Ontology Summit Process

The Ontology Summit is an organized thinking machine that works from January to April every year to brain-storm a topic of interest for the ontology engineering community. Every Ontology Summit produces a Communiqué with the results of the brain-storming and discussion. Another important outcome is the synchronization of understanding of the topic of interest by the ontology engineering community.

The Summit Communiqué is endorsed by Summit participants as well as the broader community and then published in the Applied Ontology journal, the premier journal in the field of Formal Ontology for information systems. The Communiqués are openly available on this wiki as well as in the public-facing website for each Ontology Summit. See the list of past Communiqués at OntologySummit. Each Communiqué has the co-chairs and track champions as editors. Producing the Communiqué is the final stage of each year's Summit.

Most of the Ontology Summit is virtual, consisting of both synchronous and asynchronous processes. The synchronous process consists of weekly virtual meetings. The asynchronous process consists of a collection of mailing lists.

The Ontology Summit concludes with a 2-day face-to-face Workshop and Symposium. The Ontology Summit as a whole has general co-chairs, and the Symposium has its own co-chairs.

Each year's topic is decomposed to 3-7 facets/aspects that are intensively discussed separately. Such a facet is called "track". Summit track discussions are facilitated by Track Champions and have a wiki page "Track Synthesis" as the main outcome artifact. The Track Synthesis page is edited by track champions on a basis of:

• The threaded discussion of the Community of Summit participants.
• Postings of community of Summit participants to the Track Inputs wiki page.
• Results of the weekly track sessions.
• Results of online polls, Delphi studies, surveys, questionnaires and other thought-provoking techniques.

The Track champions also serve as co-editors for the Communiqué that captures the major ideas of the Track Synthesis pages of all Tracks.

The General Summit co-chairs are ultimately responsible for the thematic integrity of all Tracks and the Workshop and Symposium.

Every track has one or more online 2-hour sessions that are comprised of 3-6 short slide presentations on track topics. These sessions also have a group chat and Q&A session with the panel of presenters. Audio, slides, chat transcripts and survey results will be published and used by track champions to prepare the Track Synthesis. Each session will usually have two co-chairs. The session co-chairs are responsible for inviting leading experts on relevant areas relevant to the session topic as speakers. The session co-chairs are also responsible for facilitating the session chat and moderating the discussion among the panelists and other session participants.

The Ontology Summit Organizing Committee consists of track champions, workshop and symposium co-chairs, lead co-editors, and general Summit co-chairs. Also the Organizing Committee has representatives sponsoring organizations, such as Ontolog, NIST, NCOR, NCBO, IAOA, NCO_NITRD. The Ontology Summit should also have a public relations organizer.

All the logistics and overall organizing work in the virtual part of Summit (i.e. the tracks and virtual part of Workshop and Symposium) is coordinated by a designate from the Ontolog Forum that acts on behalf of and for the Organizing Committee. The same organization/logistics function for the real part of Workshop and Symposium is similarly provided by a coordinator designated by the Organizing Committee.

Thus ideas on current the Ontology Summit topic flow from:

• Ontology Summit discussion list
• Track Session presentations, panel discussions and chats; surveys and polls, Delphi studies
• Track Input pages
• Track Synthesis pages
• Workshop and Symposia final discussion
• Published Communiqu&eacute

Infrastructure

The Ontology Summit is a complex process that requires a supporting infrastructure. This infrastructure continually evolves as new technology is made available. The main current technologies are:

• File-Sharing Workspace / Document Archives are on Amazon S3. This can be accessed using an S3 client. For example, the S3 Browser is available for free from s3browser.com. Access requires credentials. These can be obtained on request from Ken Baclawski. This workspace includes:
  • The slides of the track session and symposium presenters
  • The audio recordings of the track sessions and symposia
  • Archives of the mail lists
  • Backups of this wiki
• The Ontolog Community wiki
  • Hosted on Digital Ocean by Ken Baclawski
  • Openly accessible to anyone in the community
• The Ontolog Community mailing lists
  • Hosted on googlegroups.com

Acknowledgments

This page represents an attempt to capture the Ontology Summit process. The original document was produced by AnatolyLevenchuk for the Ontology Summit 2012. The current version was produced by Ken Baclawski. Additional input is always welcome.