ConferenceCall 2008 09 25

= Emerging Ontology Showcase: Session-1 - Thu 25-September-2008 =


 * Subject: "Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase" kick-off session


 * Session Co-chair:
 * Professor KenBaclawski (Northeastern University) and Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube Ltd., UK)


 * Panelists / Briefings:
 * Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube Ltd., London UK) - "The EDM Council Semantics Repository: Building global consensus for the Financial Services Industry"
 * Mr. MikeBergman (Zitgist LLC) - "UMBEL: A Lightweight Subject Reference Structure for the Web"


 * Archive:
 * slides: . [ 0-Chair ], [ 1-Bennett ], [ 2-Bergman ] ... and,
 * audio recording of the session (mp3)
 * transcript of the online chat session during the panel discussion

Conference Call Details

 * Date: Thursday, September 25, 2008 
 * Start Time: 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 6:30pm BST / 7:30pm CEST / 17:30 UTC
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Attendees

 * Attended:
 * KenBaclawski
 * MikeBennett
 * MikeBergman
 * PeterYim
 * AntoinetteArsic
 * BobGreen (US Navy)
 * KurtConrad
 * BrandKNiemann
 * Kathy Johnson-Throop (NASA/JSC)
 * DougHolmes
 * Shangguan Zhenning (RPI/TWC)
 * BillMcCarthy
 * SvenVanPoucke
 * Onnalee Gomez (CDC/CCHIS/NCPHI)
 * RaviSharma
 * SusanTurnbull
 * ToddSchneider


 * Other resgustered participants (who might have joined us after the roll call):
 * JuanSequeda
 * Elgar Pichler (Astra Zeneca)


 * ... to register for participation, please add your name (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above, or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...
 * ... to register for participation, please add your name (plus your affiliation, if you aren't already a member of the community) above, or e-mail  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...


 * Regrets:
 * LiDing
 * AsumanDogac
 * MartinHepp
 * MichelleRaymond (can't make the call, but look forward to hearing it on audio)
 * EdDodds (MB: XBRL OWL model pending? Any chance someone from that community can present?)

Agenda & Proceedings:

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


 * Agenda:
 * 1. Opening by the Session co-chair - KenBaclawski
 * 2. we'll go around with a self-introduction of participants (~10 minutes) - All - we'll skip this if we have more than 25 participants (in which case, it will be best if members try to update their namesake pages on this wiki prior to the call so that everyone can get to know who's who more easily.)
 * 3. Presentations from the Panelists - MikeBennett, MikeBergman (35 min. each)
 * 4. General Discussion - ALL (20 min.)
 * 5. Summary / Follow-up plans & actions / Conclusion - session co-chairs, KenBaclawski & MikeBennett

Topic: Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase (session-1)
Abstract by KenBaclawski / MikeBennett


 * The number of publicly available ontologies is growing rapidly, with search engines reporting over 10,000 already. This is the beginning of a mini-series intended to provide a venue for the developers of major new ontologies to present their work products to the ontology community. Each session will showcase 2 or 3 important ontologies that were recently released or updated.


 * Refer also to details at the project homepage for this mini-series at: EmergingOntologyShowcase

The EDM Council Semantics Repository: Building global consensus for the Financial Services Industry - MikeBennett


 * Abstract: This session will present the semantics model created by Hypercube for the Enterprise Data Management Council (EDM Council).


 * http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/EmergingOntology/EmergingOntology_20080925/MikeBOnBoat_a.jpg [Mr. Mike Bennett]


 * The EDM Council is a non-profit trade association focussed on managing and leveraging enterprise data as a strategic asset to enable financial institutions to increase efficiency, minimize risk, and create competitive advantage. To this end they have commissioned a semantics repository in order to achieve an industry consensus view of terms in the industry, which would be owned and validated by business rather than technology.


 * The Semantics Repository has been built primarily to identify individual meaningful terms. We have implemented this based on the OWL ontology language, but with certain important departures. This introduction to the Repository will focus on those aspects of the repository design. An important commitment of this model is that it must be reviewable by business subject matter experts with no prior exposure to any modeling language or format.


 * A key feature of the Repository is the terms not specific to the financial services world. These are identified as "Global Terms" in the repository and form the basis of an upper ontology, from which the industry-specific terms have been derived. This has been richly structured, for example using the upper level classes identified in Dr John F Sowa's Knowledge Representation (KR) ontology lattice. In so doing we believe we have solved a number of definition problems that are prevalent in the financial services industry, such as the identification of roles and parties in securities transactions and issuance.


 * This is very much a work in progress and we are keen to align with best practice in the format and structure, and with existing global or upper ontology terms where we can match these to the structure used in this model.

UMBEL: A Lightweight Subject Reference Structure for the Web - MikeBergman


 * http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/EmergingOntology/EmergingOntology_20080925/mkbergman_a.jpg [Mr. Mike Bergman]


 * Abstract: UMBEL (Upper Mapping and Binding Exchange Layer) is a

lightweight ontology for relating Web content and data to a standard set of 20,000 subject concepts. Its purpose is to provide a fixed set of reference points in a global knowledge space about what content "is about". These subject concepts have defined relationships between them, and can act as binding or attachment points for any Web content or data. Connecting to the UMBEL structure thus provides context to Web data. In this manner, Web data can be linked, made interoperable, and more easily navigated and discovered.


 * The UMBEL subject concepts and structure are a direct derivation

from Cyc. The ontology uses a more limited set of predicates mostly based on SKOS. OWL Full is also used to enable UMBEL's subject concepts to act both as classes and instances. This design is in keeping with UMBEL's role as an organizational framework for external semantic Web ontologies and tie-ins to named entity dictionaries.


 * UMBEL is presently mapped to about 20 common semantic Web

ontologies and 1.5 million instances from Wikipedia. It also now provides a subject concept class structure to DBpedia. The UMBEL design is being extended to domain-specific ontologies. It is freely available and provided as linked data.

Panelists' Presentation:

 * Our panel's prepared slides can be accessed by clicking on each of the title links below:
 * [ 0-Chair ] - http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/EmergingOntology/EmergingOntology_20080925/EmergingOntology-Intro--KenBaclawski_20080925.ppt
 * [ 1-Bennett ] - http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/EmergingOntology/EmergingOntology_20080925/EOShowcase-EDMCouncil2--MikeBennett_20080925.ppt
 * [ 2-Bergman ] - http://ontolog.cim3.net/file/work/EmergingOntology/EmergingOntology_20080925/UMBEL_Ontolog--MikeBergman_20080925.ppt


 * additional resources from the panelists:
 * (... to be added by the panel)

Questions, Answers & Discourse:

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 * For those who have further questions or remarks on the topic (or ones tha are left unanswered), please email the individual panelists directly, or, better still, post them to the [ontolog-forum] so that everyone in the community can benefit from the discourse.


 * Session ended 2008.09.25 12:41 pm PDT

Questions and Discussion captured from the chat session:
PeterYim: Welcome to the Ontolog Emerging Ontology Showcase: Session-1 - Thu 25-September-2008

o Professor KenBaclawski (Northeastern University) and Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube Ltd., UK) o Mr. MikeBennett (Hypercube Ltd., UK) - "The EDM Council Semantics Repository: Building global consensus for the Financial Services Industry" o Mr. MikeBergman (Zitgist LLC) - "UMBEL: A Lightweight Subject Reference Structure for the Web"
 * Subject: "Emerging Ontology Work Product Showcase" panel session
 * Session Co-chair:   (1MG2)
 * Panelists / Briefings:   (1MG4)

PeterYim: Please refer to details on the session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2008_09_25

PeterYim: Question for MikeBennett - how much influence does the EDM Council have to get its constituency to adopt/conform to the set of standardized terms that you have developed? ... who is in that constituency anyway?

RaviSharma: What are the plans for the human readable definitions to be converted to Structured English that is semantically understood by machine? Will OWL association mentioned enough for the same?

ToddSchneider: MikeBennett, Is there any intent to use this work to support processes?

MikeBennett: Todd: yes. the "occurrent" partition allows me to create a whole set of upper ontology building blocks for processes.

RaviSharma: Are there ebXML like contracts that are semantically more rich and less ambiguous that can be executed in B2B sense?

RaviSharma: Can we define in John's KR the actual terms that the business vocabularies people in various standards and practicing communities standards are using? still the grammer will only be partially addressed as all needed relationships and dependences will not be addrassed?

RaviSharma: Great talk and connections with current work.

SusanTurnbull: MikeBennett, Would you be willing to talk with someone from US - re: e-discovery generally and e-discovery associated with subprime litigation?

ToddSchneider: Mike Bergman: Your voice comms is cutting in and out

RaviSharma: MikeBergman - your partial relevance type notion - will it also have some associated stochastic behavior such as probability that the relationship might be valid, etc.?

RaviSharma: How are changing things - evolving THING or dynamic thing and associative chaging relationships handled in CYC and in UMBEL in terms of Concepts, etc?

RaviSharma: excellent relevance in deep dive visualization, most of the objects (THINGS) have valid names and I will also look at relationships as we proceed.Just a feedback.

RaviSharma: are the connections to other ontologies serviced by Web Services that are semantically interconnected such as for example the name or concept or subject translation from UMBEL to other ontological corresponding entities?

RaviSharma: Derived from Cyc and dependency on Cyc, does that provide any set of tests for validating ontologies?

RaviSharma: Great work.

SusanTurnbull: for MikeBennett - Is there anticipated congruence / interest from the International Accounting Standards Board?

SvenVanPoucke: Thank you all for this interesting meeting ... Cheers Sven Van Poucke

PeterYim: bye, everyone! thank you for the participation and contribution

MikeBennett: Thanks Peter, it's been a pleasure!

MikeBennett: MikeBergman - excellent presentation, it seems you are talking what I'm wondering how to do, in terms of how to align with usable terms that already exist.

AntoinetteArsic: I have so much to learn and am still reading Logic for Dummies and other readings by John Sowa and recommended readings from ChrisMenzel, PatHayes and others on category theory and math.

MikeBennett: Are you reading the exchanges between PatHayes and JohnSowa in the discussion forum?

AntoinetteArsic: Yes, most of them - some of the higher level ones or rather philosophical are easier to follow than the detailed math ones

AntoinetteArsic: Thank you Peter and both Mikes - over and out

MikeBennett: It took me a long train journey to catch up with all that, but it was very informative

MikeBennett: MikeBergman: Thanks for your patience in the questions session, sorry my answers were a bit long.

Audio Recording of this Session

 * To download the audio recording of the session, click here
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 * Conference Date and Time:	25-Sep-2008 10:40am~12:41pm PDT
 * Duration of Recording:	1 Hours54 Minutes
 * Recording File Size:	       13.0 MB (in mp3 format)
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