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Subject: May Minutes


Title: May Minutes
Here are the minutes for this month's meeting. Please review and post any corrections and/oradditions.

Here are the minutes for this month's meeting:

May 21, 2003

Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee.

USA Toll Free Number: 888-576-9014
USA Toll Number: +1-773-756-0201

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Rex Brooks
Rob Nixon
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Sylvia Candelaria deRam

Invited Visitor:

Russell Ruggiero

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened12:05 p.m. Eastern Time

Previous meeting minutes accepted.

This meeting was held on the third Wednesday of the Month.

We did not have a quorum.

As usual, some of these items were actually discussed in a different sequence from this  summary.

Old Business:

Because we did not have a quorum, and also had no official business which needed a voting quorum, the meeting was largely comprised of reports on implementations, subcommittee work, liaison opportunities, outreach endeavors and branstorming.

Rex updated the TC on the gradual development of an expressed need across TCs to request OASIS to allow subcommittees to recruit special experts who need not be TC members to address the more focused and specialized needs of some subcommittees for adequately performing the tasks of their charters. This is somewhat different from the current policy that requires special dispensation from the OASIS CEO for "Invited Experts." This may or may not be relevant to our subcommittees, but the growing numbers of subcommittees was also pointed out as a similar development in the TCs in which Rex participates, and in which he has established informal liaisons.

Our invited visitor, IT industry writer Russell Ruggiero, was introduced and he informed us about the excellent efforts he has pursued in writing and publishing his first article about the HumanML initiative in WSReview (Web Services Review), a publication of The Thomson Corporation. Russell said that he plans to expand and cntinue this work handing off information about HumanML to high-end media, vendors and and analysts so that we can begin to get some traction in the marketplace and bring attention to the value of our efforts. Unanimous approval was evidenced for this work, and any momentum this can bring to the work of the TC.

Ranjeeth mentioned that Owen Ambur of the federal government's xml.gov working group may get involved with the Conflict Resolution Subcommittee, through a connection between Owen's interest in freedom of information through improved records-keeping and HumanML's ability to expand contextual human information and improve accuracy of that information.

Rob said that our newest recruit, graduate student Amir Youssefi will be working with him on the VR-AI Subcommittee's work following the generally high level of communications between them. Rob also mentioned that he had been thinking of changing the name of the subcommittee to avoid the negative baggage carried by the term "Artificial Intelligence." Sylvia pointed out that there also needed to be some reference to the field of cognitive science, and aggreed that AI carries too much unfavorable associations and connotations. They agreed to pursue this offline.

Russell mentioned in connection with the brainstorming that accompanied this discussion that he was open to writing on new topics that any of us wish to point out to him.

Ranjeeth reiterated his request for State-Department-Related Use-Cases for the purpose of attracting attention and possible funding from that source through his recent contacts.

One aspect of this outreach effort, Russell pointed out, was the current emphasis in the corporate world on Return On Investment (ROI) accounting and decision-making, and the concurrent emphasis in government on the issues surrounding terrorism. These are the current interests, according to his observations, that Russell suggests it would be wise to address.

In this context, outreach efforts such as State Department Use-Cases, Rob noted that there are tiers of understanding related to State Department interests, and that we might be well advised to take that into account. He added that it is important to make sure we do not set up a misperception that HumanML will solve entire problems or is even capable of solving large parts of many-layered, historically intertwined problems such as the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Russell noted that, in this context, in direct support of Rob's concern, that emphasizing the role of HumanML as a global equalizer is best expressed by focusing on HumanML as an improvement in the exchange of information. By focusing on that, we defuse emotional context within the expressions of one person or group to another.

Ranjeeth agreed with that and added that it is probably a good idea to emphasize the idea that HumanML can help "explore" issues to find areas where HumanML can improve accuracy and understanding.

In a wide ranging discussion such as this, it is sometimes difficult to place comments from the Secretary's notes into their correct sequence, and the point of this paragraph is a case in point. I will italicize that point when I get to it. What happened is that Rob actually mentioned earlier on that one aspect of State-Department-related issues is that often individuals and groups have vested interests in preventing the kind of improved accuracy that HumanML seeks to bring to communications, particularly in Conflict Resolution terms. We did not pursue this aspect precisely because it came earlier and the nature of the discussion swept on from the point prior to this paragraph.

It seemed more important to put it above, where the context of discussing how to best portray HumanML makes it particularly important.

The discussion moved on to discuss ways to portray Use Cases.

Rob noted that in negotiations between sets of negotiators for two groups seated opposite each other at a conference table, where lead negotiators address each other directly while representative members of their respective groups are present, the situation is rife for feedback loops which amplify the emotional responses of each group and can lead to catastrophe.

Ranjeeth mentioned that he thought it was important to emphasize in any description of such a Use Case that these were "congitive" feedback loops fed by each groups intentions, understandings, etc.

Sylvia started to offer an analysis from her perspective to illustrate this feedback loop, but it was not immediately clear what she meant.

It was however, agreed that Sylvia would post this simplified cognitive semiosis analysis so that we could apply it as a framework for diagramming interactions in the use cases we provide since all use cases will likely involve two, or more, groups led in any interactions by individuals speaking for those groups, and so we can have a common method of explaining and analyzing examples.

Our discussion had taken us beyond our normal time limit, which Ranjeeth pointed out to us when he requested that Rex summarize the specific issues he had wanted to raise in relation to the Human Physcial Characteristics Description Markup Language Subcommittee.

Rex said that the issues were two. The first issue, coordinating with the development of a need for specific kinds of experts in other subcommittees, had been addressed, and the second issue, that his research had led him to organize the work of the HPCDML SC to produce an RDF Schema first reflecting the paper on convergent standards he posted the previous Saturday, and possibly using the registries of the ebXML TC and/or UBL TC as well, to organize the standards he has discovered. The upshot being that original work for the HPCDML SC if needed should be done after the existing standards are coordinated.

Before adjouning, it was agreed that the Conflict Resolution Subcommittee and the to-be-renamed VR-AI Subcommittee will present their charters at the next TC meeting.

The meeting adjourned at 1:49 p.m. Eastern Time.   


-- 
Rex Brooks
GeoAddress: 1361-A Addison, Berkeley, CA, 94702 USA, Earth
W3Address: http://www.starbourne.com
Email: rexb@starbourne.com
Tel: 510-849-2309
Fax: By Request


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