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Ontolog Forum

IAOA Panel Session - "International Association for Ontology and its Application (IAOA)" - Thu 18-Jun-2009

Subject: Introduction to the "International Association for Ontology and its Application (IAOA)"

  • Session Chair: NicolaGuarino (LOA-ISTC-CNR)

Resources & Archives

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, June 18, 2009
  • Start Time: 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 7:30pm CEST / 6:30pm BST / 17:30 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: 1.5~2.0 hours
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  • Please note that this session will be recorded, and the entire proceedings including the audio archives are expected to be made available as open content to our community membership and the public at-large under our prevailing open IPR policy.

Attendees

  • Expecting:
    • ... if you are coming to the session, please add your name above (please include your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community); or e-mail <peter.yim@cim3.com> so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...

A Message from the IAOA President

Dear colleagues,
I have the pleasure to announce that the International Association for Ontology and its Applications (IAOA) has been born.
Formally established in Trento, Italy in April 2009, after an open meeting at the FOIS 2008 conference, IAOA is a non-profit, open association with the purpose of promoting interdisciplinary research and international collaboration at the intersection of philosophical ontology, linguistics, logic, cognitive science, and computer science, as well as in the applications of ontological analysis to conceptual modeling, knowledge engineering, knowledge management, information systems development, library and information science, scientific research and semantic technologies in general.
IAOA is open to all individuals and institutions who share its goals.
For the statute, list of activities, membership benefits, mailing list and other information, please visit http://www.iaoa.org.
To present this initiative, which enjoys the friendly cooperation with the Ontolog Forum, the IAOA Executive Council has organized this public Ontolog virtual panel session.
Looking forward to virtually meet the Ontolog community,
Nicola Guarino
on behalf of the IAOA (provisional) Executive Council

source: http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontolog-invitation/2009-06/msg00000.html

Agenda & Proceedings

Agenda

1. Opening and "Introduction to IAOA" (NicolaGuarino)

2 Some remarks from the Panel

3. Q & A and Open Discussion

4. Closing remarks (NicolaGuarino)

Proceedings

  • please refer to the archives above - coming! ... please check back after the session.

Q & A and Open Discussion

Chris vanBuskirk: The dark ages of technology.

Mike Bennett: Folks, I'm at the Sem Tech conf and the next session is about to start but I'd like to strongly register my interest in this initiative.

Peter P. Yim: thank you, Mike!

GaryBergCross: Is there any ongoing work regarding the action "reports concerning the status and the strategic perspectives of applied ontological research, aiming at influencing concrete policy choices"? worldwide

Nicola Guarino: (answering to Gary): Not yet, this is just one point in the future agenda

Mike Bennett: One theme that's come out of a lot of conversations and sessions at SemTech has been the use of consensus domain-independent standard ontologies. Like DC and FOAF, but there are potentially more, and a few of us have discussed what it would take to arrive at an industry consensus view on standard ontologies to use, in the same way as FOAF/DC are now. Would this fit in with this community of practice?

GaryBergCross: Will events like the Ontology Summit held at NIST be co-sponsored by IAOA?

Joanne Luciano: On a different note - as a ontology practioner (BioPAX, InfluenzO, BioPathways and W3C HCLSIG) I'm very interested in continuing to work and contribute in this area. I've recently become highly available and am looking to apply my multidisciplinary knowledge in science and technology with ontologies, so if you know anyone with a need in the area of ontologies, especially in the area of health care / life science, translational medicine, please let me know or pass along my name/email to them. jluciano at gmail.com

Mike Bennett: Also standardisation of the use of meta-data around OWL using e.g. the new annotation extensions in OWL2 - stuff that's out of the scope of OWL but ripe for standardisation - for example for provenance of terms, archetypes and so on.

GaryBergCross: Shouldn't the creation of curriculia on ontologies also include epistemological and its issues since the two become related since the latter concerns methods by which we may go about inquiring about and making sense of ontological models?

Stuart Turner: @MikeBennett - At the National (United States) Cancer Institute's Biomedical Informatics Grid (caBIG) effort, we have established a process to evaluate vocabularies/ontologies. Although this is often referred to as evaluating ontologies as a caBIG standard, this is more closely a certification process. Criteria are based on best practices (e.g. largely developed by Jim Cimino and his Desiderata for Terminologies), it is essentially evaluating how an ontology under review "fits" within caBIG's metadata (ISO 11179) environment which demands textual definitions for all terms. Its a good process, but often quite subjective. Very interested in ideas to improve how to capture ontology metadata using these principles for a repository - including contextual information (fitness for a particular domain, competing ontologies).

Mike Bennett: @StuartTurner -I'm just watching a thing about things like evaluation and alignment of ontologies, I think there are a few things happening in this area, e.g. trust / proof, though I think some of these are more aimed at individuals within an instance-rich ontology. Also mapping tools and so on.

Stuart Turner: @MikeBennett - yes - we've talked about similar things. I think we need both a consistent metadata framework to capture ontology metadata (similar to FOAF or DOAP), but then also bound to a community that can provide 1) Use cases (how someone has used a given ontology) 2) Case studies 3) Feedback on fitness for purpose 4) Challenges, etc.

Mike Bennett: @StuartTurner - that's a conversation I've had several times here at Sem Tech, I've been trying to think how to take it forward.

Stuart Turner: @MikeBennett Excellent. And great examples just mentioned (e.g. Bioportal). NCI has also developed a Terminology Metadata model (lead by Tom Johnson at Mayo), but done specifically for caBIG and extensibility outside of this domain may be limited [1]

Mike Bennett: @StuartTurner - thanks. Sorry I haven't been on sound here (presentation clash)

Giancarlo Guizzardi: Regarding Educational Activities under IAOA...a very interesting initiative that I think is worth taking a look (to be considered in analogy) is the so-called "Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge" promoted by IEEE. The idea there is to provided a characterization of the several subdisciplines comprising software engineering, together with the description of learning objectives, recommended material, etc... The website can be found in: [2]

GaryBergCross: Antony you mentioned a Japanese site that contain ontological (curiculum?) information. It wasn't in the slides and I wonder if you could provide it.

Paul Koch: Perhaps of interest: the British Journal of Educational Technology, May 2006, Volume 7, Number 3 was dedicated to "Semantic Web for e-Learning".

Ken Baclawski: When I teach ontologies, it is always in the context of some other course. So far there isn't enough demand for devoting a whole course devoted to ontologies. It would be helpful to have modules that could be used in other courses.

Nicola Guarino: I can bearly hear the lady who is speaking right now

Peter P. Yim: @Nicola - that was Laure ... I can hear her well ... maybe it is your phone

Nicola Guarino: OK. Can I answer to Pat Hayes?

Peter P. Yim: please

Peter P. Yim: @Nicola ... we cannot hear you

Richard Detsch: Thanks to all the speakers. Parting suggestion: What intro materials are currently available (video, e-learninge, etc). Perhaps these could be posted.

Mike Bennett: I would be happy to put some effort into this.

Joanne Luciano: My comment: I like the idea of a core curriculum. It is important in education to expose students to different approaches, it helps them think and keeps the discussion alive. My personal ontology learning experience: I was able to get support from NSF to go to Manchester to be educated in ontologies and OWL. They have been teaching Ontology Engineering for several years, many materials and resources available on their web. Also important to include material on the applications of ontologies, such as annotating genomic data, NLP, data integration/aggregation, etc. to teach useful and practical skills to students. Utility for a given application is of practical importance to students and teaching guidelines for what is level of ontological complexity is needed for the range of applications, and how to sort that out.

John Bateman: Possible activities: modularization and structuring principles for ontologies... if there is sufficient interest, perhaps there could be a satellite workshop at FOIS next year? Open call for statements of interest....

Laure Vieu: @Joanne: thanks!

Ken Baclawski: @Joanne I like the idea of a core curriculum also, but other than a few major centers, there isn't enough demand for a whole course devoted to ontology engineering. This is why I suggested taking a more modular approach, where the modules are much smaller than a whole course.

Bill Andersen: Need to go folks. Thanks. Very good presentation.

Peter P. Yim: thanks for being here, Bill

Nicola Guarino: Bye Bill!

Giancarlo Guizzardi: Bye everyone. Thanks a lot for the speakers and organizers for this initiative!

GaryBergCross: Will the Ontolog forum accept some of these questions for now?

Peter P. Yim: @Gary - yes ... Ontolog will accept any and all "good conversations relating to ontologies" (in the mean time)

GaryBergCross: Thanks Peter

Peter P. Yim: Bye everyone ... thank you for your participation!

To join IAOA, please refer to details on the IAOA website at: http://iaoa.org/iaoa-joining.htm

Audio Recording of this Session

  • To download the recording of the session, click here
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  • Conference Date and Time: 18-Jun-2009 10:50am~12:30pm PDT
  • Duration of Recording: 1 Hour 33 Minutes
  • Recording File Size: 10.7 MB (in mp3 format)
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    • Take a look, also, at the rich body of knowledge that this community has built together, over the years, by going through the archives of noteworthy past Ontolog events. (References on how to subscribe to our podcast can also be found there.)

For the record ...

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