SSN-XG Meeting Minutes 6 July 2010 + "What happens after the end of the XG "

Hi,

Thanks to those who attended the telephone conference last week.
And a special thanks to Arthur for scribing. 

The minutes of the meeting are here: http://www.w3.org/2010/07/06-ssn-minutes.html 

We discussed what we should do after the end of the XG with a first pass on the ontology work and a second pass on the semantic markup work. 

My main goal was to get enough material for the section of the XG report on this topic. Here is my attempt to write something down which mirrors what have been said. Please feel free to suggest corrections and/or improvements for this section. 

Can I also request your comments on where there was a mismatch between the objectives which were stated in the XG charter vs. your expectations (as this can help to identify areas of future work and develop better plans for these areas). 


1) What happens after the end of the XG for the ontology work?
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Will the XG use/maintain/further develop the SSN ontology? 
- Yes (exact roles/responsibilities to be further discussed)

Has the XG reached a stage where it would be desirable to start a working group at W3C or to submit a member submission (backed by more than one member)?
- No, there is more work to be done to build the experience and momentum, before its outputs could be taken for further standardisation if desired. And there is no urge to start a work group or submit a member submission on the basis of what the XG has done (yet). 

In what conditions does the group want to continue to work on the ontology?

- The group doesn't want to take the XG outcomes out of W3C, but want to open the development of the ontology to non W3C people.
- The group wants the SSN group/community to grow: there are other people working with sensors affiliated in other projects, including European consortium represented in the XG, who are potential users of the ontology
- The group should continue the ontology development on a third party web site like Sourceforge 
- The group should plan for a smooth transition between the version published (frozen) at the end of the XG and the future versions

Is the ontology work related to activities done outside W3C and how?

- Yes, there is an opportunity to reuse/adapt the ontology to build something similar to GeoSPARQL (a project of the GeoSemantics DWG at OGC).
- But, OGC is no the only place where the ontology could be useful. There are many semantic sensor network projects which are not committed to reuse OGC standards. 
- For example, NASA/JPL is developing its ontologies using OWL2 and translating them to SysML conceptual models and profiles.

2) What happens after the end of the XG for the semantic markup work?
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There is no plan to continue the work on the generic issues identified by group participants working on the semantic markup topic. Many of these issues were judged to be broader than what the group was originally chartered for. 

The participants of the XG (Simon Cox, Luis Bermudez) have reported the XG activities both formally and informally at OGC meetings (and at related events such as the AGU or EGU conferences). The OGC TC Meeting planned in Australia in December 2010 is an extra opportunity to disseminate the findings of the Semantic Markup activity. 

Cheers
Laurent

PS: If you want to share your thoughts on how to improve the W3C Incubator activities and how to: 
- Make W3C an attractive venue for developing Web technology. 
- Make it extremely easy for individuals (not just organizations) to participate actively in the W3C community. 
- Create a smooth path from "new idea" to "standard", while not expecting or requiring all products to use all mechanisms. 
- Promote outreach to communities not yet connected to W3C to learn from them and encourage them to bring new ideas
then I encourage you to take this survey (open to everyone) http://www.w3.org/2002/09/wbs/1/newstd2/

Received on Monday, 12 July 2010 14:02:30 UTC