- From: Alexandre Passant <alexandre.passant@deri.org>
- Date: Tue, 21 Sep 2010 14:06:18 +0100
- To: public-xg-ssn@w3.org
Hi all, Since I had to drop the call earlier last week, here are some comments to the email sent by Laurent about follow-up alternatives [1]. Also, I was not subscribed to the list when it was sent, so sorry for the copy and paste rather than a proper reply ! """ Option 1: continue to work as a "community" mixing W3C members and external collaborators to reach the point where the ontology is ready to be supplied to W3C as a member submission. In this case, co-authors which are non-W3C members are also listed in a W3C submission and needs to provide the same Intellectual property statements than the W3C members (so there is a bit of paperwork but nothing drastic). This is what happened with SIOC. The ontology is developed and maintained on an external site but it is officially acknowledged and reviewed by W3C (and the Team comment for the SIOC submission is worth reading), """ => The main advantage here is that things can be done off-line (i.e. not directly in W3C - so no issues with members / invited experts) and that people can submit whenever they think that's ready. Which means no "official" deadline for submitting. However, one the submission is online, it's difficult to change things. Yet, submission may be reused at a later stage if there's a WG on the topic (as done for the SPARQL/Update submission, that serves as a basis of current work on SPARQL Update) """ Option 2: propose the creation of a sensor / internet of things IG. Alexandre advised us yesterday that this is a special category of working group where it is possible to issue "best practice guidelines" but not any "recommendations" (standards). """ => Indeed, IG can publish notes, but not recommendations (which are limited to WG) The charter can be flexible, and there can be tasks forces within, with dedicated TC (as in the HCLS one) on different topics. """ Options 3: propose the creation of a working group who would be chartered to create a standard (a recommendation). Two issues here: first, work on ontology in working groups do happen in W3C but rarely (to date) as a standalone ontology, rather as an activity which feeds a standard with a broader scope. Secondly, W3C is more interested in ontologies which have a " foundational character". The Team comments on the SIOC submission are an illustration of this point: "W3C itself normally refrains from standardizing vocabularies or ontologies for specific application areas unless they have foundational character (e.g., SKOS) or they are an integral part of some other W3C activity". """ => I had a conversation on the topic with W3C staff, and while they never done it, that's not excluded. So that could be a possibility, but since that will be the first one, there might be some questions arising during the process. Also, I think the question here is: Is there a need for a standard sensor ontology that will act as a reference model in the Semantic Sensor realm ? I'm tempted to say yes (+ timely topic), but as I've not been involved in previous discussion of the XG, I may not be the best person to answer. """ * (3a) follow-up activity on the Semantic Markup work (revise and extend previous work done on SAWSDL and maybe also RDFa to match our needs), """ => I think that may be to close of RDFa (+ current RDFa 1.1 group) """ - Options 4: there are also other established W3C activities (and some activities which are in preparation) which can leverage the work done by the XG, including other XGs and also other working groups. The most relevant ones are: * (4a) Several participants to the Provenance XG (including CSIRO) have an interest in the Sensor Data provenance use cases * (4b) KNOESIS has announced plan to start an activity (a XG) around SA-REST which may develop the results obtained by the XG on the Semantic Markup problem, * (4c): The SSN ontology does not fully address the need for "human sensor" models which are critical for the Decision XG (exploratory work on standards for decision exchange, shared situational awareness, and measurement of the speed, effectiveness, and human factors of decision-making). * (4d): The W3C POI (Point of Interest) working group is chartered to develop technical specifications for the representation of "Points of Interest" information on the Web. Points of Interest data has many uses, including augmented reality browsers, location-based social networking games, geocaching, mapping, navigation systems, and many others. """ => +1 for joining the SSN work group. But once again, I think the overall question is whether Sensors should have their own group to work on. Best, Alex. [1] http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-xg-ssn/2010Sep/0005.html -- Dr. Alexandre Passant Digital Enterprise Research Institute National University of Ireland, Galway :me owl:sameAs <http://apassant.net/alex> .
Received on Tuesday, 21 September 2010 13:07:07 UTC