The Ontology Outreach Advisory

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The Ontology Outreach Advisory

• Robert Meersman Jeroen Hoppie Hoppenbrouwers
• STARLab, Vrije Universiteit Brussel

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Summary

• OOA activities, part of KnowledgeWeb NoE Work
  Plan
• Founding
• Legal registration, new website, organisation
  membership.
• Activities in the Human resources domain
• OOA-HR kick-off, new OOA-HR roadmap, real-life
  story, next activities this workshop, scientific
  workshop in Portugal (_at_OTM07, 25-30 Nov,
  Vilamoura)
• Activities in the Healthcare domain
• Collaboration with other associations, a joint
  recommendation on ontology quality. Work with
  SUNY in Buffalo NY, USA.

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OOA v.z.w. Foundation

• Legally registered.
• An international non-profit association, called
  VzW, according to Belgian law.
• General assembly so far organised in conjunction
  with Knowledge Web meetings.

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A new website ontology-advisory.org
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OOA Foundation
Article 3 - Purpose

• 1. To promote science and research on ontology
  engineering, with a particular focus on ontology
  content
• 2. To develop and promote quality (and
  methodological) guidelines for ontology content
  and tools, including evaluation and
  recommendation strategies
• 3. To evaluate, recommend, and/or standardize
  ontology content and tools
• 4. To provide publication infrastructure for
  ontology content.
• 5. To become a representative forum for experts
  within this field
• 6. To organize chapter committees and working
  groups on subjects related to its purpose
• 7. To distribute, and make available, knowledge
  about ontologies through publications, the
  organization of seminars, courses and
  conferences, and any other means that serve this
  purpose.
• 8. To collaborate with scientific and other
  institutions, organizations and societies, as
  well as with industrial companies, national and
  international bodies with similar or related
  purpose.
• The OOA may perform any and all actions that
  directly or indirectly pertain to its purpose. It
  can among other things provide collaboration and
  have interest in any purpose related to its own.

In short To develop strategies for ontology
recommendation and standardisation, and promote
the ontology technology to industry.
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OOA Organisation
Human Resources and Employment
Healthcare and life sciences
Digital Libraries
Supply Chain Management
Domain Chapters (vertical), responsible for
implementing the OOA mission in a vertical market
sector.
Domain Upper Level Ontologies
Ontology Quality
Working groups (horizontal), focus on a certain
issue that is horizontal for several or all
domain chapters.
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OOA Membership

• Membership Fees
• 3000 (large org), 1000 (medium org), 200
  (small org), 30 individuals.
• The membership dues were waived for the founding
  members.
• Membership benefits
• Play a prominent role in their domain of
  interest, their recommendations influence the
  domain, locate new business and customers, be the
  first-to-know and have full access to the OOA
  developments, voting, etc.
• Founding Members 25 officially registered
  members ( the general assembly). 11 did not
  sign the membership form yet.

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Current Members

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Current Members
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Other Members (under consideration)
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OOA Members

• 16 universities 18 companies/organisations 2
  individuals
• Only 5 organisational memberships, the others
  participate through individual ? individual
  membership is easier especially at this founding
  phase.

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Activities in the Human Resources and Employment
Domain
2007
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OOA-HR Chapter

• Mission promote the semantics technology into
  HR/e-learning standards and applications.
• Chair

Luk Vervenne, Synergetics Luk.Vervenne_at_Ontology-Ad
visory.org
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• 1st workshop held as part of the e-Portfolio 2006
  conference in Oxford.
• This HCSIT Summit is the main industrial HR
  conference in Europe (300 participants, mainly
  tech uptakers provider companies)
• 30 participants in the OOA workshop.
• Workshop position presentations by leading world
  experts in the field.
• Compile and Discussion Panel led by Hoppie,
  leading to strategic collaborations with the HR
  community.

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Workshop Outcome

• Bridging two communities
• HR and ontology experts, industry and academia,
  uptakers and providers.
• Building an OOA-HR Community.
• Applications to join the OOA.
• Build on Roadmap Semantic Challenges and
  Opportunities in the Human Resources Domain.
• Invitation to participate in HCSIT 2008.

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The OOA-HR Roadmap
1st version (March 07)

• Focuses on The semantic challenges and
  opportunities in the HR domain.
• Contribution of many people (including 12
  non-Kweb members).
• Purpose an OOA publication, to used as a
  reference for both the HR and the ontology
  communities. Also, to be used as a roadmap for
  the OOA itself.

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The OOA-HR Roadmap
1st version (March 07)

• Analyses of the HR application scenarios.
• Existing solutions, standards, projects,
  ontologies, success stories.
• New challenges (how to model competence
  ontologies, sustainability challenge)
• New opportunities (how to introduce semantics
  into competency frameworks, semantics-based job
  matching, HR interoperability, HR e-learning)
• ? see OOA website

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The OOA-HR Roadmap
2nd version (July 07)

• Focuses on competency modeling frameworks ways
  to model, represent, exchange, and process
  competence models.
• Close collaboration with the HR-XML, IEEE-LTSC,
  and the CEN/ISSS-ICT Skills. To introduce
  semantics to competency models.
• Preparing for joint meetings in the coming months.

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A real-life story
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A real-life story

• The DOGMA-MESS methodology is successfully used
  by companies in Co-Drive to elicit HR ontologies.
• A methodology for collaborative ontology
  elicitation and meaning negotiation.
• Is actively used by bakers and bakery teachers in
  the Netherlands.
• To build an ontology of bakery tasks and
  competencies.
• The ontology will be used for matching vocational
  training and jobs (via ePortfolio services) in
  the Bakery domain, and in the technical
  installation domain.

CODRIVE Competency Ontology Driven Vocational
Education http//www.codrive.org
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A real-life story
Current Users
The Dutch centre for technical skills
The Walloon Employment Agency
A company specialised in e-learning and
competency modeling, Belgium
The Dutch bakery centre
A company specialised in e-learning and knowledge
management, Belgium
The Dutch Foundation for Professional education
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A real-life story

• A competency profile consists of a set of atomic
  competencies. An atomic competency consists of a
  set of tasks.
• These are modeled in very simple (but formalised)
  templates.

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A real-life story

• DOGMA-MESS to be integrated with Learn-eXact in
  the Flexbase project.
• To be used in other projects such as Prolix,
  Acknowledge.
• www.dogma-mess.org

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Activities in the Healthcare and Life Sciences
Domain
2007
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OOA-HLS Chapter

• Mission develop, recommend, and promote quality
  guidelines for ontology content and tools.
• Chair

Prof. Werner.Ceusters, New York State Center of
Excellence in Bioinformatics Life Sciences,
SUNY at Buffalo. Werner.Ceusters_at_Ontology-Advisory
.org
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Quality Guidelines for Ontology Authoring
A joint recommendation Issued by The Ontology
Outreach advisory (OOA) The US National Center
for Ontological Research (NCOR) The US National
Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) The
European Center for Ontological Research (ECOR)
Open Biomedical Ontologies (OBO) lt and maybe
others gt Editors/Custodians Barry Smith,
Mustafa Jarrar, Steve Ray, Werner Ceusters,
Mathias Brochhausen, Rob Shearer, Giancarlo
Guizzardi Goal Identify and recommend a set of
guidelines that contribute directly to quality,
or indirectly by pursuing ontology reusability
and adoption.
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Quality Guidelines for Ontology Authoring

• A Call-for-guidelines sent out to a selected set
  of ontology practitioners and researchers
• Guideline template

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Quality Guidelines for Ontology Authoring

• Collected guidelines to be refined and edited to
  arrive at more agreement
• Final guidelines easy to follow and apply in
  industry.
• Target users tool developers, ontology
  modellers, and the OOA itself for future ontology
  evaluation.

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2nd OnToContent Workshop

• The annual OOA scientific workshop on Ontology
  content and evaluation in Enterprise, with two
  tracks Human Resources, and eHealth.

OnToContent 2006 Montpellier, France. October
2006, as part of OTM06.
OnToContent 2007 Vilamoura, Portugal. 25-30
November 2007, as part of OTM07.