From frank.loebe at informatik.uni-leipzig.de Tue Sep 16 04:12:57 2014 From: frank.loebe at informatik.uni-leipzig.de (Frank Loebe) Date: Tue, 16 Sep 2014 04:12:57 +0200 Subject: [iaoa-general] Public Report IAOA-EC meeting n.109 - Thu 2014.09.04 Message-ID: <002401cfd153$c38cd070$4aa67150$@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> Dear IAOA members and followers, please find below the Public Report of the IAOA Executive Council meeting n.109, which took place on Thursday, Sep 04, 2014. The past Public Reports are collected at http://www.iaoa.org/iaoaorga/reports/reports.html Feel free to contact the Association if you have any question by emailing to: info at iaoa.org Best regards, Frank Loebe on behalf of IAOA EC --- One hundred ninth meeting of the IAOA Executive Council (EC) Virtual Meeting of 4 September 2014 Attendees: Stefano Borgo Michael Gruninger (chair) Janna Hastings Marion Haemmerli Oliver Kutz Frank Loebe Fabian Neuhaus Leo Obrst The Election Committee informed the EC that the quorum for the 2014 EC election has been reached and that three new EC members have been elected. The chair of the Election Committee will shortly distribute the results to the members. Information regarding the 2014 election can be found at [1] http://ontolog-02.cim3.net/wiki/IAOA_ExecutiveCouncil_Election_2014 Due to a complaint about dealing with abstention in EC elections and related email messages, the EC considered whether changing the way of counting votes and abstentions or dropping the request for quorum is legally admissible. Patrick J. Hayes resigned from the IAOA Advisory Board on September 3, 2014. The EC thanks him for his participation in the past years. The EC looked at the topics and material for the IAOA Assembly. In particular, a consultative vote is foreseen on the relocation of IAOA to Switzerland, as proposed by the EC. Moreover, IAOA SIGs, Technical and Standing Committees will have a chance to present their past and future activities in the Assembly. The adaptation of the IAOA Statute and Bylaws to the Swiss legal system are almost complete for a preliminary tax exemption request. That request will be submitted by the EC to Swiss authorities in order to clarify the status of tax exemption after relocation. Further changes to Statute and Bylaws are being discussed in the Bylaws Committee and, where deemed necessary, will be presented during the IAOA Assembly. First steps toward initiating FOIS 2016 are being taken. The EC aims at determining and announcing the FOIS 2016 General Chair at FOIS 2014. Moreover, the call for locations for FOIS 2016 will be launched soon. Michael Gruninger reported from a meeting with the Education Committee co-chairs. Short-term objectives include gathering syllabi from members and wiki pages, collecting tutorials, and possible interaction with the Ontology Summit series as well as the Semantic Web Applied Ontology SIG. The EC noticed the proposal of a European Ontology Network Initiative [2] (organizationally not related to IAOA) to coordinate people based in Europe and working in the area of ontology and semantic web technologies. The work to complete the missing public reports (PRs) of EC meetings (n. 81-83,98-101,104-106) is ongoing. The PRs number 98, 99 and 104 are ready for distribution. References: [1] http://ontolog-02.cim3.net/wiki/IAOA_ExecutiveCouncil_Election_2014 [2] http://www.eudat.eu/euon-european-ontology-network-community-driven-initiati ve-supported-eudat (End of Report) From frank.loebe at informatik.uni-leipzig.de Thu Sep 18 06:20:19 2014 From: frank.loebe at informatik.uni-leipzig.de (Frank Loebe) Date: Thu, 18 Sep 2014 06:20:19 +0200 Subject: [iaoa-general] Public Reports IAOA-EC Meetings n.104-n.106, May 22 - Jul 10, 2014 Message-ID: <004601cfd2f7$e5866920$b0933b60$@informatik.uni-leipzig.de> Dear IAOA members and followers, please find below three Public Reports of the IAOA Executive Council that were so far missing: * n.104 - Thu, May 22, 2014 * n.105 - Mon, Jun 16, 2014 * n.106 - Thu, Jul 10, 2014 I apologize for the delayed distribution. Feel free to contact the Association if you have any question by emailing to: info at iaoa.org Best regards, Frank Loebe on behalf of IAOA EC --- One hundred fourth meeting of the IAOA Executive Council (EC) Virtual Meeting of 22 May 2014 Attendees: John Bateman Stefano Borgo Michael Gruninger (chair) Janna Hastings Frank Loebe Leo Obrst Changes regarding the IAOA infrastructure will be implemented in June. By the end of June, IAOA will stop to use the CIM3 facilities based on request by CIM3. The EC grants the Infrastructure Committee the right to take technical decisions on these aspects and to implement the changes in cooperation with new partners. The Committee will periodically report to the EC until the changes are completed. One option that is being considered is to use a server at the Laboratory of Applied Ontology (LOA), Trento, Italy for the website and as file server. Mailinglist services may be hosted at the University of Magdeburg, Germany. The EC decided to spend ca. 130 EUR on renewing the web domain registration "iaoa.org" for 9 years. The EC will further investigate about the advantages of the conference bridge from Instant Teleseminar [1] as used so far based on a CIM3 account. The EC decided to continue using it until June 30 and to test other options (including Skype and Google talk) in July and August. The EC grants 300 EUR to the CONTACT workshop for a best paper award including free IAOA membership for up to 3 student authors. In the near future the EC will establish the Election Committee for the 2014 EC elections coming up in September 2014, prior to the FOIS conference. The Infrastructure Committee is verifying the possibility (and security) of a 1-click vote option. Leo Obrst, EC liaison of the SWAO SIG updated the EC on the SIG initiatives. There could be a connection with the Education Committee for the organization of tutorials and of a textbook. The website of the SIG still needs to be set up. The EC was updated on the last news regarding the IAOA relocation. Discussion covered next steps, among others what an agreement with the designated host at University of Bern should comprise. As anticipated, with the relocation a change of the Statute and Bylaws to obey with the rules of the new country are needed. The President and Treasurer will collect and integrate the notes on needed and possible changes. The Secretary will examine further formal steps, e.g. as required for requesting tax exemption. The EC confirms two policies. Firstly, job postings that are sent to the Association, e.g. from external parties, for distribution through IAOA's communication channels will by default not be distributed, neither via website nor mailing lists. Members themselves are free to distribute job requests and job postings to the iaoa-member mailing list. Secondly, the Treasurer is allowed to make regular expenses up to 200 Euro without a previous EC decision. Mike Bennett and Gary Berg-Cross will receive a free IAOA membership for one membership period due to their result in the Hackathon at the Ontology Summit 2014. References: [1] http://instantteleseminar.com/ (End of Report) --- One hundred fifth meeting of the IAOA Executive Council (EC) Virtual Meeting of 16 June 2014 Attendees: John Bateman (chair) Oliver Kutz Frank Loebe Fabian Neuhaus Leo Obrst The EC was updated on organizational aspects of the FOIS 2014 conference and the 2014 Interdisciplinary Summer School on Ontological Analysis (ISC). The transfer of 3,000 EUR of IAOA student grants (for both events) to the managing company crEAct.eve has been realized. Moreover, the ISC has received the confirmation of third-party funding of 18,000 BRL (roughly ca. 6,000 EUR). The Secretary will coordinate with the FOIS organizers on a time slot for the physical part of the IAOA Assembly. Categories of potential prizes to be awarded at FOIS have been discussed. The 2014 EC elections coming up in September were discussed. In particular, the EC considered potential candidates from the Advisory Board for the Election Committee. The EC decided to accept the workshop Ontologies and Data in Life Sciences (ODLS) 2014 as a Supported Event, to be held on Oct 07-08, 2014 in Freiburg, Germany [1]. In preparation of the relocation of the Association's legal domicile from Italy to Switzerland, Statute and Bylaws need to be adapted to the requirements of Swiss law. The EC discussed about the question of how much modification should be admitted beyond that what is required for Switzerland. This item is to be resumed in a future meeting. One argument for minimal changes is the easier maintenance of the consistency between both documents. The EC was updated on recent activity in the special interest groups (SIGs) on Design Semantics, and on Semantic Web and Applied Ontology (SWAO). The SIG on Design Semantics is advancing the preparations for its first SIG workshop in 2014 in Bari, Italy [2-3]. Regarding the SWAO SIG, Andrea Westerinen faces new commitments and must resign as a co-chair at this time, such that Mike Bennett and Eli Abi-Lahoud are the two co-chairs of the SIG since June 6, 2014. An initial version of a new SWAO SIG website was created, primarily implemented by Naicong Li, and is under review by the SIG. In connection with the CIM3 infrastructure phase-out, the EC discussed options of conferencing services, including chargeable options. The issue is urgent and is continued in the next meeting. References: [1] https://wiki.imise.uni-leipzig.de/Gruppen/OBML/Workshops/2014-ODLS [2] http://www.designsemantics.org/ [3] http://cindy.informatik.uni-bremen.de/cosy/design-semantics/SIG-2014/about/i ndex.html (End of Report) --- One hundred sixth meeting of the IAOA Executive Council (EC) Virtual Meeting of 10 July 2014 Attendees: John Bateman Michael Gruninger (chair) Marion Haemmerli Oliver Kutz Janna Hastings Frank Loebe Fabian Neuhaus Leo Obrst The technical infrastructure of IAOA is further undergoing changes as the service provision by CIM3 phases out. Web and email server have been transferred to the Laboratory of Applied Ontology (LOA), Trento, Italy and to the University of Magdeburg, respectively. The EC decided to continue the use of the conference bridge service provided by Instant Teleseminar within 2014 (for 67 USD p.m.) and to investigate other possibilities until January 2015. Switching may be necessary because the current Teleseminar conference bridge provides access for 100 people only, which may be too limited, e.g. for the IAOA General Assembly and for some Ontology Summit sessions. The change in hosting services has led to unexpected expenditures (domain registration, SSL certificate, conference bridge). On request of the Treasurer, the EC decided to allocate 500 EUR originally provided in the budget for "other event sponsoring" to cover costs emerging from changes in hosting services. The EC decided to allocate 500 EUR for sponsoring one keynote speaker for the Supported Event Ontologies and Data in Life Sciences (ODLS 2014) [1]. The usual conditions (on reduced fees, reporting, etc.) apply. The EC continued its discussion on the planned relocation of the Association's legal domicile from Italy to Switzerland. To estimate the administrative work after relocation to Switzerland, the EC has decided to submit a preliminary tax exemption request to the Swiss authorities. Tax exempted associations need not file annual tax declarations in Switzerland, saving considerable administrative work. For that request, Statute and Bylaws need to be adapted and will (partly) be translated into German, to accelerate the formal process. The EC decided to prepare a first English version of the modifications needed before starting the translation. Marion Haemmerli will check the schedule of a tax exemption request with Swiss authorities. The EC decided to invest 200 EUR for prize artifacts for FOIS 2014. Reference: [1] https://wiki.imise.uni-leipzig.de/Gruppen/OBML/Workshops/2014-ODLS (End of Report)