SBIR/STTR Grant Project Proposals

At the time of this writing in early March 2004, we must aim at deadlines in June or later for this year, and because we have experienced qualified failures to receive an award from this program, albeit within the context of DARPA rather than NSF, it is worthwhile to provide some general notes on criteria and focus for the grant proposals we will be fielding with various partners in the near future and further into fall 2004 and beyond.

First, because HumanML is functionally limited to digital information systems we need to maintain a focus on IT as well as communication. By this, we mean that our workproducts will necessarily be limited to use within digital information systems, whether they have implications or even philosophical or logical extensions beyond digital information systems, so discussion of goals, objectives, performance and results factors need to be kept within these bounds. When we digress into social issues or improvement goals, we court discrediting ourselves unless we immediately supply the means or methods for measuring performance results. ALL of our work needs to provide easily understandable and accepted metrics by which our performance results can be repeatably verified and documented.

Second, in order to do this in the public marketplace of ideas, we need to invent as little new or innovative terminology within our vocabularies as is possible. (Please note the phrase, "as is possible--since quite a lot of our work WILL necessitate some amount of invention.) However, we need not spend time trying to improve existing accepted vocabularies. If improvements are needed, the underlying problems will surface and be recognized in due course. Our innovation needs to occur in combining previously disjoint disciplines such as healthcare delivery with its concomitant medical vocabulary and cultural studies within the context of emergency management.

The more we can show HumanML as a facilitating and enabling technology, rather than as an idealistic panacea for the global problems of human hunger or war, peace and diplomacy, the greater will be our chances to attract good quality help with developing our vocabularies, as opposed to blanket condemnations or criticisms that dismiss us out of hand with no effort at reasoned debate or discussion.

We need to remember that no one, let alone a group as small and entirely voluntary as we are at this point, can prove or disprove a negative, so responding to negatives which can't be disproven is a waste of time that only validates the accusers. We need to focus on producing genuine concrete benefits with our work and let that speak for itself as much as we can. That, of course, does not mean that we should fail to publicize or write about our efforts and how these efforts can be applied, only that we should not waste time responding to criticism that fails to meet a minimum standard for argument: that honest debate and discussion can be carried forward, as opposed to simply saying what amounts to "Ouch, that aint true!"

So, with those general guidelines, basically that we stick with existing vocabularies and datatyping that can be measureably used within digital information systems, and set concrete objectives we can actually achieve as we pursue or greater goals, we keep our efforts within the bounds of what CAN be funded in the grant project proposals we want to pursue.

Quoting from http://www.e.nsf.gov/sbirspects/IT/it.htm

"...

Information technology can be conceptualized in the form of a stack. Each layer of the stack is built upon the layers below and supports the layers above. the National Science Foundation SBIR/STTR Program conceptualizes a five-layer stack. ... From the top down, the five layers include the following:

Therefore we will be using B. Human Computer Interaction even though there will be implications for technologies lower in the stack. It's THEIR system, so we should not suggest that other organizational schemes might be wiser for allowing higher level languages to provide inputs into the stack lower than what NSF SBIR/STTR has established. Likewise, we need to make sure that our proposals accurately locate HumanML contributions in the level of Human Computer Interaction, e.g. Human-readable and understandable terminology relevant to the analysis and processing of Human-Human and Human-computer communication. We will have to downplay the implications of HumanML for Applications and Education Applications immediately below it in the stack. Repeat: it's THEIR system. So we should limit our discussion of how we organize our work by application area, at least in the proposals we will be fielding. That can make itself felt if and/or when we produce the applications on which our work is based.

I wanted to get this note out before I start to work on the Mediation SC materials I hope to post tomorrow, but which will certainly be posted Tuesday or Wednesday before our next TC meeting, because those materials, in addition to more general usage pattern discussions, will be forming the basis of at least two of the three grant topic areas on which I hope to get us started, beyond what is already underway.

Additionally, it appears that we need to cite B... first even when a specific topic in their outline falls under A... Fortunately, we can ask for guidance.

The three combination-areas I think we can field SBIR/STTR grant proposals from url above are:

B.2. Virtual/Augmented Reality for Immersive Environments-A.2. Enabling E-Communities
     My musculo-skeletal emotional representation system within a chat application fits
      this combination of topics (Starbourne + Humanmarkup.org, Inc)

B.3.Representation and Visualization of Knowledge and Models-A.4.c. Customer feedback and relationship mangement systems-A.3. Security/Privacy-A.5 Knowledge discovery in Decision Making
We can use OWL Ontological systems combined with HumanML for preferences within
HMML applied to UI work for these combined topics (Can also be broken out as separate
   topics for QDA, Image Matters + Humanmarkup.org, Inc.)

B.5. Universal Access-B.6.e. Speech Recognition and dialong management-A.5.Knowledge Discovery in Decision Making
Adaptations of VXML which Rex is working with in WSRP and adaptations of Cicero from
    Level8 fit into this combination of topics (Can also be broken out as separate topics for
       Level8 and HMML in VXML.)

Ciao,

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