Re: semantic technologies training/request

Dear John and Paola,

The issue of open access was raised on a list to which John must be familiar, i.e. the NOAA managed Coral List for coral research and marine biology.

You will find a very interesting thread there on open access and the price of publishing knowledge and who should pay to get publicly and private funded research results in publications like books, proceedings, research articles and reports.

The Semantic Web par excellence should foster open access and access to information.

Check out http://www.paradiso-fp7.eu/ and see why e.g. the European Union is literally espousing what we are promoting in our organization.

The year 2009 is promising to be a big challenge in funding for pure and applied research and funding for non-profits and even the Millennium Development Goals of the UN.

Unfortunately education and outreach will also feel the pinch.

It will take creative thinking and a lot of good will of researchers, dog food cadres, and large hardware and software companies and out-of-the-box thinking non-profits to come up with programs, projects and initiatives to overcome the money problems.

Open Access is vital to making ICT work for the benefit of mankind, access itself is vital to making democracies and society work (see the World Resources Institutes sponsored project: www.accessinitiative.org and www.pp10.org).

Let us all think about committing some of our precious time resource and experience and expertise towards fostering (open) access, education and outreach in the year 2009.

It will make a world of difference.


Milton Ponson
GSM: +297 747 8280
Rainbow Warriors Core Foundation
PO Box 1154, Oranjestad
Aruba, Dutch Caribbean
www.rainbowwarriors.net
Project Paradigm: A structured approach to bringing the tools for sustainable development to all stakeholders worldwide
www.projectparadigm.info
NGO-Opensource: Creating ICT tools for NGOs worldwide for Project Paradigm
www.ngo-opensource.org
MetaPortal: providing online access to web sites and repositories of data and information for sustainable development
www.metaportal.info
SemanticWebSoftware, part of NGO-Opensource to enable SW technologies in the Metaportal project
www.semanticwebsoftware.info


--- On Tue, 12/30/08, paola.dimaio@gmail.com <paola.dimaio@gmail.com> wrote:
From: paola.dimaio@gmail.com <paola.dimaio@gmail.com>
Subject: Re: semantic technologies training/request
To: "John Graybeal" <graybeal@mbari.org>
Cc: "Semantic Web" <semantic-web@w3.org>
Date: Tuesday, December 30, 2008, 8:36 AM

Hi John

>
> Have you found this in any engineering discipline? It seems unusual to me.
>  If you want that kind of thing in the U.S., you pay very dearly for it.

If you need training for a private, corporate aim, then I agree you
should pay for it. But if you
want to learn stuff to satisfy a legitimate personal desire for
knowledge, I consider it a 'human right'

On the one hand, the purpose of research is advancing knowledge, to
better the human condition. This purpose is generally intended for the
public good, in my understanding

On the other hand, we use most of public funding to finanance private
enterprises, and to generate protected intellectual property, save for
a couple of papers here and there and notional
dissemination efforts

this to me seems a contradiction that lies at the heart of a profound
dichotomy of purpose that
can slow down progress proportionally to the amounts invested - the
more money we put into discovery, the less knowledge is publicly
accessible

The discussion concerning public money funding private enterprises is
too serious, and too long, and not for this list.

However, as scientists and researchers, teachers, many of us feel the
need to provide as much access as possible to knowledge and learning
opportunities.

What I see is that we create knowledge, and then we create the need to
'sell' this knowledge
using expensive training, thus furthering the barriers and knowledge
gaps in this world -of course to the economic and financial
speculators this comes under ' creating business opportunities'

when it comes to knowledge and progress of humanity as a whole, to
deliberatelly put the instruments of knowing and earning in the hands
of some and not others, is perverse
but that's another argument

>
> On the U.S. side, our Marine Metadata Interoperability project is
attempting
> to do good outreach for its semantic initiative and repository (see [1]
for
> example). So we've been holding training workshops and the like, to
the
> extent funding allows.  And we try to be very responsive to requests for
> additional training.
>
> But this project (MMI and its semantic work) is not targeted at the
semantic
> world, rather it is targeted at environmental scientists/data managers who
> may find some of these specific tools of use. (MMI was funded by the US
> National Science Foundation's Ocean Sciences division.)  We have to
provide
> training in order to obtain any entrainment at all.

that's fantastic, however, it's still pushing the knowledge into the
institutional bottleneck
unless someone is working for an institution where you are doing
outreach, they wont be able to
learn from you, today, thanks to connected environments, we can do
better than that

tnowasays, these barriers are unnecessary.  a bit of open house policy
where possiblle, creating peer learning opportunities interspersed
with other obligations and committments, can only be beneficial I
think. the problem may be that people at the top our knowlege pyramid
can  maintain their position as long as the bottlenecks are in place

>
> So I wonder, is it possible the amount of outreach is influenced by the
> primary goal of the tool developers -- developing new tools, as opposed to
> serving a particular group of end users?  Just a thought.

yes, possible - but that should be part of the feedback loop, unless
the end users goals
are kept well knit into the design of the tools, we end up with lots
of lovely and pompous hot air baloons, fired into the air with public
resources

I hope that people who benefit from grants and funding of various
kinds to acquire the
knowledge advantage that 'puts them where they are'  feel compelled to
some extent
to pass something on  where theere is a need/request  for it

>
> Another possibility is that research funding is still rather limited on
> semantic solutions, and making everything work well is hard, so the
> resources all go into development rather than outreach.
>
sure, that's also true- however we can benefit from the multiplication
of resources when we open up our models : by allowing students and
tutors to share their knowledge, skills and resourcs a bit with
others, we will soon end up with more resources,
following the 'peer production' principle


PDM


>
> [1] http://marinemetadata.org/semanticframework
>
> On Dec 28, 2008, at 2:55 AM, paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote:
>
>> Greetings
>>
>> I am starting to be introduced to great sw tools being released by the
>> various EU funded projects, for which lots and lots
>> of public money is been used
>>
>> such as
>>
>> http://ontoware.org/
>> as well as lots of others
>>
>> Although all of these materials have some tutorials and documentation,
the
>> need for
>> face to face training is mounting, and likely to increase
>>
>>  I have not yet found during any of my trips distributed, connected, 
open
>> training centers
>> possibly c/o universities, whre people could drop in and get some
guidance
>> on how to get their hands dirty
>>  and have the chance to spend some contact hours with students and
tutors
>> who may want to share their expertise
>> and help newcomers to become experts
>>
>>
>> If this is at all possible, dear Santa, it's on my wishlist, and
in my
>> prayers for 2009
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> Paola Di Maio
>> *************************************************
>>
>
>
> John
>
> --------------
> John Graybeal   <mailto:graybeal@mbari.org>  -- 831-775-1956
> Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute
> Marine Metadata Interoperability Project: http://marinemetadata.org
>
>



-- 
Paola Di Maio
*************************************************
Networked  Enabled Capabilities Research
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