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Ontology Summit 2011 Launch Event - Thu 2011-01-20

  • Topic: OntologySummit2011: "Making the Case for Ontology"

Abstract: Goals & Objectives

OntologySummit2011 Theme: "Making the Case for Ontology"

This is our 6th Ontology Summit, a joint initiative by NIST, Ontolog, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA & NCO_NITRD with the support of our co-sponsors. The theme adopted for this Ontology Summit is: "Making the Case for Ontology." In an earlier planning session last month, the community brainstormed on this initiative and how best to frame the issues. That and subsequent input were carefully reviewed and synthesized by the Summit Organizing Committee, and it is this plan and program that we will be discussing with everyone during this launch event.

While the field of ontology, in the information science sense, has blossomed since the late 1980s, the use of ontology in commercial applications still has not been fully exploited, much less recognized by the mainstream technical community. Many in the ontology community are asked for good examples where using an ontology brings clear benefits to addressing a commercial need - indeed the quest continues for the "killer app" for ontologies. This year's Ontology Summit seeks to address this need to provide concrete evidence of successful deployment of ontologies by examining several application domains for such examples, and in better articulating where different "strengths" of ontological representation are best applied. The goal of the summit is to clearly document some of these examples with solid, quantitative benefits, to indicate promising application areas and research challenges for the future, and to capture the consensus of the community in the form of a communique intended for public consumption.

The 2011 Ontology Summit officially begins with today's launch event. We are initiating a series of topical online discussions, virtual panel sessions, studies, synthesis, etc. which will take place, virtually, in the next 3 months. All of these will come together with a face-to-face meeting on April 18 & 19 in Gaithersburg, MD, USA at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST).

See developing details at: OntologySummit2011 (home page for this summit)

Agenda

Ontology Summit 2011 Launch

  • Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call

Proceedings

Please refer to the above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

see raw transcript here.

(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.

-- begin in-session chat-transcript --

Steve Ray: Welcome to the Ontology Summit 2011 Launch Event - Thu 2011-01-20

Topic: Ontology Summit 2011: "Making the Case for Ontology"

Co-chairs: Dr. Steve Ray & Dr. Nicola Guarino

anonymous morphed into Yu Lin

anonymous morphed into David Price

David Price morphed into David Price

Steve Ray: Early birds!

Steve Ray: See details on the session page at

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2011_01_20#nid2L7T

anonymous morphed into David Eddy

anonymous1 morphed into JulitaBermejoAlonso

anonymous morphed into Pierre Grenon

anonymous morphed into Michelle Raymond

anonymous1 morphed into Al Stevens

anonymous morphed into Laurent Liscia OASIS

MikeDean1 morphed into Mike Dean

Laurent Liscia OASIS: I'm delighted to be here (albeit lurking in the wings)

Laurent Liscia OASIS: Congratulations to you all as you launch into your new summit.

anonymous1 morphed into Ed Dodds

anonymous2 morphed into Bobbin Teegarden

Laurent Liscia OASIS: And let me state that the case for ontology does not actually need to be made:

anyone in standards knows that ontology is the way to go.

anonymous morphed into Elizabeth Florescu

Nicola Guarino: *3 to unmute, right?

Fabian Neuhaus: Yes you are right

Mike Bennett: Did Peter just mute himself?

Peter P. Yim: got disconnected just now ... I'm back in

Ramdsriram: Steve: How do you un-mute here.

Fabian Neuhaus: @Ram: *3

Ramdsriram: @Fabian: Thanks

anonymous1 morphed into Ali Hashemi

Ed Dodds: Would folks mind listing any of their Twitter or Identica IDs on the chat? @ed_dodds

@conmergence fwiw

Mike Bennett: Twitter ID: @MikeHypercube

Amanda Vizedom: Twitter ID: ajvizedom

Gary Berg-Cross: Twitter ID garybcross

Al Stevens: Twitter ID astevens

Steve Ray: My Twitter id: steveraysteve

David Price: Twitter ID : davidpricenet

Amanda Vizedom: Relatedly, last year we regretted not having selected a nice, short #hashtag for the

conference. Anything for this year, organizers, or is the door open for suggestions?

Ed Dodds: #ontologysummit2011 works for me

Amanda Vizedom: @Ed complaints last year about using 19 char for a hashtag

Ed Dodds: #ontsum2011

Steve Ray: Understand the long hashtag problem, and yet we benefit from the tweets showing up under

general searches if we don't abbreviate.

anonymous1 morphed into John F. Sowa

anonymous2 morphed into JVermeer

Ed Dodds: We could target the creation of open courseware for ontology related matter (DSPACE

[1], Open Courseware [2], curriki [3], etc.)

since this kind of material could prosper in the distance education world.

Ed Dodds: RE: Education - James H. Shelton III, Assistant Deputy Secretary for Innovation and

Improvement http://www2.ed.gov/news/staff/bios/shelton.html might be enlisted as an ontology ally

anonymous1 morphed into Jeffrey Abbott

anonymous2 morphed into Arturo Sanchez

Todd Schneider: @Nicola, is the IAOA web site using https yet?

John Bateman: @ToddSchneider: Nicola, is the IAOA web site using https yet? An SSL-based layer will

soon be brought online for membership registration.

Todd Schneider: @John, excellent. I've been waiting to join.

anonymous2 morphed into Tara Athan

Ed Dodds: FWIW Real-time user case example: Drupal 7 - http://groups.drupal.org/node/120684 Semantic

Web: RDF instance data (and ontology) management on a Sesame Triple-Store

Mike Bennett: Thanks Ed.

Steve Ray: John F. Sowa said: Steve Jobs doesn't use metrics. We can't measure where we want to go. This

is a problem.

Todd Schneider: @John, developing a 'wow factor' for infrastructure has always been a challenge.

anonymous1 morphed into Mary Parmelee

Arturo Sanchez: @SteveRay and @Nicola: second that! -- Peter is instrumental!

Arturo Sanchez: @MichaelGruninger: Re: Track 2: I suggest to use "Ontology-Driven Software

Engineering", in lieu of "Ontology-Driven Software Design" ...

Todd Schneider: @Arturo, @Michael, suggest replacing 'software' with 'system'.

Todd Schneider: @Michael, it sounds like you'll be able to develop architectural patterns for the

uses of ontologies/semantic technologies.

Arturo Sanchez: @ToddSchneider: "O-D Systems" >> Refers to a class of software systems (I presume);

O-D Software Engineering >> Refers to the practices associated with building "O-D Systems". So, it

seems we want to discuss both concepts ...

Nicola Guarino: I support Todd very much. We should not be limited to software systems. Indeed, the

general perspective concerning the future use of ontologies is much broader: from information

systems to socio-technical systems.

Michael Grüninger: @Arturo -- I agree, we should refer to "Ontology-driven Software Engineering"

Nicola Guarino: Alan Rector said: we should clarify relationship between ontologies vs.data models and

data structures

Peter P. Yim: @Alan and all ... if you can capture your main points on this chat board before or after

your verbal remarks, that would be great (as the chat-transcript will be captured and become

searchable later)

Ed Dodds: Is OMG.org represented here by anyone -- model driven is their thing

Mike Bennett: We are liaising closely with OMG in our work at the EDM Council and are using their ODM

metamodel.

Arturo Sanchez: @EdDodds: I am not from OMG, but have been associated with "Domain-Specific Software

Development" (e.g., ongoing workshop at OOPSLA)

Todd Schneider: @Ed, OMG's model-driven == UML

Ramdsriram: @Todd Not sure I understand that what you mean by model-driven == UML. I believe UML is

used as a scheme to represent the model-driven architecture concepts.

Ed Dodds: @ToddSchneider True but do a quick search on UML & Ontology; quite a little material out

there

Todd Schneider: OMG's model-driven approaches are based on UML.

Ed Dodds: Yes

Mike Bennett: For now

Alan Rector: Agree that UML is a poor way to develop ontologies; but many of the ontologies we

develop have to have, as at least one of their outcomes, UML models / data models or at least

provide constraints on them. Furthermore, thre are far more people trained in UML/MDA than

ontologies. I look forward to a longer discussion on 3 Feb.

David Price: @MichaelGruninger : Seems slide 3 is 'What roles do ontologies play in applications?'and

suggest adding'What are the advantages of the use of ontologies in those roles?'

JulitaBermejoAlonso: There has been some developments on ontologies and UML (even suggesting to move

forward to OMG's SysML), mostly for agent-based systems and software engineering

Rex Brooks: Just to let you know I'm listening, The Open Group attempted to use a form of UML for a

SOA Ontology and the result was neither especially useful, understandable or successful for a number

of reasons, but UML is not a great fit for ontologies unless one is very, very careful.

Ed Dodds: @RexBrooks Thanks

Rex Brooks: @Ed Dodds You're welcome.

Rex Brooks: Provided we provide an adequate disclaimer, it would be interesting to see how well an

application based on the TOG SOA Ontology performs according to the criteria being discussed.

David Price: @ToddSchneider Another core technology behind OMG MDA is QVT ... what's MDA without a

transformation engine. Ontology-driven should/could drive a similar need.

Todd Schneider: David, What does QVT stand for?

David Price: Query / View / Transform

Gary Berg-Cross: Mike G makes a point (in passing) the Ontologies provide value (the beef) for

something like model-based development.

Michael Grüninger: @Todd: interesting idea to think of the framework as providing architectural

patterns; perhaps this will guide us in how detailed we need to make the framework

Todd Schneider: Michael G., Alan's point suggests a decomposition of 'uses' of ontologies in systems

development.

Alan Rector: On applications: a) Important to clarify relationship between ontologies and data

structures / data models.

Alan Rector: b) Links to standard software engineering methodologies, UML, MDA, etc

Alan Rector: c) To be specific on the added value of "ontology driven architectures"

Ramdsriram: @MichaelGruninger: There is a framework called Zachman Framework. Have you hear of that.

May be useful in organizing your track.

Michael Grüninger: @DavidPrice: I saw the discussion of the advantages of ontologies being the focus

of Track 3; the framework would be used to help understand how different applications can be

compared to each other.

David Price: @MichaelGruninger OK, makes sense there.

Jim Rhyne: It is hard to argue that something computational can only be done with an ontology. Almost

anything I can do with, e.g. OWL / Pellet I can also do with Java and a database. The real difference

is how easy it is to create and maintain the behavioral rules for an application in an ontology. A

similar argument has been made for rule systems. The problem with rule systems is the difficulty of

debugging without some kind of consistency checker.

David Price: @JimRhyne I doesn't have to be about 'can only be done', can simply be 'can be done

better, faster, cheaper'

Jim Rhyne: @DavidPrice - yes, Mike retracted his earlier remarks on slide 2

Nicola Guarino: @MikeBennett: not just "the best that they have", but perhaps also "the worst that

they have"... Learning from failures in applying ontologies might be very useful...

Mike Bennett: @Nicola that is a good idea. I think what we want for the summation at the Face to Face

would be what people did that worked and what they would do differently next time. I'm not sure

we'll attract people to present on their failures though

Peter P. Yim: @Nicola ... that said, we still want to build a repertoire of "Best" cases that people can

point others to when they are "making a case for ontology"

David Eddy: ...we're 60+ years into software & haven't quantified it or applied metrics. Why bother

with Ontology?

David Price: @MikeBennett slide 5 : Why only business case for ontology as a whole? Why not allow

ontology in combination with other technologies or aspects of technologies? Don't understand what

that limitation is included.

Mike Bennett: @DavidPrice that was weak phrasing on my part. Ontology as a whole range of formal

models of reality, not just one type like OWL or RDF. Not ontology in isolation. Will look at how

these delivered some value, which is almost always in connection with some application.

Brand Niemann (Semantic Community)1: Re "While the field of ontology, in the information science

sense, ... I suggest we consider ontology, in the data science sense, - see

http://semanticommunity.info/Data_Science

Brand Niemann (Semantic Community)1: Mills will probably speak to the value proposition next week,

which suggests we broaden out to building knowledge-centric systems, not IT centric systems, in

which ontology may or may not be needed - see Knowledge-Centric Paradigm: A New World of IT

Solutions @ http://semanticommunity.info/@api/deki/files/8282/=BrandNiemann01112011.ppt

Peter P. Yim: @Todd - slide#3 ... [ref. Todd's remark about concentrating only on monetary value] sure

we will focus on "value" wrt to ROI (return on investment), but thought we will *also* address other

intangible values as well, like quality improvement, strategic impact, and others that have been

brought up on the [ontology-summit] list earlier

Brian Haugh: The proposed metrics focus appears to neglect key metrics used in evaluating the

quality of results, such as precision and recall in search.

Steve Ray: I agree with Peter's point, and Brian's suggestion. The metrics can be monetary, or other

types like quality, performance, capability...

Bill Hogan: I would say that how ontologies facilitate/improve/affect all these aspects of your

overall architecture are more important than these things as attributes of the ontology itself.

Todd Schneider: Brain, The metrics I suggested are needed to to bolster the case to decision makers.

They need to be simple and related to the primary interests of the decision makers. Your example

suggests a particular usage and the metrics for that case may need to stress performance metrics.

Todd Schneider: @Peter, intangible values rarely are of interest to 'decision makers'. However, there

may be a useful way to connect these to more base ROI metrics. I leave to the community to help

solve this.

Peter P. Yim: [subsequently added] @Todd: for C-level executives and Policy makers, strategic value

(mostly intangible) would be very pertinent

Nicola Guarino: @Todd: To understand value metrics and value models, maybe it would be useful to

develop an ontology of value and value models... See

http://www.vmbo2011.ugent.be/VMBO2011/Welcome.html

Todd Schneider: @Nicola, Yes that occurred to me, but was hesitant to introduce that notion due to

the required work and constrained time line. In principal whatever is developed for track 3 will

provide a basis for such an ontology.

Alan Rector: @RexBrooks & Todd Schneider: How does the argument for ontology in general relate to the

ontology spectrum in slide 4 ?

Todd Schneider: @Alan, Slide 3, Ontology Spectrum, was only to suggest that there may need to be

either multiple metrics or value sets for the metrics.

Rex Brooks: @Todd We should contact Kurt Conrad on the value ontology (ontology of value types)

and/or value model ontology (ontology of models associated with various value types). This is, of

course, directly related to architectural models, too, hence an NCOIC connection.

Amanda Vizedom: Must drop off. Thanks to presenters; looking forward to continuing sessions.

David Price: @ToddSchneider I find it hard to make sense of 'ROI for an ontology'. I understand ROI

for an application as that's what affects an organization, but not for particular components of that

application. I hope the track can help answer this question.

Mike Bennett: @DavidPrice re ROI for an ontology. If someone tried to solve some problem using

technical means alone and spent a lot of time and money, and then spent some time creating some

ontology and addressed the same problem in less time, there's an ROI.

Todd Schneider: @David, You're correct about 'ROI of ontology'. Hence the focus on system. Systems

use ontologies and semantic technologies; Systems have an understandable ROI.

David Price: @ToddSchneider OK - I'll be interested in seeing how it goes. Getting ROI info is

notoriously difficult.

Todd Schneider: @David, I also interested in seeing how this goes. Lots of questions, confusion.

Rex Brooks: Also, since I am directly involved with using UML is SOA, specifically for the OASIS SOA

Reference Architecture Foundation (SOA_RAF), I will be creating an ontology from the SOA-RAF and

ensuring that it works, but I will inevitably restrict/qualify it as specific to the SOA-RAF and not

SOA at large.

Brian Lucas: Another aspect to consider is that to be truly interoperable, I believe the ontologies

must themselves be re-usable and cross-referenced (and, ideally, reconciled into upper-level

ontologies). I have recently come to the conclusion that upper-level ontologies are very necessary

to interoperating lower-level ontologies, if we wish to have any hope of reconciling the

separately-developed, domain-specific ontologies. And the connection of these "non-IT" ontologies

may help drive the actual IT implementations (UML or otherwise). Perhaps the Grand Challenge track

is the place for this thinking?

Yu Lin: agree with Brian

Mike Bennett: +1 agree with Brian

Steve Ray: +2 on Brian's remark. I am arguing this very point in integrating the 70+ standards being

developed to support the smart grid interoperability in the US.

David Price: @BrianLucas : Upper-or-not is a huge debate and I'd be concerned about it being a on

the critical path wrt a good way to 'Make the Case for Ontology' in the larger world. I've worked in

both worlds and find strong advocates that disagree completely.

Brian Lucas: @DavidPrice : I do not believe it should be on the critical path either. It is a

personal interest of mine in the organization space, and I'm launching a non-profit in this domain,

but I'll continue the conversation in one or more of the tracks.

David Price: @BrianLucas, I'll be interested in following up on that with as part of the Summit.

Jim Rhyne: @Nicola - unfortunately VMBO is a workshop format with unpublished proceedings. One has to

commit to attending in order to benefit from the discussions.

Nicola Guarino: @Jim: Yes, VMBO is just an informal workshop, but if you look at the organizers and

the previous attendants publications you will find a lot of interesting material....

Jim Rhyne: @Nicola - agreed, been down this path. Not planning to attend this year. How can we get

cooperation from the VMBO attendees to work on this problem?

Nicola Guarino: @Jim: I'll talk with the VMBO organizers and let you know. I'll try to involve at

least some of them (indeed I am one of them)

Rex Brooks: @Todd I sent you an email on my availability, just a heads up.

Todd Schneider: @Rex, Thanks. I'll be in touch.

David Price: @SteveRay at al : Excellent topic for the Summit!

Mike Bennett: And I hope everyone will mark their diaries for next Thursday for the first in the

Track 2 Applications and Case Studies with Mills Davis.

Peter P. Yim: Great session!

Leo Obrst: Thanks, folks, goodbye!

Jim Rhyne: @Nicola - great - will follow up with you.

Mike Bennett: Thanks Peter and everyone. Looking forward to it all.

Pavithra Kenjige: thank you!

Ed Dodds: thank you all!

Peter P. Yim: -- session ended: 11:27 am PST --

-- end of in-session chat-transcript --

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