I have emerged from a diverse field of technical experience, training, and educational background. I have formal education in fine arts, nuclear technology and computer information systems. I spent 20 years in the nuclear industry where I worked primarily with all things related to special nuclear materials (plutonium, transuranics, uraniums) from nuclear extractions and processing to research and development of nuclear assay methods and technology development. I particapted for a short time in the ASTM Committee C-26.10, the formal committee for developing Non-Destructive Assay procedures and guides used throughout the nuclear industry for special nuclear materials. These technologes are computer-based, quite sophisticated, and dissparate (stand-a-lone). They were designed for the safe-guarding of special nuclear materials for the nations nuclear defense programs. They were not designed for measuring unknown quantities of packaged transuranic wastes. Research of technologies and methods for assaying the cold war transuranic wastes to find both cost effective and acurate methodologies for nondestructive assay methods (do not open the package, measure only the physical characteristics to determine accurately the amount of nuclear materials contained) sparked my passion (there was a great need as well) for computer system integrations (new ways of combing physial data, algorithms) and interoperatability (data sharing, formats, QA). Succesful integration not only meant new system development, it meant better answers at a cheaper price and with less of a cost factor for environmental restoration. This passion lead to SGML interests (Kurt Conrad is responsible for this) and then continuing with XML technologies. I am also qualified for auditing nuclear programs. These audits must comply with nuclear quality assurance regulations as codified in the CFRs and following ANSI NQA-1 standards as applied to special nuclear and other transuranic nuclear material programs. The rigidity of this nuclear 18-point based QA program is unparalleled except for space programs. To my dismay and 75,000 others, Clinton adminsistration killed off all research dollars for these programs and I lost my work. I have since reinvented myself and I am now building an Internet based corporation for the marine industry. My previous research interests remain and I have applied previous work and ideas in designing an ontology/meta data driven web portal with a specific focus on the marine industry. I am using both open source and open standards technologies. Python is the programming language of choice, LINUX the OS, Zope is the portal application and server platform. Redland for RDF storage and retrieval is being reviewed.

Zope offers potentially an ability to APPLY an ontology through its current application design which provides a loading of a custom vocabulary (lexicon). This is not an easy programming feat but I happen to know a great python programmer. I am hoping to grasp what terms lexicon and logic have in common and whether this is a possibility. The other Zope dsign is a small db for meta data that is embedded into every Zope object. Other possibilities for implementing an ontology based portal in Zope/python include Sailor Agent, a python program that loads multiple agents including KIF and RDFs. Whatever methods or applications are used or developed, the bottom line for me is I must write and apply the domain ontology for the portal to achieve my goals. In order to do this

I must learn much more than I know now. My goals are as follows;

• To learn methods and technologies for building ontologies for real time business applications.
• To participate and contribute to advance the technologies and knowledge of ontologies.
• To contribute towards the deployment of e-business and web services development.

I have an over all goal to learn/develop design processes for transcribing mental/physical relationships to a machine logic structure without getting lost in the process, and to develop documentation practices for developing ontologies. Other areas include learning about language constructs and machine encoding processes, tools and preferred programming languages.

Some discussion topics of interests

• Topic-1: Practical development of ontologies
• Topic-2: Ontology groups or types as applied to types of industry needs
• Topic-3: Developing a lexicon based language/vocabulary from a domain specific ontology
• Topic-4: Programming designs for ontologies
• Topic-5: Applying ontologies to a service oriented architecture other than brokering semantics