Proposal : poll on ontologies development and use

Presenting my 3 priorities in the previous message I wrote :

"From the experience we have with customer companies, they come to semantic
technologies and languages first for internal interoperability sake (which
is a good thing), but are more relunctant to ensure external
interoperability.
Either they don't see the point of it, or they consider their internal
ontology
as a strategic asset to be kept hidden under the hood."

The more I think and speak about it, the more critical this seems to me.
Was just speaking with a partner, with whom we developed an ontology for a
tourism portal, in the framework of an European IST project. We've come to
the idea of a poll directed at corporate developers/users of ontologies,
either companies or organizations. Seems to me that the result of such a
poll could help us to set priorities.

Some questions that came to our mind (not exhaustive, just preliminary
brainstorming)

- Does your organization use ontologies in its applications ?
- If not, does it intend to do so in the future ?
- What kind of applications do you make of ontologies currently ?
- What kind of applications do you intend to develop in the future ?

- What kind of strategy would you prefer for your organization ? (set
priorities)
	o Use publicly available ontologies
	o Adapt/extend publicly available ontologies to fit your business
	o Develop your own ontologies
- If you develop ontologies, do you intend to ...
	o Make them publicly available on the Web, free of rights? All of them?
Part of them?
	o Make them available under license conditions
	o Share them only in a protected area (e.g. intranet, entreprise portal
applications ...)
	o Use them only for internal applications
- If you develop ontologies, do you consider them as ...
	o Something to share with the general public
	o Your organization strategic assets
	o Not sure about it
- If you are not sure about the previous question, is it because ...
	o You have not thought about it
	o You have difficulties to see the advantages of either solution
	o You have difficulties to figure the public-private boarder
- Do you consider ontologies would be more efficient if developed by
	o Individual organizations to fit their specific needs
	o Public institutions to ensure consensus, authority and trust
- Would your organization participate in a public effort for
developping/maintaining ontologies in your domain ?
- If so, what kind of ROI do you see in such a participation ?
- ...

Would it be possible to have a slot in the agenda for discussing this poll
idea - even over a beer or Pastis ?

Bernard

PS : I will arrive in Cannes Wednesday 3rd only, around 3:00 pm

Bernard Vatant
Senior Consultant
Knowledge Engineering
Mondeca - www.mondeca.com
bernard.vatant@mondeca.com

Received on Friday, 27 February 2004 07:02:34 UTC