ConferenceCall 2009 12 17

= OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 - "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009 =

OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"

 * OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 Topic: "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities"


 * Co-chairs: Dr. SteveRay & Dr. AmandaVizedom


 * On the Panel: SteveRay, AmandaVizedom, ArturoSanchez, AntonyGalton, ElizabethFlorescu, PeterYim and other Summit Track co-champions


 * Archive:
 * Agenda & Proceedings
 * Our panel's prepared slides can be accessed by clicking on each of the title links below:
 * Slides: . [ 0-Chair ] . [ 1-Sanchez-Galton ] . [ 2-Florescu-Yim ]
 * [ Audio Recording of the session ] (mp3)
 * [ Transcript of the online chat session ] during the panel discussion
 * Other Resources

Conference Call Details

 * Date: Thursday, 17-December-2009 
 * Start Time: 10:30am PDT / 1:30pm EDT / 7:30pm CET / 6:30pm GMT / 18:30 UTC
 * see world clock for other time zones
 * Expected Call Duration: 1.5~2.0 hours
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 * Please review our Virtual Session Tips and Ground Rules - see: VirtualSpeakerSessionTips


 * RSVP to [mailto:peter.yim@cim3.com peter.yim@cim3.com] appreciated.


 * This session, like all other Ontolog events, is open to the public. Information relating to this session is shared on this wiki page: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_12_17


 * Please note that this session will be recorded, and the audio archive is expected to be made available as open content to our community membership and the public at-large under our prevailing open IPR policy.


 * To participate in OntologySummit2010 virtual discourse, please refer to details here.

Attendees:

 * Attended:
 * SteveRay (co-chair)
 * AmandaVizedom (co-chair)
 * ArturoSanchez
 * AntonyGalton
 * ElizabethFlorescu
 * PeterYim
 * KenBaclawski
 * BillMcCarthy
 * JerrySmith
 * BruceBray
 * FabianNeuhaus
 * MichelleRaymond
 * MichaelGruninger
 * BillHogan
 * TerryLongstreth
 * PierreGrenon
 * LeoObrst
 * BartGajderowicz
 * CameronRoss
 * BernardUlozas
 * ToddSchneider
 * GaryBergCross
 * RaviSharma
 * Tom Dale (Dale and Associates)
 * Lisa Zilinski (PWC)
 * BonnieSwart
 * PavithraKenjige
 * JoelBender
 * NancyWiegand
 * MichelleRaymond


 * Other registered participants who may have joined us after the roll call:
 * BrandNiemann
 * ThomasBrunner
 * BillNichols
 * FrankChum
 * ... 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  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...
 * ... 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  so that we can reserve enough resources to support everyone's participation. ...


 * Regrets:
 * BarrySmith (co-chair)
 * NicolaGuarino
 * MatthewWest
 * RalphHodgson

Resources

 * Homepage of OntologySummit2010
 * OntologySummit2010 - Event Calendar
 * OntologySummit2010 Launch Event - ConferenceCall_2009_12_10
 * Communitywide brainstorming and planning session Ontology Summit 2010 - ConferenceCall_2009_11_05
 * OntologySummit2010: Key Content Pages
 * OntologySummit2010_PertinentQuestions
 * [ontology-summit] discussion list archives - http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/ontology-summit/
 * to subscribe to this discussion list: send a blank message from your subscribing email address to  or visit http://ontolog.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/ontology-summit/ and subscribe yourself there
 * Homepage of OntologySummit2009 - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2009
 * OntologySummit2009_Communique
 * Homepage of OntologySummit2008 - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2008
 * OntologySummit2008_Communique
 * Homepage of OntologySummit2007 - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2007
 * OntologySummit2007_Communique
 * Homepage of UpperOntologySummit (2006) - http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?UpperOntologySummit
 * UpperOntologySummit/UosJointCommunique

Topic: OntologySummit2010 - 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 - SteveRay (10 min.)
 * 2. Formulating the Survey Questions for the Present - ArturoSanchez & AntonyGalton (30 min.)
 * 3. Formulating the Survey Questions for the Future (Delphi Study) - ElizabethFlorescu & PeterYim (25 min.)
 * 4. Feedback on Who To Survey - AmandaVizedom (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.''

PeterYim: Welcome to the OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 - "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities" - Thu 17-Dec-2009

OntologySummit2010 Theme: "Creating the Ontologists of the Future"


 * OntologySummit2010: Panel Session-1 Topic: "Surveying the Landscape and the Possibilities"


 * Co-chairs: Dr. SteveRay & Dr. AmandaVizedom

and other Summit Track co-champions
 * On the Panel: SteveRay, AmandaVizedom, ArturoSanchez, ElizabethFlorescu, PeterYim


 * See details on session page at: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?ConferenceCall_2009_12_17

.

anonymous morphed into SteveRay

anonymous1 morphed into AntonyGalton

anonymous morphed into BernardUlozas

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

AntonyGalton: Just about to dial in.

anonymous2 morphed into Tom Dale

anonymous1 morphed into ElizabethFlorescu

anonymous2 morphed into Lisa Zilinski

RaviSharma: Arturo: we need categories on semantics, tagged web pages, Linked -open - data, Vocabularies, terms, data dictionaries, philosophy and math or specific like CL etc.

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

FabianNeuhaus: 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

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

ArturoSanchez: @Fabian: good idea ... will do ...

KenBaclawski: Even in the US, terminology can vary from institution to institution. Sometimes programs are divided into majors and majors into concentrations.

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

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

PeterYim: 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)

RaviSharma: 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.

ArturoSanchez: @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!)

PierreGrenon: Arturo / Antony: while universities might be the main institutions concerned, can we make provisions for 'professional certification'?

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

ToddSchneider: Peter, how do I mute the phone?

SteveRay: *2 to mute

ToddSchneider: Thanks Steve.

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

RaviSharma: 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?

ToddSchneider: 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.

PierreGrenon: @fabian, i think so, but th

PierreGrenon: sorry.. just that the questions are very university biased

KenBaclawski: @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.

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

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

PierreGrenon: @Ravi: going through it, thanks. @Fabian

PeterYim: *3 to unmute, Elizabeth

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

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

PeterYim: *3 on your phone pad

BruceBray: It would be useful to request submissions of syllabus documents for existing courses/modules - to obtain a more complete description of content.

SteveRay: In fact, if people have links to course materials, perhaps we could include a place to list them.

ArturoSanchez: @PierreGrenon (first comment): Yes, good point. How do you suggest we change the questions to capture this?

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

KenBaclawski: @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.

ArturoSanchez: @PierreGrenon (second comment): You can either (1) send the survey link to colleagues in those institutions; or (2) answer on their behalf (or both! )

ArturoSanchez: @KenBaclawski: Yes, good point ... will do

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

RaviSharma: 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.

ArturoSanchez: @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

RaviSharma: 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?

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

ToddSchneider: 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.

ArturoSanchez: @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 ...)

ArturoSanchez: @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

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

ToddSchneider: 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?

RaviSharma: 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?

BonnieSwart: 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"

ArturoSanchez: @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?

ToddSchneider: 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".

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

AmandaVizedom: Steve: yes

SteveRay: @Amanda: Great. Thanks much.

PierreGrenon: @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...

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

ArturoSanchez: @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.

ArturoSanchez: @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 ...

BonnieSwart: @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,

ArturoSanchez: @Bonnie: great ... see my suggestion above as a response to ToddSchneider's suggestion ... please keep me in the loop

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

BonnieSwart: @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

AntonyGalton: I have to go now.

ArturoSanchez: @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!

PierreGrenon: @todd: do you need help for your ontology?

ArturoSanchez: @ToddSchneider: "The curriculum developed for training ontologists will overlap that of systems engineering and most likely software engineering" ... current curricula already overlap ...

ToddSchneider: Pierre, what ontology?

PierreGrenon: ontology for training

ToddSchneider: 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.

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

ToddSchneider: Pierre, I'm not developing an ontology for the training of ontologists, I'm recommending Barry Smith for this effort.

RaviSharma: Peter: slide number?

--

+PeterYim: (slide#12 ) @All - Q0: please state what prespective are you representing? [ the market | the educator | the ontologist ]

JoelBender: I am representing an "ontologist wannabe"

BruceBray: University educator

CameronRoss: Market

MichelleRaymond: representing viewpoint of Market

MichaelGruninger: University educator

PierreGrenon: i'm taking the ontologist role

FabianNeuhaus: educator

BillHogan: ontologist

KenBaclawski: educator

GaryBergCross: Aspiring Ontologist

Tom Dale: Tom Dale: individual

ArturoSanchez: @PeterYim: Role == Software Engineer / Software Developer / Business Analyst

LeoObrst: 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'''

PeterYim: '''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)

PierreGrenon: Development: ontologist make a decent living

PierreGrenon: 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

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

PierreGrenon: Development: Ontology as part of industrial standards life-cycle (all standards, inter alia, in ontology form + ontologisation as part of QA)

RaviSharma: 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.

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

MichelleRaymond: 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.

JoelBender: (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

FabianNeuhaus: Ontology will become a standard course in teaching bioinformatics.

ArturoSanchez: Q1: The domain of Ontology will be established as an (mostly) Engineering discipline that cross-cuts other disciplines

LeoObrst: 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.

--

PeterYim: '''Q2: What do you see as important emerging trends concerning ontology, ontologists or ontology training/education over the next 20 years?'''

RaviSharma: 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.

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

BillHogan: Routine use of ontology will enable a revolution in the flexibilty of information systems to be expanded beyond their original purpose

KenBaclawski: In 10 years, ontology engineering will be accepted as an engineering discipline like electrical engineering or software engineering.

MichaelGruninger: Ontologies will be a foundational component for semantic technologies and knowledge-based systems

TerryLongstreth: Important emerging trend in next 20 years (or a hope?)- techniques to eliminate cultural bias from ontological methods

MichelleRaymond: Emerging trends concerning ontology training are that many domains are piecing together content to "meet-the-need" in an ad-hoc manner now.

FabianNeuhaus: Ontology will separate itself from the Semantic Web buzz

NancyWiegand: 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.

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

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

MichelleRaymond: Trends for ontologists are many "related" fields are claiming the capabilities and will consider to do so until a formalized credentialling is available.

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

BonnieSwart: 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)

ArturoSanchez: 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

LeoObrst: 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.

--

PeterYim: 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?

RaviSharma: Q3: all three perspectives: at least One million assuming the current population growth, in 20 years.

JoelBender: 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.

MichelleRaymond: The equivalent number of data base professionals, data-model professionals, AI professionals, and mathematicians needed today are the number needed within 10 years.

KenBaclawski: 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.

ArturoSanchez: Q3: Half of the number of Engineers

LeoObrst: 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+.

--

PeterYim: Q4: What are the potential futures of ontology in academia? (e.g. university departments, mandatory credit courses, undergrad, grad, PhD, etc)

RaviSharma: 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.

RaviSharma: 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!

ToddSchneider: Ken, ontology development paradigms and precepts will permeate to all engineering disciplines.

BillHogan: 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)

MichaelGruninger: Ontological engineering will be an undergrad minor and a specialization stream at the graduate level.

JoelBender: 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.

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

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

KenBaclawski: Q4: In 10 years there will be many departmental groups for ontologies, but not many full departments.

ArturoSanchez: 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.

LeoObrst: 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.

--

PeterYim: Q5: What needs to happen between now and the day when we will have "ontology departments" in universities and enterprises?

RaviSharma: no please parse the answers later

PierreGrenon: we need convincing applications

FabianNeuhaus: Ontology needs to become a mature engineering discipline with an accepted methodology and evaluation criteria

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

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

JoelBender: 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.

MichaelGruninger: More rigorous foundations and methodology, together with solid applications

PierreGrenon: 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.

ToddSchneider: A more pragmatic answer may include the availability of useful and effective tools and services that use ontologies for their operation.

RaviSharma: 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.

KenBaclawski: Q5: We need curricular materials (textbooks, readily available courseware, curriculum guidelines) as well as professional/academic organizations.

ArturoSanchez: Q5: Exogenous forces (industry/government) endogenous forces (academia)

LeoObrst: 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.

--

PeterYim: '''Q6: If you were to educate the general public about "ontology," what do you expect them to learn, know or understand?'''

MichelleRaymond: The general public would benefit from knowing there is a spectrum in "ontology" per Leo's famous graphic.

CameronRoss: Q6: The characteristics of ontology that differentiate it from the many other information-based technologies out there.

PierreGrenon: 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.

BillHogan: 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.

ArturoSanchez: Q6: Programs in NPR, articles in Scientific American, such as that on Semantic Web by Berners-Lee et alia

RaviSharma: 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.

PierreGrenon: kids ought to be able to understand ontology

MichelleRaymond: The public would also benefit from knowing how Ontology tools help address key issues in technology and understanding.

JoelBender: 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.

FabianNeuhaus: 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)

NancyWiegand: 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.

LeoObrst: 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.

TerryLongstreth: Q6: Ontology is currently an Art, which we hope will evolve into a science, of correlating concepts from across different cultural perspectives

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

KenBaclawski: 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.

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

JoelBender: @Pierre: lol

ToddSchneider: Pierre, Ken, around the world you usually need to explain technical things to non-technical people.

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

ToddSchneider: Pierre, I concur. But simple is usually hard.

KenBaclawski: @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.

PierreGrenon: @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.

ArturoSanchez: gotta go ... great session y'all!

+PeterYim: thank you very much, Arturo

ArturoSanchez: @PeterYim: My pleasure

RaviSharma: 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.

PeterYim: end of "Development" question ... thanks

ElizabethFlorescu: 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 LeoObrst

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

--

AmandaVizedom to All: please go to: http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2010_PertinentQuestions#nid25J9

RaviSharma: 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.

MichelleRaymond: 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.

MichelleRaymond: Of-course there are plenty of "Data Modelers" and "Human Factors professionals" who need ontology skills and don't have them.

BonnieSwart: 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.

RaviSharma: 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.

LeoObrst: 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.

LeoObrst: Now, I look for the following:

LeoObrst: 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.

--

AmandaVizedom: '''Q: To whom should we be talking? Whom should we be asking to complete this survey?'''

NancyWiegand: Are you trying to develop a curriculum in ACM?

RaviSharma: 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.

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

MichelleRaymond: Talk with industry labs that have knowledge services sections, automated reasoning sections, and domains that require knowledge analysis.

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

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

CameronRoss: Developers of semantic tooling should be on the list.

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

PierreGrenon: 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..

RaviSharma: all speakers in last 5 years who have addressed forums like Ontolog and its connected areas such as Gov KM etc.

TerryLongstreth: Medlars

MichelleRaymond: In the Built environment community look to those working with standards: IFC, COBIE, OmniClass, IFD... etc...

KenBaclawski: 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.

AmandaVizedom: US Air Force

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

PierreGrenon: Do you want actual contacts?

PierreGrenon: ok, i'll put together a list.

MichelleRaymond: For Honeywell Labs contact Conrad Bealue(sp.) who is focused on Building Information Modeling. Also Liana Kiff.

RaviSharma: DOD DHS NASA NOAA Law and Regulations monitoring (joke to catch Madoffs) and financial analytics and Wall street players are also to be contacted.

PeterYim: 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.

PeterYim: Educators/trainers: Deans of Engineering colleges, College of Arts & Sciences, ... professional services firms that are putting out training courses, ...

PeterYim: Individuals: those who are already pursuing studies in Computer Science, Information Systems, Philosophy, Library Science, ...

RaviSharma: there are probably 100 in US alone as interested agencies and UN CEFACT or other UN uses, etc are some others.

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

RaviSharma: It is Dr. Duane Caneva?

AmandaVizedom: All of the SemanticWeb meetup groups, Linked Data groups.

AmandaVizedom: NASA

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

FabianNeuhaus: 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

PierreGrenon: 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

RaviSharma: THAT WAY ALL eu ONTOLOGY ACTIVITIES

RaviSharma: sorry for the caps

MichelleRaymond: Carnegie Mellon Silicon Valley for Location Awareness and Disaster Management. Talk w/ SteveRay.

AmandaVizedom: Financial industry - Michael Bennett?

PierreGrenon: do we have IBM already?

AmandaVizedom: Library of Congress

AmandaVizedom: World Bank

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

AmandaVizedom: Search industry, including Convera.

NancyWiegand: 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.

MichelleRaymond: Mondeca had a visual topic-map of professionals working with topic-maps. Their domain specialties would be interesting to look into.

RaviSharma: 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!!!

RaviSharma: 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.

AmandaVizedom: Joint interoperability projects

MichelleRaymond: Standards Development Organizations are discovering the need for more complete and rigorous knowledge models. e.g. OASIS and OGC

RaviSharma: 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.

PeterYim: 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

MichelleRaymond: The National Information Exchange Model (NIEM) needs more reasoning support. Contact data.gov.

CameronRoss: Distributed Management Task Force - Common Information Model - Schema WG

RaviSharma: 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?

ToddSchneider: http://datagov.ideascale.com/

PierreGrenon: 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

BonnieSwart: 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 ...

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

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

BonnieSwart: 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

PierreGrenon: @cameron: an ontologist in information science is somebody who makes knowledge accessible to machines, this is a very generous and oecumenical view

CameronRoss: 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).

RaviSharma: Thank you Peter and Amanda.

RaviSharma: and SteveRay and all who participated.

PeterYim: voice session adjourned ... 12:31pm PST

JoelBender: Thank you!

PeterYim: chat session will remain open until 12:45pm PST

MichelleRaymond: 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.

AmandaVizedom: 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.

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

PeterYim: @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

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

RaviSharma: 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.

AmandaVizedom: @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.

RaviSharma: 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.

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

PeterYim: chat session ending in 3 minutes ...

RaviSharma: Amanda: The remuneration for that study was a consulting fee of $100. total paid by those who monitor Indian IITs. FYI.

CameronRoss: 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.

PierreGrenon: @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.

CameronRoss: 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.

PeterYim: 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

PeterYim: chat session coming to a close now ... thank you, everyone

PierreGrenon: thks

AmandaVizedom: Thanks, Peter.

RaviSharma: 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

RaviSharma: Peter: thanks.

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

PeterYim: @Ken - the survey wil NOT be confidential (in accordance with Ontolog IPR Policy)

PeterYim: @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)

KenBaclawski: @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.

PeterYim: @Ken - point noted (will do) ... drawing the attention of Arturo, Antony, Amanda, Elizabeth, et al. on this point as well

PeterYim: bye

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


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