1st Virtual Assembly during April 14-21 for 2013 Financial Statement and 2014 Budget Approval

[copy of today's address to the membership by the IAOA President Michael Gruninger]

Dear IAOA members,

our Statute requires the Association's financial statement and annual budget to be formally approved every year by a (virtual) assembly, announced at least 15 days in advance. So this is a formal invitation to participate in the first 2014 virtual assembly, whose main purpose is to discuss and approve the 2013 Financial Statement and the 2014 Budget. Our financial status is safe, not only anticipating this year's FOIS conference and Summer School. Overall, we are actively supporting participation in a wide variety of novel as well as traditional IAOA initiatives.

The relevant documents (Financial Statement plus Budget) will be published on April 02, 2014.

The discussion on the Budget (and possibly on any other issue concerning the Association) will take place between April 02 and April 09, 2014.

Finalized details will be published by April 11, 2014.

The voting period will be April 14-21, 2014. Detailed voting instructions will be distributed in advance and will be available at [1].

The quorum is satisfied if the number of votes exceeds 50%+1 of the IAOA membership count, determined on April 13. If we are not able to meet the quorum requirement, a second call will be necessary. The outcome of the voting will be announced to the members' mailing list until April 30, 2014.

Please be aware that your vote takes just a few minutes, but is of huge importance to let our Association move forward. Guaranteeing that the IAOA is truly open and democratic is our first priority, and you will certainly understand that it requires a huge investment of voluntary time. We really count on your support!

Let me take this opportunity to express the gratitude of the whole IAOA Executive Council to our acting Treasurer, Laure Vieu. She did an excellent job in keeping our finances under rigorous control as in previous years, making at the same time everything transparent and understandable in any detail. Serving as Treasurer since IAOA's inception, Laure is currently passing on the respective duties to our new designated Treasurer Fabian Neuhaus, under whose direction the 2014 budget has already been prepared, and to the new Membership Officer Claudio Masolo. We are grateful for their readiness and contributions.

Michael Gruninger

President, IAOA

[1] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IAOA_Assembly_2014_04

Get together in sunny Rio de Janeiro for the premier IAOA event, FOIS 2014

In September 2014, the international community of ontologists will flock to the Brazilian coastline for the largest IAOA event of the year, the flagship Formal Ontology in Information Systems (FOIS) conference.

Research paper submissions are due on March 3 -- start preparing now, as just as in previous FOIS events, we expect tough competition! This year, in addition to paper submissions there will also be an ontology competition in which a prize will be awarded to the winning ontology evaluated by the criteria outlined in last year's Ontology Summit.

Find out more about this event at http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br/p/home.html.

Here comes the Ontology Summit 2014!

We are so far.

The Ontology Summit 2014 has just started this week.

For the first time ever in the Ontology Summit history, more than 100 members and interested parties from around the world have attended the Launch Event on January 16 via phone and chat!

A great achievement for our Community!

Colleagues are already posting about the event, so don't miss out!

Become a member and join the Summit and the Community discussion! You can only win!

And help us spread the word (G+, Twitter, FB) (official twitter account: @OntologySummit; proposed hashtag: #ontosum).

From Tim Finin's blog, link added above

2014 New Year's Address to IAOA Members by the Executive Council

Dear IAOA members,

Happy New Year!

Looking back on 2013, it is evident that our Association is thriving in a number of areas.

2013's Summer Institute was held in cooperation with the Vespucci Institute in Fiesole, Italy in June. The selected topic was: "Ontologies and models for integrated assessments of multiple-scale processes".  Using the notion of "land functions" as a basis, discussions covered a host of highly interdisciplinary approaches, including spatial micro-simulation models for environments and social science, to move towards an ontology of land function and land function dynamics.

Dimitris Ballas (University of Sheffield), Tom Bittner (SUNY-Buffalo), Max Craglia (JRC), Werner Kuhn (University of Münster), Carlo Lavalle (JRC) served as facilitators. And particular thanks go to Werner Kuhn for his energy and assistance in another highly successful Summer Institute!

IAOA was also one of the co-organizers for OntologySummit 2013, which addressed the theme "Ontology Evaluation Across the Ontology Lifecycle" and explored criteria, tools, and techniques for evaluating ontologies.

 In addition, marking a new development for the Association, IAOA sponsored a Prize for the Best Hackathon-Clinic Project at the Ontology Summit.

The winners of the Award in 2013 were:

- Mike Bennett (FIBO; EDM Council; Hypercube)

- María Poveda Villalón (OOPS!; Universidad Politécnica de Madrid)

- Astrid Duque Ramos (OQuaRE; University of Murcia)

- Samir Tartir (OntoQA; Philadelphia University, Jordan)
Congratulations to all of the winners.

The new Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG was created in November, with Leo Obrst leading the effort. Various activities continued in the other Special Interest Groups and Technical Committees, although we are strongly encouraging much higher participation levels from members in the future!  There is much to do. In particular, we are hoping to energize the Education Committee and initiate the development of an ontology textbook. Zena Wood has agreed to be the new Chair of the Education Committee, taking over from Antony Galton and Fabian Neuhaus.

The year also brought changes to the Executive Council, with Giancarlo Guizzardi and Laure Vieu both retiring. Many thanks to Giancarlo and Laure for all of their hard work!  Laure, in particular, has served as our Treasurer since the inception of the Association, an absolutely vital role. The current success of IAOA is in large part due to her untiring efforts, and she will be greatly missed.

Elections were held in 2013, and Janna Hastings and Marion Haemmerli both joined the Executive Council, with their term starting this January, 2014. Re-elected to the Executive Council were Oliver Kutz, Frank Loebe, Fabian Neuhaus, and Leo Obrst.

For the coming year, 2014, we are eagerly anticipating a wide range of major events.  Foremost, we have FOIS occurring this year September 22-25 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.  With Laure Vieu as General Chair, Pawel Garbacz and Oliver Kutz as Programme Committee Chairs, and Giancarlo Guizzardi and Renato Rocha Souza as Organization Chairs, FOIS promises to be a spectacular venue for the presentation of the latest ontological research. For the latest information, visit the website at http://fois2014.inf.ufes.br .

The Second Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis will also take place in Vitoria, Brazil, in the week before FOIS. The emphasis here will be on ontological analysis, pursuing the goal of showing how the different disciplines within IAOA interact and communicate to answer a variety of problems. Details on the program/courses of the school, venue and accommodation and registration procedures are available at http://iaoa.org/isc2014 .

As in previous years, IAOA will again be a co-organizer of the Ontology Summit. Ontology Summit 2014 has selected as theme for this year "Big Data and Semantic Web Meet Applied Ontology".  The Summit will offer a particularly important opportunity for building bridges between the Semantic Web, Linked Data, Big Data, and Applied Ontology communities. The Kickoff session takes place already on January 16, 2014 -- for more details, see http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?OntologySummit2014 .
 

This coming year therefore holds great promise for new activities within the Association as well as new opportunities for involvement across all the interdisciplinary areas that make up Applied Ontology. We therefore look forward to your continuing support in all the endeavours of IAOA and will hope to see you at any or all of this year's face-to-face events!

Michael Gruninger and John Bateman

for the IAOA Executive Council