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Ontology Summit 2010: Panel Session-1 - "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009

Ontology Summit 2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"

Conference Call Details

  • Date: Thursday, 17-December-2009
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Attendees

  • Other registered participants who may have joined us after the roll call:
    • ... 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. ...

Resources

Topic: Ontology Summit 2010 - Creating the Ontologists of the Future

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."

  • Session Abstract: Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities
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.
In this session, we will describe the mechanisms by which we shall facilitate the discourse and elicit input from the community. We will be engaging the participants, at the session, to provide some real-time input and insights to help us shape and refine the survey instruments we will be using during the course of this summit, so we can collectively survey the landscape and the possibilities.

See also: OntologySummit2010 (home page for the project)

Agenda & Proceedings

Ontology Summit 2010 Launch

  • Session Format: this is a virtual session conducted over an augmented conference call
    • 1. Opening - Steve Ray (10 min.)
    • 2. Formulating the Survey Questions for the Present - Arturo Sanchez & Antony Galton (30 min.)
    • 3. Formulating the Survey Questions for the Future (Delphi Study) - Elizabeth Florescu & Peter P. Yim (25 min.)
    • 4. Feedback on Who To Survey - Amanda Vizedom (15 min.)
    • 5. Q & A and open discussion on what the community wants to achieve in this Summit (All ~30 min.) -- please refer to process above
    • 6. Conclusion / Follow-up (AmandaVizedom - 5 minutes)

Transcript of the online chat during the session

see raw transcript here.

(chat-transcript below has been re-organized and lightly edited for clarity.)

Participants are welcome to make light edits to their own contributions as they see fit.

Peter P. Yim: Welcome to the Ontology Summit 2010: Panel Session-1

- "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009

Ontology Summit 2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"

and other Summit Track co-champions

.

anonymous morphed into Steve Ray

anonymous1 morphed into Antony Galton

anonymous morphed into Bernard Ulozas

Arturo Sanchez: Hello there Antony. Are you in the call now?

Antony Galton: Just about to dial in.

anonymous2 morphed into Tom Dale

anonymous1 morphed into Elizabeth Florescu

anonymous2 morphed into Lisa Zilinski

Ravi Sharma: Arturo: we need categories on semantics, tagged web pages, Linked -open - data, Vocabularies,

terms, data dictionaries, philosophy and math or specific like CL etc.

Arturo Sanchez: @Ravi: are you referring to the survey? If so, what specific page in the survey are you

referring to?

Fabian Neuhaus: suggestion to arturo and antony: could you include the examples for program/course/course

that includes ontology related concepts that arturo just used to explain the slide

Todd Schneider: Will a set of definitions be developed to help with the terminology differences?

Arturo Sanchez: @Fabian: good idea ... will do ...

Ken Baclawski: Even in the US, terminology can vary from institution to institution. Sometimes programs are

divided into majors and majors into concentrations.

Arturo Sanchez: @Todd: do you mean as part of the survey?

Arturo Sanchez: @Ken: these would be 'programs' (collectively referred to as ...)

Peter P. Yim: A note on the event calendar ... the Thu 2010.02.11 date for the "Quality" Track Panel Session is

still tentative (and is subject to change)

Ravi Sharma: Arturo and Antony: we have slight preference in the survey for academic courses leading to

degree but there are courses or tool based or technologies based training programs that we all might be

surprise at in terms of numbers of practical ontologists and semantics professionals that these tracks might

be able to generate. These could include categories in the surveys such as: Vocational, Tool based,

Migration in to ontologies from Bio, bioinformatics, IT, Standards that can use or that are based on

ontologies, etc.?

GaryBergCross: Does the "survey" process plan to include ontology modules/courses which are in Departments

of Theology/religion. Ontology is often discussed there.

Arturo Sanchez: @GaryBergCross: yes ... hopefully respondents will identify these types of programs, and you

can send the link to your colleagues working in these areas (good point!)

Pierre Grenon: Arturo / Antony: while universities might be the main institutions concerned, can we make

provisions for 'professional certification'?

Pierre Grenon: Also, what do i do if i know of programs that are not hosted by my institution?

Todd Schneider: Peter, how do I mute the phone?

Steve Ray: *2 to mute

Todd Schneider: Thanks Steve.

Fabian Neuhaus: @Pierre: professional certification is definitely within the scope of this survey

Ravi Sharma: Further my observation of the fields of IT, Data management, information processing etc have the

trend thatg based on new opportunities and solution discoveries many traditional professionals switch to

newer fields such as ontologies, how will we then capture such potential ontologists going forward?

Todd Schneider: Arturo, not as a question or questions in the survey, but first for the community and this

effort, secondly as "guidance" for those filling out the survey.

Pierre Grenon: @fabian, i think so, but th

Pierre Grenon: sorry.. just that the questions are very university biased

Ken Baclawski: @Arturo: My suggestion is to adjust the definition of "program" to make it clear that it

includes majors and concentrations according to the terminology employed at the institution.

Ravi Sharma: Pierre: kindly see my lengthy comments I agree but it is a good beginning.

Fabian Neuhaus: @pierre: you are right. we should try to make it more open to non-university programs

Pierre Grenon: @Ravi: going through it, thanks. @Fabian

Peter P. Yim: *3 to unmute, Elizabeth

Elizabeth Florescu: I am unmuted on my phone, maybe u didn't unmute me

Elizabeth Florescu: Peter, I am here, but i think u didn't unmute me

Peter P. Yim: *3 on your phone pad

Bruce Bray: It would be useful to request submissions of syllabus documents for existing courses/modules - to

obtain a more complete description of content.

Steve Ray: In fact, if people have links to course materials, perhaps we could include a place to list

them.

Arturo Sanchez: @PierreGrenon (first comment): Yes, good point. How do you suggest we change the questions to

capture this?

Ravi Sharma: Steve: great idea and also a mechanism to keep track active links after 2010 summit.

Ken Baclawski: @Arturo: Another issue concerns the granularity of accreditation. The institution as a whole

can be accredited, but one can also have accreditation at the department level. A department can offer

several programs most of which are not individually accredited. It would help if the question on

accreditation would make it clear how specific the accreditation is.

Arturo Sanchez: @PierreGrenon (second comment): You can either (1) send the survey link to colleagues in

those institutions; or (2) answer on their behalf (or both! )

Arturo Sanchez: @KenBaclawski: Yes, good point ... will do

Pierre Grenon: @arturo: comment 2, easy then let me think about #1...

Ravi Sharma: Arturo and Anthony: Similar to Professional Training we also identify shorter courses that may

not mean any degree. You already possibly have this in the survey checklist.

Arturo Sanchez: @BruceBray: yes, that is why we are asking to include web references when describing courses

... but if you have suggestions for the language to use, please let us know

Ravi Sharma: Peter: you are referencing probably the realtime Delphi which would imply online analytics and

display and updated of display results being new and in 2004 but i participated in DELPHI surveys for the

space program as early as 1960's or early 1970's?

Ravi Sharma: Peter and Elizabeth: sorry saw the RAND link later, ignore history comment.

Todd Schneider: A note of caution, a survey of this type can't be too long or imposing or people will not

reply. It may be necessary to conduct a focused second survey or e-mails based on the results of the first

survey.

Arturo Sanchez: @SteveRay: OK ... I see, a specific area to include links ... let me think how this can be

done in a simple way (so respondents do not feel overwhelmed ...)

Arturo Sanchez: @KenBaclawski (granularity of accreditation): Yes, that is right ... we will think about how

to do this (BTW, this would probably only apply to the US, which brings up another issue ...)

GaryBergCross: I do worry about trusting the opinions of "experts" since they can be subject bias like

anyone else. This is pointed out in "How we Decide" by Lehner p202 Experts and pundits often suffer from

cognitive errors in that they selectively interpret the data so that it proves them right. They'll distort

their thought process until it leads to the desired conclusion. Some data is presented on p207 In an

experiment, 284 people who make a living offering political and economic advice were polled on their

predictions. This led to 82,361 different predictions... They tended to perform worse than random chance,

and selected the right answer only 3.3% of the time... The most famous in the study tended to be least

accurate. Why? False certainty which led the experts to mistakenly impose top down solutions

Arturo Sanchez: @ToddSchneider: Yes, very good point ... which is why I would rather keep it simple ...

Todd Schneider: The survey will need some contextual introduction i.e., Why is the survey being conducted.

Which raises another point, what is the intent of this survey or, more importantly, what will be done with

the gathered information?

Ravi Sharma: Elizabeth: THis mechanism includes incremental learning in realtime as well as the influence

(social and Psychological or also depending on the wiond the lobby or persuation of powerful professionals

on the independent answers that perhaps more ignorant but unbiased professionals would have otherwise

provided. This has positive and negative benefits for example convergence to community views is advantage

and bias to dominant view is disadvantage, have these factors been studied and isolated in the statistic.

And you use the word Cohort, can you further explain this in this context?

Bonnie Swart: I do want to volunteer to help with the survey or any other summit activities and I'd like to

revisit the idea of building an ontology of the "Ontologist Profession"

Arturo Sanchez: @BonnieSwart: Thank you for offering ... there will be different surveys for different tracks

... which one would you like to help with (hopefully the one Antony and I are putting together is one of

them ). Also, as I mentioned last Thu. I like very much the idea of building an ontology for the "Ontologist

Profession" ... Somebody (or a small group) must be the "chief engineer" ... would you like to be it?

Todd Schneider: Arturo, I asked Barry Smith to develop an ontology for training ontologist back in October;

Haven't heard back about that. I vote for Barry to be the "Chief Engineer".

Steve Ray: @Amanda: I will need to leave in 5 minutes. Can you take over chairing?

Amanda Vizedom: Steve: yes

Steve Ray: @Amanda: Great. Thanks much.

Pierre Grenon: @arturo: re.1 university biase. Maybe it's just a matter of having a more inclusive

terminology... as a first stab, suggestions could be something like: 1) broaden/qualify the terminology,

perhaps using examples, following Fabian's suggestion, might be enough. 2) slide 8, question on degree, add:

professional certification' or some such? 3) slide 9, re. level, add something like 'professional' or

vocational' or some such, if it makes sense. 4) disciplinary association might not work be easily elicited,

i don't know whether the best would be to ignore it or add something less academic? e.g ICT? Will keep

thinking...

Arturo Sanchez: @Pierre: Thanks! I appreciate the input ... we'll keep it in mind as we put together the next

version.

Arturo Sanchez: @ToddSchneider: OK ... we can add this at the beginning ... as for "Why is the survey being

conducted", our intention was to explain this in slide 3 of our presentation today, in the context of the

Summit's theme, which is further elaborated in http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010.

what will be done with the gathered information? The information from our survey (Curricular Content &

Quality Assurance--Presently) will be presented to the community as part of the summit to attempt to

characterize the current 'state of the art' for these two tracks.

Arturo Sanchez: @ToddSchneider + @BonnieSwart: Well, in that case, I would suggest for Bonnie to get in touch

with Barry to see if he's still insterested/has time for that. I am also interested, but I am not an

Ontologist myself ... I am a Software Engineering mainly interested on what to do with the Ontologies to

solve practical problems ...

Bonnie Swart: @Arturo: I'll take on "chief engineer" duties ... who else is interested in the ontology? Ravi

expressed an interest last week -- since he's more familiar with the Ontolog procedures,

Arturo Sanchez: @Bonnie: great ... see my suggestion above as a response to ToddSchneider's suggestion ...

please keep me in the loop

Bonnie Swart: Ravi, would you help me organize the ontology work?

Bonnie Swart: @Arturo: I'll get with Barry on the ontology ... re. Surveys, I'm actually more interested in

the info you're collecting to formulate the queries -- that knowledge and the modeling required to build the

ontology have a significant overlap. Also, the ontology would allow the survey data to be stored as RDF,

either directly or converted

Antony Galton: I have to go now.

Arturo Sanchez: @AntonyGalton: Antony, let's keep in touch via email ... please drop me a line to let me know

when/if you will be able to meet next week ... Best!

Pierre Grenon: @todd: do you need help for your ontology?

Arturo Sanchez: @ToddSchneider: "The curriculum developed for training ontologists will overlap that of

systems engineering and most likely software engineering" ... current curricula already overlap ...

Todd Schneider: Pierre, what ontology?

Pierre Grenon: ontology for training

Todd Schneider: The curriculum developed for training ontologists will overlap that of systems engineering

and most likely software engineering. It could be argued that if a school has a department of/for systems

engineering that department could run such a program.

Pierre Grenon: @todd: (not that i know what you're onto)

Todd Schneider: Pierre, I'm not developing an ontology for the training of ontologists, I'm recommending

Barry Smith for this effort.

Ravi Sharma: Peter: slide number?

-- 

the educator

Joel Bender: I am representing an "ontologist wannabe"

Bruce Bray: University educator

Cameron Ross: Market

Michelle Raymond: representing viewpoint of Market

Michael Grüninger: University educator

Pierre Grenon: i'm taking the ontologist role

Fabian Neuhaus: educator

Bill Hogan: ontologist

Ken Baclawski: educator

GaryBergCross: Aspiring Ontologist

Tom Dale: Tom Dale: individual

Arturo Sanchez: @PeterYim: Role == Software Engineer / Software Developer / Business Analyst

Leo Obrst: Role: multiple: market, educator, ontologist.

+ToddSchneider: besides markets, consider also adjacent markets

--

+PeterYim: using the futurists' definition of "developments" - where a development is an event or a fact that

could have a significant impact on the future of a field, sector, world or a domain

Peter P. Yim: Q1: What major "development(s)" (please express in one statement) do you foresee happening to the

domain of Ontology or to the Ontologist profession over the following 20 years? (e.g. ontology gets accepted

by the scientific community as a science, like physics, chemistry, biology, psychology)

Pierre Grenon: Development: ontologist make a decent living

Pierre Grenon: First development: ontology not as a discipline (because it's not, it's a fusion of

disciplines) but recognised as useful to disciplines, e.g. demand for ontology training from biology,

medicine, humanities or social science people

Pierre Grenon: Second development: ontology as a multi-headed discipline with specialisms of its own

Pierre Grenon: Development: Ontology as part of industrial standards life-cycle (all standards, inter alia,

in ontology form + ontologisation as part of QA)

Ravi Sharma: Q1: Market and Academic as well as Ontologist all three: all the disciplines as indicated and

Applied Math/ Engineering, Government including security, IT tools for application to variety of

Disciplines, Ontology by itself as a , DoD, Space, Information Integration and information Exchange etc.

Ravi Sharma: Peter: it would be beneficial if you allow answer of what you have in slidesas Q 1 to... for 20

years.

Michelle Raymond: Ontology will become as broad a spectrum of service and study as Computer Science and as

such will require many specialized/focused areas of study. The need is now. The resulting spectrum of

supporting professionals will become identified in 5-10 years and available in 10-20 years.

Joel Bender: (1) In twenty years there will have been a revolution in the tools that an ontologist uses to

build an ontology, and that will change the relationship between ontologists and their clients, changing the

way systems engineering and software design is done.

GaryBergCross: Ontology becomes separated from Philosophy as a scientific method the way the Psychology did

in the late 19th century

Fabian Neuhaus: Ontology will become a standard course in teaching bioinformatics.

Arturo Sanchez: Q1: The domain of Ontology will be established as an (mostly) Engineering discipline that

cross-cuts other disciplines

Leo Obrst: Q1: Market: accepts need for ontologists now, though skills are ill-defined. Education: is behind,

will catch up within next 2-5 years. Ontologist: the working ontologist recognizes need for training,

certification now, expects accredited programs within 2-5 years.

--

Peter P. Yim: Q2: What do you see as important emerging trends concerning ontology, ontologists or ontology

training/education over the next 20 years?

Ravi Sharma: Q2: as all three: Inferencing and Search, Predicate Calculus and Prdicate (Relationships in

ontologies and RDF OWL sense) as well as affinity analysis in the sense of depth or strength of

relationships and models and tools required to do that.

Cameron Ross: The field of Ontology will transcend domains/markets etc.

Bill Hogan: Routine use of ontology will enable a revolution in the flexibilty of information systems to be

expanded beyond their original purpose

Ken Baclawski: In 10 years, ontology engineering will be accepted as an engineering discipline like

electrical engineering or software engineering.

Michael Grüninger: Ontologies will be a foundational component for semantic technologies and knowledge-based

systems

Terry Longstreth: Important emerging trend in next 20 years (or a hope?)- techniques to eliminate cultural

bias from ontological methods

Michelle Raymond: Emerging trends concerning ontology training are that many domains are piecing together

content to "meet-the-need" in an ad-hoc manner now.

Fabian Neuhaus: Ontology will separate itself from the Semantic Web buzz

Nancy Wiegand: In 20 years, ontology might just be background information that everyone is used to.

GaryBergCross: A standard text becomes available for the core course in the same way that this happened for

Cognitive Psych in the 1960s. This identifies the core topics and issues and addresses them in a standard

way.

Joel Bender: The field will be opened up, will not be as bound to FOL constraints as is currently presented.

Cameron Ross: Tools/technologies/best practices will (continue) to emerge to support the field.

Michelle Raymond: Trends for ontologists are many "related" fields are claiming the capabilities and will

consider to do so until a formalized credentialling is available.

Ken Baclawski: Ontology will become an accepted part of software engineering processes.

Bonnie Swart: Emerging trends in ontology and semantics: convergence with cloud computing (see

BrandNiemann's presentation from the 12/15/09 DC Semantic Web meetup

http://federalcloudcomputing.wik.is/@api/deki/files/132/=BrandNiemann12152009.ppt)

Arturo Sanchez: Q2: Ontologists will be formally trained professionals that will be able to develop

ontologies (as software/hardware artifacts) which can be seamlessly consumed by various software/hardware

artifacts

Leo Obrst: Q2: Market, education, ontologist: certification and academic programs at MS level will emerge

within 2-5 years. Education, ontologist: PhD programs will emerge in 5+ years. Training for all three roles

will be recognized as requiring: 1) background in logic, semantics, formal ontology/philosphy; 2)at least 2

years of computer science; 3) hands-on training in ontology development and ontology application

development.

--

Peter P. Yim: Q3: About how many "ontologists" (or professionals doing work that requires an "ontology education

or training") do you estimate the world might need over the next 20 years?

Ravi Sharma: Q3: all three perspectives: at least One million assuming the current population growth, in 20

years.

Joel Bender: Q3: no answer.

GaryBergCross: Depends on the type of world we have, but I'd say if we have 4-500 now we would have 4-5,000

by then since we would have 5 years or more of graduates from accredited programs.

Michelle Raymond: The equivalent number of data base professionals, data-model professionals, AI

professionals, and mathematicians needed today are the number needed within 10 years.

Ken Baclawski: Q3: At least 5-10% of the personnel on a software engineering project will be required to have

significant ontology training, and a larger number will need some background in ontologies.

Arturo Sanchez: Q3: Half of the number of Engineers

Leo Obrst: Q3: Quantity of ontologists over next 20 years. Market: current: 1k; 20 years: 10k; Education:

current: 100; 20 years: 1k; Ontologist: current: 1k; 20 years: 10k+.

--

Peter P. Yim: Q4: What are the potential futures of ontology in academia? (e.g. university departments,

mandatory credit courses, undergrad, grad, PhD, etc)

Ravi Sharma: Q4: all 3 perspectives: Ph.D. and grad School Courses and Professional and tool certifications

will begin immdiately in more advanced or academic countires and will continue to permeate down over the

next 20 years, thus at the end of 20 years you will see ontology courses similar to choosing "world History"

today.

Ravi Sharma: Peter: I can not limit my thinking only to a time window so let me provide as I get the answers

or responses and we can parse them later!

Todd Schneider: Ken, ontology development paradigms and precepts will permeate to all engineering

disciplines.

Bill Hogan: Per Barry Smith, there will be Departments of Ontology that perform a service function not unlike

that of Departments of Biostatistics, in Schools of health sciences (like medicine, pharmacy, nursing, etc)

Michael Grüninger: Ontological engineering will be an undergrad minor and a specialization stream at the

graduate level.

Joel Bender: Q4: I see it incorporated into existing plans, replacing systems design as an evolutionary step.

GaryBergCross: In 20 years there may still be more inter-disciplinary programs with Ontology as part of

that, than pure Programs.

Michelle Raymond: Doctorate degrees in "Ontology" with specialized areas of study within 10 years.

Fabian Neuhaus: I expect the first master programs in ontology within the next 10 years.

Ken Baclawski: Q4: In 10 years there will be many departmental groups for ontologies, but not many full

departments.

Arturo Sanchez: Q4: There will be degrees which will focus on Ontology Engineering. There will be courses on

Ontologies offered by programs in Computing, Engineering, Medicine, Biology, Philosophy, Library Sciences,

etc.

Leo Obrst: Q4: Futures in academia. Education: immediate need for an ontology dept that offers undergraduate

and postgraduate degrees. My guess is that from now to 2 years, these will be interdisciplinary degrees at

postgraduate level; at undergraduate level, there will be minors (i.e., a few courses in computing,

philosophy, linguistics, cognitive science programs). In 5 years, there will be ontology departments.

--

Peter P. Yim: Q5: What needs to happen between now and the day when we will have "ontology departments" in

universities and enterprises?

Ravi Sharma: no please parse the answers later

Pierre Grenon: we need convincing applications

Fabian Neuhaus: Ontology needs to become a mature engineering discipline with an accepted methodology and

evaluation criteria

Michelle Raymond: We need credentialing for employers to weigh professionals against to form Ontology Depts.

Cameron Ross: Q5: Wide spread adoption of semantic technologies in the marketplace will be a prerequisite.

Joel Bender: Q5: There has to be a market recognition that it is something more than systems engineering as

it happens now, and not just resume fodder.

Michael Grüninger: More rigorous foundations and methodology, together with solid applications

Pierre Grenon: it needs to become clear to industry that ontology training is available and a worthy

investment

GaryBergCross: Chicken and egg issue, but we need an agreement on the field and its relations to other

fields, how it fits into IT courses, cognitive science etc. And then we need success avoiding the Cyc

phenomena of bit effort with less payoff.

Todd Schneider: A more pragmatic answer may include the availability of useful and effective tools and

services that use ontologies for their operation.

Ravi Sharma: Q5: all 3 perspectives: Math, Logic, Philosophy IT and Engineering Department Faculty has to

become aware of this emerging powerful knowledge management discipline and their awareness will then

converge in a separate course or department and like in Physics and EE they might still teach the same

course or its variant.

Ken Baclawski: Q5: We need curricular materials (textbooks, readily available courseware, curriculum

guidelines) as well as professional/academic organizations.

Arturo Sanchez: Q5: Exogenous forces (industry/government) endogenous forces (academia)

Leo Obrst: Q5: What needs to happen before we have ontology depts.? Bodies such as IAOA need to establish

criteria for knowledge, skills, quality requirements, for personal certification and academic/professional

accreditation. Otherwise, these will be based on efforts of "heroes" within universities and companies,

which will be typically good but idiosyncratic.

--

Peter P. Yim: Q6: If you were to educate the general public about "ontology," what do you expect them to learn,

know or understand?

Michelle Raymond: The general public would benefit from knowing there is a spectrum in "ontology" per Leo's

famous graphic.

Cameron Ross: Q6: The characteristics of ontology that differentiate it from the many other information-based

technologies out there.

Pierre Grenon: not much, just that machines are dumb and people need to tell them how the world is

GaryBergCross: Start in grade school the way we do with computer literacy. Build an apprpeciative public in

general. Target undergraduate education leveraging connections to Psychology and SE etc.

Bill Hogan: computers don't know what exists in the world, we have to tell them, and we have to be very

careful about doing so, because otherwise they draw bad conclusions. And it turns out to be a very tricky

thing to do, despite how easy it sounds.

Arturo Sanchez: Q6: Programs in NPR, articles in Scientific American, such as that on Semantic Web by

Berners-Lee et alia

Ravi Sharma: Q6: all 3 perspectives: I do not yet feel i have reached that stage but i can say that this new

practice of old known discipline is beginning to address and solve problems as exemplified in EU and US by

the number of problems in Bio, Med, Onco, DHS security and events analysis etc. or for datamining etc this

discipline is worth looking at as a component in your self study professional study or formal training.

Pierre Grenon: kids ought to be able to understand ontology

Michelle Raymond: The public would also benefit from knowing how Ontology tools help address key issues in

technology and understanding.

Joel Bender: Q6: (funny, I'm trying to do this in a standards working group and not making any progress) That

by using ontology design principles then better systems can be built, the systems will work together better

because the individual components of what something "means" will be better defined.

Fabian Neuhaus: Ontological engineering is a method to represent knowledge in a machine readable way. It

allows to separate executable code (written by software engineers) from the knowledge about a particular

domain (maintained by domain experts/ontologists)

Nancy Wiegand: Ontology is the background terms, concepts, and relationships that describe a domain.

Ontologies can help organize information, help in searching, and help resolve multiple terms that are

related.

Leo Obrst: Q6: General public knowledge of ontology. I would expect them to know initially (today) only that

ontologies are models which are used in computer science and software that represent ways that human think

about the real world. So ontologies represent knowledge that humans know about the world and wish to impart

to software, so that software can more directly use human knowledge and thus interact with human software

users at their level.

Terry Longstreth: Q6: Ontology is currently an Art, which we hope will evolve into a science, of correlating

concepts from across different cultural perspectives

Joel Bender: @Terry: Not just an "art", but it seems to come across as quite a bit of philosophical hand

waving

Ken Baclawski: Q6: Just to be a "devil's advocate", why is it necessary to educate the general public? It is

rare for someone in the general public to know what linguistics is, but that did not prevent there being a

lot of linguistics departments.

Pierre Grenon: @ken: in the UK, we have to explain things to the tax-payers

Joel Bender: @Pierre: lol

Todd Schneider: Pierre, Ken, around the world you usually need to explain technical things to non-technical

people.

Pierre Grenon: @todd: agreed, totally, but we ought to aim for simplicity for starters

Todd Schneider: Pierre, I concur. But simple is usually hard.

Ken Baclawski: @Pierre: Yes, I can accept the need for that. However, if that is the motivation, then one

should focus on the *use* of ontologies rather than what they are.

Pierre Grenon: @todd: right, that's why it's a goal and not a requirement. @ken: the use indeed is important

for illustration, the difficulty here is that it's very dependent on people's background. I tend to use the

internet with which most people i meet are more or less familiar, but that's very reductive. The other

examples are scientific databases. then you can explain expert systems... In the end, with professionals in

particular, you actually have to know about their needs.

GaryBergCross: Ken asked "why is it necessary to educate the general public? It is rare for someone in the

general public to know what linguistics is, but that did not prevent there being a lot of linguistics

departments." I might think that the public experiences quite a bit about English and language in its

elementary and high school education and a modest amount of analagous exposure to semantic issues would be

useful in their education and apreciation for what goes on in Ontology work in Universities.

Arturo Sanchez: gotta go ... great session y'all!

+PeterYim: thank you very much, Arturo

Arturo Sanchez: @PeterYim: My pleasure

Ravi Sharma: Peter i have answered all Qs but not in the same sequence as you timed them in your time window

sorry you have to rearrange the answers later but i did not want to stop thinking.

Peter P. Yim: end of "Development" question ... thanks

Elizabeth Florescu: Thank you all for your great list of developments! We will distill them and feed back to

you the draft for eventual further comments

anonymous1 morphed into Leo Obrst

Peter P. Yim: Thanks, Leo ... I'll make sure your input does gmake it into today's proceedings as well.

--

Amanda Vizedom to All: please go to:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_PertinentQuestions#nid25J9

Ravi Sharma: Amanda: Kindly include examples such as you just mentioned such as data modelers etc that are

able to use ontology a formal or informal use of capabilities that give them insight to solving current

problems, also, many times people do not want to make only one choice.

Michelle Raymond: An issue with defining who is currently hired to do Ontology work is the fact that

employers are asking for the skills of an Ontologist without even knowing what "Ontology" is. Thus an

Ontologist has improper labeling such as "Data Modeler" and "Human Factors" with requirements gathering and

analysis skills.

Michelle Raymond: Of-course there are plenty of "Data Modelers" and "Human Factors professionals" who need

ontology skills and don't have them.

Bonnie Swart: the flip side to Michelle's statement is that ontologists go into interviews with companies

that say they have an ontology/semantic practice area but don't even begin to understand what that means ...

we end up in interviews talking to database people or software engineers that think any file ending in .owl

is an ontology.

Ravi Sharma: Amanda: would it not be also useful if we could analyze the web (Ontolog) profiles of people in

this survey or ask a question to define their current interest areas, job titles or voluntary activities and

interests. this might also benefit the Delphi analyses. by cross feedback.

Leo Obrst: When I hired ontologists at VerticalNet in 1999-2000, I looked for people who had experience in

formal ontology, formal semantics in linguistics, data modeling, AI (especially in knowledge

representation), computational linguistics, and those with experience developing ontologies or complex

models.

Leo Obrst: Now, I look for the following:

Leo Obrst: This position would support projects with technical solutions requiring knowledge representation,

ontology engineering, knowledge management, and related technical disciplines (e.g., general artificial

intelligence, natural language semantics, natural language processing, data and object modeling, enterprise

modeling, formal logic, automated reasoning, etc.)

Desirable attributes: a proven track record developing timely and usable solutions to complex problems, the

ability to create enterprise strategies for organizations using ontology-related technologies and

knowledge/logic-based applications, solid project management and software development experience, experience

building ontologies and knowledge representation systems and applications that use ontologies, 4+ years

experience building ontologies for commercial and/or governmental use, interest and experience in the

Semantic Web, excellent oral and written communication skills, knowledge of computational classification

methodologies, ability to lead and work with a team. Education: Masters or Ph.D degree or equivalent

experience: Linguistics, Computer Science, AI, Knowledge Representation, Semantics, Philosophy of Language,

Formal Logic, Automated Reasoning.

--

Amanda Vizedom: Q: To whom should we be talking? Whom should we be asking to complete this survey?

Nancy Wiegand: Are you trying to develop a curriculum in ACM?

Ravi Sharma: Funding Agencies, Venture Capitalists, futurists, are our target to get to apprecite the value

of ontology but for the survey we should be asking Ontolog, standards bodies and other related Communities

including researchers and government funding agencies.

Fabian Neuhaus: For the survey: One company that is offering courses in ontology is Ontology Works Inc.

Michelle Raymond: Talk with industry labs that have knowledge services sections, automated reasoning

sections, and domains that require knowledge analysis.

Fabian Neuhaus: We should circulate the surveys among the bioontology commmunity, e.g. the OBO group

Michelle Raymond: Also talk with Human Factors (user focused / not ergonomics) professionals.

Cameron Ross: Developers of semantic tooling should be on the list.

Bonnie Swart: survey members of semantic tech interest groups from sites like LinkedIn ...

Pierre Grenon: ask them to ontologists knowledge engineers, information architects etc. You can send this to

ICT R&D departments in most major companies, consulting companies, i don't know about computing

departments..

Ravi Sharma: all speakers in last 5 years who have addressed forums like Ontolog and its connected areas such

as Gov KM etc.

Terry Longstreth: Medlars

Michelle Raymond: In the Built environment community look to those working with standards: IFC, COBIE,

OmniClass, IFD... etc...

Ken Baclawski: Along with all of the other communities already mentioned, there are many government agencies,

military departments and the intelligence community that would be very interested.

GaryBergCross: Use a stratified approach as people are suggesting for strata. Use citation index to find the

most published folks and survey them, for example.

Amanda Vizedom: US Air Force

Michelle Raymond: For built environment (buildings/facilities) contact DeborahMacPherson at Cannon Design.

Pierre Grenon: Do you want actual contacts?

Pierre Grenon: ok, i'll put together a list.

Michelle Raymond: For Honeywell Labs contact Conrad Bealue(sp.) who is focused on Building Information

Modeling. Also Liana Kiff.

Ravi Sharma: DOD DHS NASA NOAA Law and Regulations monitoring (joke to catch Madoffs) and financial analytics

and Wall street players are also to be contacted.

Peter P. Yim: Market: anyone who is a potential employer for people trained in ontology - CIOs, CKOs,

software-application Project-Directors, Libraries, professional services firms, systems integrators ... all

big IT / System / Professional Services houses - IBM, ORACLE, HP, SAP, CSC, Salesforce.com, [ PWC, BAH, SAIC, BAE, ] ... etc.

Peter P. Yim: Educators/trainers: Deans of Engineering colleges, College of Arts & Sciences, ... professional

services firms that are putting out training courses, ...

Peter P. Yim: Individuals: those who are already pursuing studies in Computer Science, Information Systems,

Philosophy, Library Science, ...

Ravi Sharma: there are probably 100 in US alone as interested agencies and UN CEFACT or other UN uses, etc

are some others.

Michelle Raymond: Medical and emergency response call Dr. Duane Cavena. (sp.)

Ravi Sharma: It is Dr. Duane Caneva?

Amanda Vizedom: All of the Semantic Web meetup groups, Linked Data groups.

Amanda Vizedom: NASA

Michelle Raymond: Further in Built Environment look into the International Dictionary Framework group.

Fabian Neuhaus: For the bio-ontology community: probably the best way is to send the announcement of the

queries to their mailing lists, e.g. the Gene ontology mailing list

Pierre Grenon: BT has a bunch of semantic web researchers in their innovation center, SAP has people who

could call themselves ontologists, Ordnance Survey (make maps for the Queen) have an strong ontology

group... will send names

Ravi Sharma: THAT WAY ALL eu ONTOLOGY ACTIVITIES

Ravi Sharma: sorry for the caps

Michelle Raymond: Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley for Location Awareness and Disaster Management. Talk w/

SteveRay.

Amanda Vizedom: Financial industry - Michael Bennett?

Pierre Grenon: do we have IBM already?

Amanda Vizedom: Library of Congress

Amanda Vizedom: World Bank

Pierre Grenon: @amanda: this is VERY useful, now i know where to send a cv

Amanda Vizedom: Search industry, including Convera.

Nancy Wiegand: I'm not sure who you're looking for, but I have names/contacts for the geospatial semantics

people from the Terra Cognita workshops at ISWC. There is also GeoS. These are mostly academics, but not

all.

Michelle Raymond: Mondeca had a visual topic-map of professionals working with topic-maps. Their domain

specialties would be interesting to look into.

Ravi Sharma: All who comile Taxonomies and Digital Libraries FGDC Metadata groups, Knowledge communities

GaryBergCross: Places like LOB and World Band have done this under taxonomy development. Libraries start

this way. So we can retrain librarians!!!

Ravi Sharma: Gary: I agree with your comment

GaryBergCross: You know one way to get at this is to ask the community, "who are your clients?" We're seeing

that list appear here.

Amanda Vizedom: Joint interoperability projects

Michelle Raymond: Standards Development Organizations are discovering the need for more complete and rigorous

knowledge models. e.g. OASIS and OGC

Ravi Sharma: Geospatial ontologies will probably emerge as one of the most important applications of

ontologies as it will tie with DR BC, Events, Pandemics, Significant Events and correlated events as

applications.

GaryBergCross: And sho should be your clients but aren't buying in yet.

Peter P. Yim: Amanda & Peter to All: once our survey is ready, we will look to folks here to help forward the

invitation/solicitation to relevant folks and mailing lists that are close to you

Michelle Raymond: The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) needs more reasoning support. Contact

data.gov.

Cameron Ross: Distributed Management Task Force - Common Information Model - Schema WG

Ravi Sharma: Amanda: Will you translate these in to a framework of relevant, directly relevant and may be

type of contact categories? Iam ready to assist if required like a spreadsheet linked list etc?

Todd Schneider: http://datagov.ideascale.com/

Pierre Grenon: Continuing with the role playing game, it would be a useful resource to have something like a

marketplace for onologists, says the ontologist... places hiring, but also for teachers, it would be useful

to know of places ready to take students/interns and so on

Bonnie Swart: get the survey into the hands of university professors from IT / CS / Phil / Math departments in time

for the beginning of the spring/winter semester/quarter so they can make it part of class participation ...

Pierre Grenon: http://barcelona.research.yahoo.net/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=yrbpublic:internship_program

Cameron Ross: I still don't have a clear understanding as to what exactly an Ontologist is :-s.

Bonnie Swart: I was half-way through my MS in CS (AI concentration) before I took a class in NLP -- that,

combined with graduate courses in AI, data/info management and a liberal arts (pre-law PHIL/HIST/REL)

undergrad with a minor in math launched a baby ontologist

Pierre Grenon: @cameron: an ontologist in information science is somebody who makes knowledge accessible to

machines, this is a very generous and oecumenical view

Cameron Ross: I believe that "Software Architect" was similarly ill-defined... CMU-ISE has done a lot to help

define this discipline http://www.sei.cmu.edu/architecture/ (also for Software Engineer).

Ravi Sharma: Thank you Peter and Amanda.

Ravi Sharma: and Steve Ray and all who participated.

Peter P. Yim: voice session adjourned ... 12:31pm PST

Joel Bender: Thank you!

Peter P. Yim: chat session will remain open until 12:45pm PST

Michelle Raymond: Ah, I've been remiss. We should have input from library sciences in industry research

facilites. I can provide contacts to the Honeywell Labs library staff if desired.

Amanda Vizedom: Thank you all! This is a rich harvest indeed. I haven't been able to track it all while

facilitating, but am looking forward to pouring over it tonight.

Pierre Grenon: cheers, good being in such company! will be in touch with names, take care

Peter P. Yim: @Pierre - Thank you. While you are a member of the [ontology-summit] community, you aren't yet a

member of the ONTOLOG community per se ... if what we do aligns well with your professional interest, please

conside becoming a member of ONTOLOG - see details at:

http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage#nid1J

Amanda Vizedom: @Pierre - Great to see you here. I hope you make it a habit.

Ravi Sharma: Casmeron and Amanda just capturing the question that i ask my self whether i am an Ontologist

and the inner answer is - Not really yet! and the learning effort continues and it is becoming harder as

there are sometimes utilitarian pulls that take away from purer learning for own sake pulls.

Amanda Vizedom: @Ravi: I do not have a pre-defined organization of the suggestions in mind. I plan to see

whether one or more ways of organizing it fall out naturally. I also plan to bring puzzles, questions, and

quandries to the mailing list. But the most important thing, from my POV, is to have all of these leads,

even unsorted. We can do and coordinate a good bit of outreach without it. I will add to / enrich the

questions, I think, based on some of these suggestions. And certainly the survey questions will need to

support, and receive, useful analysis.

Ravi Sharma: Amanda We need to create a list of how we perceive contacts list and open process of outreach

which of course will be integral to ONTOLOG and ONTOLOGY SUMMIT NIST and collaborating communities agreed

usage but will also help us find major gaps by disciplines, by lack on connectivity among practioners,

potential beneficiaries etc as we address how to create future ontologists and also will allow us to do ROI

and time-scale projections. One such study i did for Technical Education in india where i predicted the need

of Software professionals outside the formal track as well as those with Engineering and IT degrees, I

predicted ROI to yield $15B/yr from 2010 but india has already exceeded that a few years back! Similar ROI

study would help us justify the need for future ontoloists and really the proof of pudding is in the results

that the professional fuure ontologists bring to the world of user endeavors, companies, Gov, etc.

healthcare, etc.

Ravi Sharma: Amanda that study was done in 1994-95 and looked ahead 10+ years.

Peter P. Yim: chat session ending in 3 minutes ...

Ravi Sharma: Amanda: The remuneration for that study was a consulting fee of $100. total paid by those who

monitor Indian IITs. FYI.

Cameron Ross: Pierre: By the definition you've given, I would argue that a typical Software Engineer is an

Ontologist. That is, they codify domain specific knowledge (software programs) such that it becomes

accessible to machines.

Pierre Grenon: @cameron: maybe something about it being declarative has to be inserted then. But I can see

why some SE could count as ontologist (because it's part of ontology to develop certain kinds of software),

however, I'm not sure I see where the knowledge is in certain pieces of code. Something interesting that

people are trying to do (or are moving towards) is to use ontological engineering and knowledge rep to

support semi-automated programming, which would be a case in which the ontologist is a SE and the SE is

perhaps an ontologist with the domain being that of computer programs.

Cameron Ross: Pierre: Code generation is one of my personal interests in ontology. Domain modeling is an

important part of software engineer and there appear to be similarities here... methodologies, tooling and

artifacts are different though.

Peter P. Yim: just fyi ... this chat window probably will not close as long as someone is there (but entries

after we close may not make it to today's proceedings) ... our appreciations, once again, to Doug Davis and

IBM Alphaworks for providing the soaphub server support

Peter P. Yim: chat session coming to a close now ... thank you, everyone

Pierre Grenon: thks

Amanda Vizedom: Thanks, Peter.

Ravi Sharma: Amanda and Elizabeth: In Contrast the futuristic projects such as Space program and Fusion did

not benefit from our Delphi inputs of the 60's namely lack of commitment of congress to continuity of

investments in future tehnologies and we only allowed Europe and others to get ahead in those areas.

Similarly we have to realistically project the HR Needs of ontologists that can incrementally be funded and

sustained by those who are investers and stakeholders (gov for example) and the m

Ravi Sharma: Peter: thanks.

Ken Baclawski: Is the survey confidential/anonymous or will the identities of respondants be known?

Peter P. Yim: @Ken - the survey wil NOT be confidential (in accordance with Ontolog IPR Policy)

Peter P. Yim: @Ken - as for anonymity, it is "not" the intent ... (that said, by necessity, the RTDelphi process

calls for anonymity so that "loud" people don't dominate the conversation)

Ken Baclawski: @Peter: It is such a common practice for surveys to be anonymous that it would be good to make

it clear that the survey is not anonymous.

Peter P. Yim: @Ken - point noted (will do) ... drawing the attention of Arturo, Antony, Amanda, Elizabeth, et al.

on this point as well

Peter P. Yim: bye

-- chat-session ended: 2009.12.17-12:46pm PST --

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