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Ontology Summit 2010 (Pre-launch) Community Input and Planning Session - Thu 2009-11-05

  • Topic: Refining the ideas around the challenge of Ontology Summit 2010: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"
  • Co-chair: Dr. Steve Ray & Professor BarrySmith
  • Agenda: This is a (pre-launch) communitywide brainstorming and planning session for OntologySummit2010.

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 5-November-2009
  • Start Time: 10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST / 7:30pm CET / 6:30pm GMT / 18:30 UTC
  • Expected Call Duration: 2.0~2.5 hours
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Attendees

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

Abstract

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.

This is a a (pre-launch) communitywide brainstorming and planning session for those who are passionate about the subject and would like to influence and help drive the outcome by helping refine the ideas, organization and process, around our challenge of Ontology Summit 2010: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future."

See: our Ontology Summit 2010 Home page at: OntologySummit2010

Agenda & Proceedings

1. Introduction and ideas Steve Ray (co-chair)

2. Some more ideas Barry Smith (co-chair)

3. Open floor for even more ideas (All) -- please refer to [ process above]

Brainstorming of ideas that support the "Creating the Ontologists of the Future." theme
o Topics, Speakers, Invitees, Sponsors, Marketing, ... and more

4. Summary and wrap-up (SteveRay)

Proceedings

Please refer to the archives above

IM Chat Transcript captured during the session

(The chat transcript below has been lightly edited to help improve on clarity of the conversation.)

VNC2: Welcome to the Ontology Summit 2010 (Pre-launch) Community Input and Planning Session - Thu 2009-11-05

  • Topic: Refining the ideas around the challenge of Ontology Summit 2010: Creating the Ontologists of the Future
  • Agenda: This is a (pre-launch) communitywide brainstorming and planning session for OntologySummit2010.

Please refer to details on the session page at:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_11_05

anonymous morphed into Bettina Schimanski

anonymous morphed into Kurt Conrad

anonymous morphed into Arturo Sanchez

anonymous1 morphed into Antony Galton

anonymous morphed into Jeff Abbott

anonymous1 morphed into Barry Smith

anonymous morphed into Fabian Neuhaus

anonymous morphed into Rex Brooks

Terry Longstreth: @barry: is this an extension of computer application

development? What are the pre-reqs?

Peter P. Yim: @Barry - can one get properly "trained" on OWL 2.0, say, in

  • one day* ?

Peter P. Yim: or "ontology mapping" or even "logic for ontologists" ... you

would probably need a whole bunch of prerequisites to make the "one day"

plan

Todd Schneider: Barry, why is university accreditation needed? Are there

other organizations that could do this?

Frank Chum: @Todd, to guarantee a certain standard?

Todd Schneider: How about the Open Group? They provide administrative

services.

Steve Ray: I'm thinking that assembling a curriculum comes first, then

certification comes afterwards.

Todd Schneider: Barry, how were these costs arrived at?

Todd Schneider: Steve, I agree: The curriculum could be compressed to the

certification. I talked with Barry about this approach.

Steve Ray: @Todd: What do you mean, "compressed to the certification"?

Bettina Schimanski: How would this certification compare to other

certifications that already exist, like from Semsphere (http://www.semsphere.com/)?

Bettina Schimanski: I would like to clarify -

I did not mention Semsphere for any marketing reasons as I am not

affiliated in any way with this company. I just mentioned it as an

example of another company that also has provided certification

possibilities.

Todd Schneider: Steve, I'm assuming a curriculum would be more

comprehensive and a certification would be a subset of it.

Todd Schneider: The notion to be addressed is interoperability in the

broader sense.

Arturo Sanchez: Ontology creation and ontology use are tighly coupled ...

Peter P. Yim: do we *really* need "ontologists"?

... is it a profession, or a role tagged onto some exisiting professionals

... what is an Ontologists anyway? How many types of "ontologists" are there?

... maybe what we need are knowledge-engineers-plus,

or software-engineers-plus,

or systemn-architects-plus

(where, "plus" meaning those people with some additional training)

Peter P. Yim: Marketing questions -

    • who needs "ontologists"?
    • how big is the "market" for (various types of) ontologists? ... now, and in 1,3,5 years?
    • how are we expecting "ontologists" to be showing up as?
      • bring them in-house, as part of the software team?
      • go to a university, and support their professors and research students to get the work done?
      • hire an independent consultant?
      • go to an established "professional services" firm that has the expertise to offer?
    • assuming you were the hiring manager ... how much are you willing to pay for the expertise?

Doug Holmes: So, in what significant way is an "ontologist" different

from a knowledge engineer? There are courses of instruction that exist

in that area that might be leveraged...

anonymous morphed into Pavithra Kenjige

Peter P. Yim: Arturo Sanchez expressed interest to support in an

environmental scan on the issue at hand

Peter P. Yim: we can do an online survey (like we did in OntologySummit2007)

... join Antony Galton et al. in their IAOA effort?

Todd Schneider: Ontology development paradigms are more aligned with

systems engineering.

Bettina Schimanski: I agree that designing and building ontologies does

not solely rely on Computer Scientists. They are the ones to implement

them. The content, however, must come from SMEs, and not just from

biologists as was just mentioned.

Peter P. Yim: I got a proposal (from someone who has been watching how we

were doing the past summits) suggesting that we should have "proposals"

prepared as part of the summit deliverables ... that would take us one

more step, beyond just releasing a communique.

Rex Brooks: What kind of proposal did this person mean, Peter?

Peter P. Yim: @Rex - that person was referring to grant proposals

Rex Brooks: Thanks for the clarification. Would this be proposals in

response to RFPs, or unsolicited in terms of target area?

Amanda Vizedom: @Peter: I like the proposal to prepare proposals very

much. I'd like to suggest that this, too, be modular in that we will

have an easier time working through proposals if those focusing on

overall architecture are separate from those focusing on content

segments, audience, requirements, etc.

Todd Schneider: Ontology Works and Top Quadrant already provide training

services, among others. Could we get them to cooperate?

Steve Ray: @Todd: I was just talking to Ralph Hodgson of TopQuadrant

about this yesterday, and he did have some suggestions, so I'd say yes,

I believe they would participate.

Frank Chum: Semantic Arts also provide a 5-day ontology design training

course

Bettina Schimanski: @Todd: I know Top Quadrant has been very open with

training at conferences so I would think, if invited, they might be

interested. I am unfamiliar with Ontology Works.

Amanda Vizedom: If we want to produce a truly usable and meaningful

certification, we need to make sure we are addressing, in both content

and presentation, the broad range of very different practices that come

under the heading of Ontology.

Bettina Schimanski: @Frank: I am also aware of this Semantic Arts course

and have good things to say about it.

Frank Chum: @Bettina: The course has been taught by DaveMcComb and his

staff. I took it a few years ago. It was really good.

Amanda Vizedom: ... I don't mean the bad stuff, obviously. I do mean that

we need to consider that some ontologists are focused on creating a

single-viewed best possible model of some part of the world, in

abstraction from any particular user community or context. Some are

explicitly focused on creating a model of the world as conceptualized by

members of some community of practice. Some work within a domain and

some work across domains.

Frank Chum: We may need to certify the trainers first!

Arturo Sanchez: yes

Amanda Vizedom: It is absolutely critical that new ontologists have some

understanding of what practices they are part of, and be able to distill and

understand methodological guidances in that context.

Arturo Sanchez: So, that is another thread of discussion. What does ONTOLOG think

Arturo Sanchez: a good certificate program should look like ...

Arturo Sanchez: Wow, good ear!

Leo Obrst: I was going to mention the IAOA too, as a potential certifier

of the certification programs, to provide trustworthiness.

Steve Ray: @Leo - that might be a better legal entity to do the

certification of the certifiers than Ontolog.

Arturo Sanchez: Legal issues aside, ONTOLOG--as part of this upcoming summit--

Frank Chum: There is a class of people out there building database/xml

schemas and convert them into ontologies and then call themselves

ontologists

Bettina Schimanski: @Frank: That is another possibility for a module

topic. I do not have a background with database work but often when I

work with others who have, they want to know what benefits ontologies

offer that databases cannot provide. It is not often a straightforward

discussion.

Frank Chum: @Bettina: Yep. Explaining ontology concept to database people

can turn into lengthy discussions.

Bettina Schimanski: Great, I'm glad to hear Deb is already aware of the

summit and will be a part of it. I'm sure therefore that Jim knows about

it as well. I also agree that more than a Computer Science presence

needs to be there. Any suggestions?

Doug Holmes: There is a joint initiative between MIT and the University

of Southampton in England called The Web Science Research Initiative

(WSRI) that probably ought to be part of this summit...

Arturo Sanchez: propose a formal curriculum that would define what an

ontologist is ...

Bettina Schimanski: @Doug: On that same note, Rensselaer Polytechnic

Institute has two key Semantic Technologists (JimHendler and DebMcGuinness)

who have developed a curriculum that should perhaps also be

considered for inclusion in ths summit.

Doug Holmes: @Bettina I think it be very good to have Jim as part of this Summit

Peter P. Yim: @Bettina - I did speak to DebMcGuinness last week, and has

her support for this upcoming Summit

Arturo Sanchez: @Bettina: DeborahMcGuinness is an habitue of the summit

... it would be great to have James Hendler as well ...

Frank Chum: @Bettina: Yes, but both of them are computer scientist and

sometimes they are not the ideal people to do ontology modeling.

Arturo Sanchez: @FrankChum: "sometimes they are not the ideal people to

do ontology modeling." **this puzzles me ... can you elaborate?

Amanda Vizedom: @Barry - Suggestion: replace current module 13 (UCore) with a

module that surveys the landscape of existing, in-use ontologies: where

they come from, what there characteristics (logically, in use, etc.)

are, what they can and should be used for, how to find and assess more.

Pavithra Kenjige: Steve : I beleive to build Ontology one needs to

understand, logic of relationships of things, how they can be described

( properties) in ones domain. I am not sure where exactly the phsycology

fits in! However, people with phycology communicate with people well,

not necessarily things..

Doug Holmes: Thanks Ken; I have a very hard time distinguishing what we

seem to be talking about from knowledge engineering...

Bettina Schimanski: When I (a Computer Scientist) have designed

ontologies, I have often partnered with a Technical Librarian. That is

what made it successful in my opinion.

Leo Obrst: I periodically teach a series of 3 courses through our MITRE

Institute, each 8 hrs long: 1) Introduction to semantics, ontologies,

knowledge representation, and Semantic Web technologies; 2) a more

foundational course, Introduction to Logic and Logic Programming (this

really should be taught first, in my opinion); and 3) an advanced course

on Ontology Engineering and Applications of Ontologies. These are

currently scheduled independently, but I am considering teaching them in

sequence in one week. I've found these are too short at 8 hrs each, and

yet that is all people can allocate time for, at least here, i.e.,

maximally 24 hrs over 3 days.

Amanda Vizedom: Indeed, RPI is another frequent producer of nascent

ontologists, as is UMD. RPI seems to be coming out of CS. There are many

strong ontologists working today who came originally from Philosophy,

Linguistics, Information Sciences, and so forth. To be usable by folks

who want to hire ontologists, the certificate may incorporate elements

that originated in all of these and more, but the focus must be not on

theoretical background for its own sake, but on the actual knowledge and

skill needed to do good work as a working ontologist.

Peter P. Yim: @Amanda - I talked to Tim Finin (UMD) at ISWC last week, and he

is very supportive too!

Doug Holmes: I personally think that even a small step away from computer

science leads immediately and inevitably to philosophy and there is no

bottom to that swamp...

Frank Chum: @Auturo: As Bettina mentioned, with Librarian, also social

scientist, domain knowledge engineers.

Bettina Schimanski: Maybe it helps too that my background is in

Artificial Intelligence / Cognitive Science.

Bettina Schimanski: I think those fields might need to be included as

well.

Frank Chum: Philosopher too.

Arturo Sanchez: @FrankChum: strongly agree ... the ontology is the

collaborative product of modelers and--so-called--domain experts ...

Amanda Vizedom: @Doug: That's only true of bad philosophy. (half-joking,

bc I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but serious in saying that while

some critical elements come from philosophy, including conceptual

analysis, applied ontology (as opposed to the philosophical subfield of

ontology) is distinct from that ancestral home in part because it does

  • not* include unconstrained swamp-diving, except when done badly.

Doug Holmes: @Amanda no slight intended to philosophers or Philosophy; it

just takes a very long time to resolve anything in that realm

Bettina Schimanski: @All: I enjoyed this discussion and look forward to

further ones. Unfortunately I need to leave now for another meeting.

Have a good day!

Steve Ray: @Bettina - thanks for your participation.

Mike Bennett: There are also a bunch of people at Brunel who are working

in the ontology area. Might be worth talking to them?

Peter P. Yim: @MikeBennett and all - can you, or anyone here, identify who

these people are ... and/or talk to them on behalf of this community

Mike Bennett: @Peter: will do. The person to talk to at Brunel is Sergio

de Cesare, I'll drop him a mail and copy you.

Peter P. Yim: @MikeBennett - great! thanks

Jeff Abbott: Peter and group, I just wanted to put down my input in

text, in case I don't get may audio working. We come from a Human

Systems Integration (HSI)perspective. We have the first HSI

certification program in the USA online at UCSD in San Diego, that is

supported by UCSD and SPAWAR. We always do an Analysis of Alternative

(AOA), see what's out there before we proceed as part of our process. We

are currently developing a HSI for the System Engineer course. Peter, I

just got back from the W3C and attended the HCLS Healthcare group (where

I also talked with Mark Musen) and the Healthcare group certainly uses

ontologies and deals with the integration of ontologies, which could be

a course by itself.

Jeff Abbott: Yes, System Engineering. We are doing the HSI to SE

(because it's in one of our domains) and would like to do Ontology to

SE.

Pavithra Kenjige: Jeff, I agree with that. I learnt it when I was

studying software systems engineering..

Bettina Schimanski: @Steve and Barry - thank you for your presentations

and proposals.

Frank Chum:

http://videolectures.net/Top/Computer_Science/Semantic_Web/Ontologies/

Jeff Abbott: Pavithra and group, you have to develop curriculum to the

audience and it's logic and level of ability and need.

Leo Obrst: @Todd: I taught an elective course on my topic 1 to UVA's

Accelerated Masters program in Systems Engineering.

Peter P. Yim: @Antony and All - please document the salient points you just

talked about on this chat board, if you please (that will help

tremendously when I start boiling the input down to a work plan, and to

manage follow-up activities)

Antony Galton: Just to put on written record what I was saying. The IAOA

include educational matters as an important part of its activities. One

thing we want to do is to compile a database of what is already out

there, i.e., existing courses or modules with ontological content, much

along the lines of what Arturo suggested, and I have already started

work on this - but so far I mainly only have material from the UK.

Another idea is to create a library of resources that teachers can draw

on when designing courses, e.g., research papers, tutorial material,

example ontologies in various formats, editing tools, etc. A third idea

is to put together a set of recommendations for a set of "standard"

curricula. This could relate to the idea that was mentioned about IAOA

being a possible certification or accreditation body for ontological

courses. Finally, I drew attention to the workshop we are planning to

hold at FOIS 2010 on ontology education - we will need to look at how we

can coordinate this with the activities of this summit. I'll be

distributing a call for contributions for this workshop soon.

Frank Chum: @Doug: Barry Smith was (or still is) a philosopher'

Jeff Abbott: You need a ontology basis to go between domains and get a

System of Systems view.

Mike Bennett: @Doug: I disagree profoundly. Ontology should be

multi-disciplinary (think santa Fe type of approach). It has

philosopical underpinnings if it's done right. IT/comp sci does not, if

it's done wrong

Arturo Sanchez: @AntonyGalton: great ideas! I'll look into the FOIS

workshop you mentioned ...

Amanda Vizedom: @Arturo, @Frank: Yes, this is a critical point of

difference between contemporary applied ontologists due and both some

theoretical ontology (in philosophy) and some historical projects: By

far the majority of projects are collaborative in many ways, including

between ontological specialists and subject matter experts. Many people

who have theoretical training turn out to be unable to do applied

ontology in such contexts. Also, a dismaying number of both

supposedly-trained ontologists and customers are unaware of the

substantial research that has taken place in the last 20 years --

especially the last 10 -- around these collaborations and the

consequences of moving the input/formalization closer to, or further

away from, the SMEs.

Peter P. Yim: Todd Schneider suggested that Barry Smith might come up with an

ontology on the domain of "education and training of ontologists"

Todd Schneider: So Barry, are you suggesting a department of ontology

would focus on research in the domain of ontology?

Doug Holmes: @Mike I think that a multi-disciplinary perspective is good

- probably essential, but I also think there is an essential engineering

perspective that has to be grounded in a particular product. That is, as

far as I can see, a computer science product...

Mike Bennett: @Doug, it is certainly engineering and should be grounded

in well established engineering methodology. This is what I don't tend

to see when IT folks who call themselves engineers, get hold of a new

toy or a new language to learn. Results can be variable!

Amanda Vizedom: @Doug: None taken! Just piping up because sometimes

people focus on the more abstracted or least empirically connected

schools, within certain subareas of philosophy, thinking that's all

there is. There are, however, a substantial number of us out here with

Ph.D.s in philosophy *and* many years of experience as working, applied

ontologists in non-academic environments. We do, however, tend to come

from more pragmatic schools of thought, and often from different

sub-areas within philosophy.

Doug Holmes: @Mike can't argue with that

Mike Bennett: @Doug and Amanda, I think we have a core module here

Frank Chum: @Amanda: Philosophers can be working ontologists too.

Doug Holmes: @Frank as long as its ontology with a "small o"

Amanda Vizedom: @Doug, @ Mike, and others: I agree that the engineering

aspect is critical. In fact, I might argue that the certificate client

organizations want is very importantly an *applied* ontology

certificate. I have seen too many people hire folks with theoretical

training only, and no engineering understanding or intuitions. This

causes project failure *and* gives the field a bad reputation.

Mike Bennett: @Amanda agree wholeheartdly. Maybe we should be talking to

engineering insstitutions

Doug Holmes: IEEE

Arturo Sanchez: @MichaelGruninger: good summary ... which sums up the

threads that can be defined for the summit ...

Peter P. Yim: we need "champions!"

Arturo Sanchez: "we don't need another hero" "Tina Turner"

Rex Brooks: I didn't want to inject a tangent, but I wish I had some

ontology students to help with doing ontologies for use in IT standards.

Jeff Abbott: Peter, I will send you my information and will be in

contact. thx

Peter P. Yim: @Jeff - yes ... thanks

Arturo Sanchez: Thanks y'all Nice weather here in NE Florida

Peter P. Yim: Great session ... I'll try to get the chat-transcript and

audio recording posted (onto the session page) within the next working

day ... please check back!

Terry Longstreth: @Peter: Could you put together a list of things people

could help on?

Peter P. Yim: @Terry ... I guess that would be what the "organizing

committee" will need to get to next - before the Ontology Summit 2010

Launch Event on 10-Dec-2009

Leo Obrst: I agree with Fabian, that we need to distinguish between

university (Masters level) curricula, and a professional curricula. I

personally think that they are the same. I would advocate a commmon

curriculum, which could be taught in 3 ways: 1)a university academic MS

degree in ontology engineering, which could be prelude to a PhD program;

2) a university terminal professional MS degree in ontology engineering;

3) a non-university professional accreditation course. In all cases,

there should be recognition via a certification: the first 2 via a

university degree, the 3rd via the course provider backed by

accreditation itself via a professional organization such as the

International Association for Ontology and its Applications.

Peter P. Yim: session adjourned 12:03pm PST

Peter P. Yim: Bye everyone ... closing chat session now! =ppy

- end of in-session chat-transcript -

  • Further Question & Remarks - please post them to the [ ontology-summit ] listserv
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  • Conference Date and Time: 5-Nov-2009 10:38am~12:03am PST
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