OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-3 - "Training Requirements for Ontologists" - Thu 4-Feb-2010    (26K9)

OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"    (26KA)

Conference Call Details    (286G)

Attendees:    (287G)

Resources    (287S)

Theme: OntologySummit2010 - Creating the Ontologists of the Future    (288G)

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" and was launched on 10-Dec-2009. Like previous years, this Ontology Summit will comprise of three months of virtual discourse, over our archived mailing lists, wiki, and virtual panel sessions (like this one), and will culminate in a 2-day face-to-face workshop/symposium to be held on Mon & Tue, 15 & 16-March-2010 at NIST (Gaithersburg, Maryland, USA.)    (288H)

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.    (288L)

The "Content" and "Quality" tracks of this Summit focus, respectively, on identifying the subject matter that might form the content of ontologist training and on means of delivery that maximize quality in both the training itself and the ontologists it produces. For either of these discussions to be effective, however, we need to have a sense of the target: what is the training supposed to accomplish?    (288M)

We will begin with remarks from our panelists, each of whom embodies one or more end-user (or "consumer") perspectives: those who hire ontologists and need a reliable way to identify qualified candidates; those looking for training that will adequately prepare them for careers as working ontologists; those who hire, manage, or evalute ontologists and have insight into the value of various elements of preparation; those who need supplemental training for themselves or staff to meet changing work needs. We will also look at the forthcoming Requirements survey, though we will not walk through all of it, or ask people to complete it, during this session. Questions, Answers, and Open Discussion will follow, with the aim of further developing our community understanding of the needs to which ontologist training ought to be addressed.    (288N)

The session plan is to have each panelist speak for 10 minutes, assuming a small number of panelists. Default topic for each is the set of general questions to which the Requirements Track and this Session are addressed:    (288O)

o . What are we training for?    (288Q)

o . What do working ontologists need to know?    (288R)

o . What do ontologists need to be able to do?    (288S)

Individual Panelists are free, however, to focus more specifically on particular points they see as worthy of emphasis: lessons learned, experiences, points that stand out as commonly overlooked or over-emphasized, and so on.    (288T)

Goal: The Ontology Summit community is in general agreement that the most valuable and urgently needed training will be informed not only by theoretical considerations but also, and centrally, by the needs of ontologists seeking employment and employers seeking quality, useful ontologists. Our understanding of those needs, however, is scattered and divergent. This Panel session, and the "Requirements" track generally, are aimed at developing a richer and more clear picture of the requirements of employability (those trained are well-prepared for the available jobs) and deployability (those who hire trained ontologists find them ready and able to perform the needed work). The goal is not necessarily to maximize coverage within this session; the surveys, wiki, forum discussion, and other activities all the way up to the March face-to-face will each play a role in such maximization. Rather, the goal is to bring a strong "end-user" voice to the discussion, and to stimulate thinking and discussion across the Summit community as a whole.    (288U)

Agenda & Proceedings:    (28CI)

OntologySummit2010 - virtual panel-3 - Topic: "What Are We Training For?"    (28CJ)

Transcript of the online chat during the session:    (288V)

 see raw transcript here.    (288W)
 (for better clarity, the version below is a re-organized and lightly edited chat-transcript.)
 Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.    (288X)
    -- begin of chat session --    (288Y)
	PeterYim:   Welcome to the …    (28M1)
	PeterYim: OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-3 - "Training Requirements for Ontologists" - Thu 4-Feb-2010
	OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"    (28M2)
	* Panel Session-3 Topic: "What Are We Training For?"    (28M3)
	* Chair: Dr. AmandaVizedom    (28M4)
	* Panelists: 
	  o Professor DeniseBedford
	  o Dr. MichaelUschold
	  o Mr. MikeBennett
	  o Dr. JohnSowa    (28M5)
	PeterYim: details are on the session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2010_02_04    (28M6)
	PeterYim: .    (28M7)
	anonymous morphed into RayMcCormick    (28M8)
	anonymous morphed into JulitaBermejoAlonso    (28M9)
	anonymous morphed into NicolaGuarino    (28MA)
	NicolaGuarino: hi Ali! how are you?    (28MB)
	AliHashemi: Hello Nicola! I am doing well.    (28MC)
	MikeBennett: Just tried dialing with a phone and it was worse than Skype. Hope the sound is Ok    (28MD)
	AliHashemi: I keep on getting a "That was not a valid conference room"    (28ME)
	RaviSharma: Denise: What is specifically meant by "ontological forms rather than developing in 
	context" -examples?    (28MF)
	ArturoSanchez: @DeniseBedford: (cf. slide 7) Of course, the development workflows are not linear. 
	Also, it is not clear at what point the ontology is actually consumed (i.e., it now becomes an 
	artifact of another development cycle, for instance, software development). Any comments?    (28MG)
	RaviSharma: Denise: Would you agree that example of "business" would be a domain area such as XBRL 
	for financial services domain, I think Mike will address some of it? Further while i see a lot of 
	MDM, BPM, Data and Enity empashis in your definitions and workflow, I would like to know your views 
	on "data-to-information" of value to "business" and beyond data (even MDM) to terms and vocabularies 
	that help information exchange. Further Ontologies have to embrace concepts of "affinity" among 
	entities (Things) by weighing Predicates etc. Also CEP and decision support ...etc.    (28MH)
	anonymous morphed into ElizabethFlorescu    (28MI)
	GaryBergcross: Denise on slide 8 you have "Enterprise Architecture (business architecture,    (28MJ)
	GaryBergcross: Is there more in that item since the paren doesn't close?    (28MK)
	GaryBergcross: For Whom Do Ontologists Work? Organizational, besides the chief architect they often, 
	organizationally, work for a CIO.    (28ML)
	RaviSharma: Thanks Denise, for response to my comments, let us also chat offline on such important 
	topics    (28MM)
	RaviSharma: Mike: Great summary on tools and their importance and balanced view from Ontology 
	development perspective including patterns - thanks.    (28MN)
	NicolaGuarino: @MikeUschold: ontology design patterns are fine, but if they are too much 
	underspecified they don't really help semantic interoperability, since two people who adopt the same 
	pattern may actually disagree... Unfortunately most of the pattern on the site you mentioned are 
	very underspecified (check roles, collections, situations...)    (28MO)
	RaviSharma: Ralph: great comments on patterns, and diverse applications, NASA telemetry, etc.reuse 
	is not clear to me yet?    (28MP)
	PeterYim: @RalphHodgson (and ALL): one good way to contribute asynchronously would be to respond to 
	the surveys and join the Real-time Delphi study - the single entry point to those is: 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_Survey ... thanks in advance    (28MQ)
	NicolaGuarino: I support VERY MUCH John Sowa's point on the importance of translating simple NL 
	statements in logic. I also agree o the importance of choosing right names for concepts, underlined 
	by Mike. In general, this kind of linguistic/logic competence is an essential requisite for an 
	ontologist. Unfortunately I have to go, bye bye everybody.    (28MR)
	AmandaVizedom: @Nicola: I quite agree, and in fact have spent significant time in recent months 
	thinking about how to take this right-on idea of Ontology Design Patterns and apply it in a way we 
	can really use. This has got, I think, to include at least specifying (formalizing) the technical 
	assumptions (DL-only like the current collection, for example), purpose (decision support, 
	classification, information retrieval, for example) and some other aspects of the application 
	context. Something that deserves a Ontolog session or thread of its own, I think!    (28MS)
	AmandaVizedom: Noting a point of MikeBennett's for record: importance of differentiating field X 
	from Xical Engineering. Ontologists must know how to take the principles of Ontology and apply them 
	in a situation to solve a problem (paraphrased).    (28MT)
	PeterYim: @MikeBennett: still can't quite catch that last sentence, can you type it out here, 
	please?    (28MU)
	AmandaVizedom: Final point from MikeBennett: "The art of doing ontology is the art of *not* 
	designing something."    (28MV)
	RaviSharma: Mike: Where are we at using XBRL and (ontology oriented) transactions in financial 
	services?    (28MW)
	RexBrooks: The notion of "not designing" ontologies, but discovering or capturing the structure or 
	organization of some domain of knowledge or discourse is what, for me personally, is FUN in the 
	sense that MikeUschold was making in his last point.    (28MX)
	RexBrooks: It would be helpful to "capture" the minds of bright young people for the field of 
	ontology with this kind of FUN.    (28MY)
	SteveRay: For the record, I raised the question of the distinction between "design" and "creating an 
	ontology" that MikeBennett raised.    (28MZ)
	RaviSharma: Mike: Does Ontology help bridge this apparent "lack of synchronization" between 
	Business Processes as you described and items such as "logical or physical data models"?    (28N0)
	anonymous morphed into JimDisbrow    (28N1)
	MikeBennett: @Ravi I would certainly hope so - my view (no shared by all?) is that ontology should 
	be situated within a formal place in the development methodology, which is why I see an ontologist 
	as being a kind of engineer as well as someone who understands meaning    (28N2)
	MikeBennett: @Ravi XBRL - long story...    (28N3)
	Ed Dodds: @MikeBennett - ontoneer - function of the PMO?    (28N4)
	MikeBennett: @Ed    (28N5)
	Ed Dodds: @RaviSharma Hitachi's "XBRL for Dummies" Primer advocating putting XBRL as far into the 
	data chain as possible -- don't know what traction that has. Did see MIX the other day 
	http://hitachidatainteractive.com/2008/02/01/xbrl-supports-microfinance/    (28N6)
	AmandaVizedom: Ways of contributing asynchronously: (1) Respond to the Surveys, via the single-point 
	entry page http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_Survey, as Peter noted. This 
	page has information to help you decide which surveys to take, as well as links to each. (2) Share 
	*your* thoughts on today's focal question, as our panelists have, by posting to this track's 
	Community Input page: 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_PresentRequirements_CommunityInput    (28N7)
	PeterYim: and, of course, post any thoughts to the [ontology-summit] mailing list (with a proper 
	[PREFIX])    (28N8)
	PeterYim: to contribute to the discussion - see under: 
	http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010#nid25CT    (28N9)
	RaviSharma: John: Of course being mentored by you on Ontolog Forum, I am indebted and todays 
	presentation is a good way to learn how to connect ontology learning and logic?    (28NA)
	anonymous morphed into MichaelUschold    (28NB)
	MichaelUschold: I wonder how much encoding sentences in English into first order logic is useful to 
	ontologists of the future, not sure how relevant today.    (28NC)
	MikeBennett: What John is saying defines the difference between someone who gets the concepts and 
	someone who drives tools    (28ND)
	MikeBennett: Add an understanding of linguistics into the mix? (as per this example = se couduire - 
	to drive oneself; v to drive cattle to market - a linguist would get that    (28NE)
	MikeBennett: I wonder if creating a reading list between us, would help us identify the sorts of 
	things that an ontologist should know or be familiar with before they can call themselves one of 
	those.    (28NF)
	RaviSharma: John: Many thanks for good explanation of english and logic, and I now see importance of 
	studying Aristotle and his influence into parsing english sentence. Now my related question, if we 
	have a reasonably clear (subjective) text as is semi-professional and publishable (no slang etc), 
	then what % of sentences typically would fall into logic types expressed in slide 7 exemplified by 6 
	entries.?    (28NG)
	RaviSharma: Amanda: model theoretic and physical entity and its model's congruence are a big open 
	topic that I would like to understand your perspective on? It is exteremely relevant to ontology 
	oriented learning and results.    (28NH)
	PavithraKenjige: Hi, Dr Sowa, your emphasis on theory or logic rather than a particular tool is 
	interesting! Even though I agree with you, industry may not! People do look for experince in a set 
	of tools rather than theory!    (28NI)
	SteveRay: It should not be "rather than" but "in addition to".    (28NJ)
	Ed Dodds: @MikeBennett we could adopt #ontolog as a keyword on both delicious.com and diigo.com for 
	a start on the reading list    (28NK)
	MikeBennett: @Pavithra - that's a lot like the traditional difference between an engineer and a 
	technician. Industry needs both, but we'd be lost without the engineers i.e. the people who can 
	think in concepts 1st and tools 2nd    (28NL)
	PavithraKenjige: Thank    (28NM)
	SteveRay: Excellent session. Thanks Amanda.    (28NN)
	FabianNeuhaus: thank you amanda, great job    (28NO)
	RaviSharma: Amamnda: Thanks for a great session.    (28NP)
	PavithraKenjige: Thank you, it was excellent!    (28NQ)
	SteveRay: ...and thanks to the panelists.    (28NR)
	MikeBennett: @Ed good call    (28NS)
	MikeBennett: thanks Amanda and everyone, great session    (28NT)
	AmandaVizedom: Thank you Panelists!    (28NU)
	PeterYim: Great session ... thanks everyone!    (28NV)
	PeterYim:   -- session adjourned 12:38pm PST --    (28NW)
    -- end of chat session --    (288Z)

An Open Invitation    (2893)

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.    (2894)

Audio Recording of this Session    (2899)

For the record ...    (289H)

How To Join (while the session is in progress)    (289I)