ColabWiki: ExpeditionWorkshop/SemanticConflictMappingandEnablement MakingCommitmentsTogether 2005 02 22: "Collaborative Expedition Workshop #38, February 22, 2005 at NSF (8XT)

Semantic Conflict, Mapping, and Enablement: Making Commitments Together (8RO)

AGENDA (8RP)

Purpose/ Description (8XU)

How can Communities of Practice build the capacity needed for shared understanding and governance around new mission responsibilities for data stewardship and sharing? How can emerging standards-based protocols (RDF, OWL, Topic Maps) improve collaboration around problem-centered, intergovernmental scenarios? In the realm of semantic technologies, conflict and context is the crux of everything. In light of this reality what is the potential for creating Public Information Environments that Strengthen Citizen-Government Relationships? (2IOY)

The reason why semantic technologies exist at all is because of the unavoidable fact of semantic conflict. Software engineers cannot escape it; business leaders pay a hefty price because of it. The only way semantic conflict can be dealt with successfully is by fully understanding the context in which the conflict exists. In fact, context is crucial regardless of whether software engineers program a solution in a popular programming language or model the solution in a scalable data representation modeling language. So, whether Java is used or OWL is used, the engineer and analysts will always have to understand the business context that created a given data conflict. Source: Chapter 5. Semantic Conflict Solution Patterns in 'Adaptive Information ? Improving Business Through Semantic Interoperability, Grid Computing & Enterprise Integration,' Wiley-Interscience by Pollock and Hodgson. Also . . ."