be anonymous that it would be good to make 
	it clear that the survey is not anonymous.    (25WJ)
	PeterYim: @Ken - point noted (will do) ... drawing the attention of Arturo, Antony, Amanda, Elizabeth, et al.
	on this point as well    (25WK)
	PeterYim: bye    (25WL)
        -- chat-session ended: 2009.12.17-12:46pm PST --    (25NN)

An Open Invitation    (25LE)

If you do find this initiative interesting or useful, we cordially invite you to join us in the "Ontology Summit 2010" virtual discourse that will be taking place in the next 3 months or so, and to the face-to-face workshop that will be held on 15 & 16-March-2010 as part of the NIST Interoperability Week in Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.    (25LF)

Session ended 2009.12.17-12:31 pm PST (chat-session extended for another 15 minutes)    (25LJ)

Audio Recording of this Session    (25LK)

For the record ...    (25LS)

How To Join (while the session is in progress)    (25K8)