Re: Raising some points of concern

Hi Paola, all,

On 22/06/2007, at 22:40, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:

> I do not share your worries, in the sense that nothing has formally  
> taken place, just informal
> 'chats' among early contributors who are giving their inputs and  
> sharing ideas nothing indicative of a particular trend or  
> direction, that I can see.

Well, yes, given that it is just talk to date there is no 'real'  
problem. What I am flagging is a potential problem if we don't make  
some changes between now and when we start creating something that is  
real.

> I think we are waiting to hear from the w3 members before we can  
> put together a formal 'plan'    In organizinng 'global'  projects,  
> the emphasis is to involve stakeholders from different geographies,  
> languages, sections of the community, backgrounds etc etc. We need  
> an initial statement, and to make public announcement inviting  
> people to take part, and possibly may have to do some ad hoc  
> proactive promotion - we may have to 'go and get them' actively  
> recruiting participants, which given our extensive connections  
> should not be a problem. Some contributions we may have to elicit  
> offline, using more conventional survey methods, like meeting  
> people face to face and asking them what they think

If this is the case, then shouldn't we be considering this, rather  
than jumping into a glossary? Aren't we getting ahead of ourselves?

> Do you have ideas, suggestions, a plan in place that you may want  
> to put forward to start with? How you think we can ensure a  
> balanced participation?

No plan, haven't had time to do that ;) Ideas? You know me, always!

1. A communications plan and material to communicate what the effort  
is to the people that are going to be the prime benefactors of the  
work - those involved in disaster management. Having a few pages on a  
website that provide a good overview to non-technical people, as well  
as regular updates on progress, along with an announcement list.  
Fairly similar to what you suggest above.

2. Engagement with key organisations, for example the International  
Association of Emergency Managers, United Nations etc.

3. We should see if we can get some of the people from the OASIS and  
similar projects involved, if at all possible. They would seem to  
have some good background and experience to be involved in this sort  
of work.

> Again, I am not sure how you get that vibe from. Personally in  
> creating ontology the approach is scientific and aimed to create a  
> shared, factual viewpoint as the basis of  common understanding.   
> We specifically use 'ontology engineering methods' to ensure that.

I've yet to see many objective engineering methods applied - it seems  
rather adhoc at this point. That could of course be because we  
haven't started in earnest yet. So take that with a grain of salt.

> When it comes to collaborative ontology building, such methods are  
> still experimental, so in a way, we are working with something  
> relatively new.

That's fine, but the process will have to have a suitable degree of  
rigour for our potential end users to buy into the process we are  
starting.

> A good ontology can be used by human, as well as by machine, and  
> can connect two, three or n- number of agents. (if I understand you  
> right)

Correct, in fact it is essential for it to be useful. We don't want  
to have to dual-markup all pieces of content - once for a human  
ontology, and a second that is machine-readable.

Cheers Gav

Received on Saturday, 23 June 2007 12:06:46 UTC