REVISED TC Meeting Minutes 3-10-04

March 10, 2004

Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee.

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Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Rex Brooks
Sylvia Candelaria deRam
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Russell Ruggiero
James Landrum III
Roger Alexander

Propsective Member:
John Sarazen

Invited Guest:
Rob Nixon

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

Meeting convened 12:05 p.m. Eastern Time.

Previous meeting minutes accepted for January.

This meeting was held on the new normally scheduled second Wednesday of the Month.

We had a quorum. As a result, decisions, even somewhat tentative, that are indicated in these minutes should be treated approved unless otherwise stated.

We began by noting that our meeting last monthm February, was cancelled due to lack of attendance due largely to late notification of the change in both the time from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time to 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. Eastern Time, and from the third to the second Wednesday of the month to avoid conflict with the some other commitments by some TC members.

As a result of that this meeting was largely devoted to updates from members on their on-going activities and a brief introduction of the first draft of the proposed charter and mission statement for the Mediation Subcommittee which was submitted to the TC mailing list before the meeting:

http://www.oasis-open.org/archives/huml/200403/msg00015.html

Sylvia reported that she had decided not to specifically cite a relationship with the HumanMarkup TC, or the Non-Profit 501 (c)(3) Coproration, Humanmarkup.org, Inc. in her Letter of Intent to file a Grant Proposal to NSF in the Topic Area of Human Social Dynamics, but was using a group of colleagues for her proposal. She described this research work as including Natural Language Understanding aided by inserting markup tag within text for emotions, and cultural context, using overlaps and comparisons for speculstive uses such a KIF, Knowledge Information Format, an international standard that describes knowledge representation in predicate logic. It is similar, Sylvia said, to RDF, and, thus may prove useful in the development of a Cognition in Environments Subcommittee. It is noted that this work will also likely have significance for the semantic web in frame-based ontological knowledge bases such as Protege with OWL.

We congratulated Sylvia on passing the initial deadline hurdle, and developing some positive movement in this direction.

Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga mentioned that this was also interesting for its connection to the Text Encoding Initiative, TEI, http://www.tei-c.org/

"Humanoid Animation," per se, should not be confused with the work of H-Anim (Humanoid Animation Working Group). There is no X3D Humanoid Animation Markup Language UNDER DEVELOPMENT as far as I am aware- although the H-Anim working group has new guidelines for X3D (see http://www.h-anim.org/Specifications/H-Anim200x/ISO_IEC_FCD_19774/).
People (individuals, organizations, and institutions) are working (variously) on X3D and using X3D for 3D avatar development. We (the ATL) are not doing anything with H-Anim at the present time, however, we (me, Aaron Bergstrom, Rex Brooks, Rob Nixon, Sandy Ressler, and others) are having a teleconference with some members of H-Anim and X3D and members of the medical informatics communities today, to explore issues of relevance, with regard for markup activities of the various groups working humanoid anatomy and related humanoid animation tagging, etc., with some empahsis (today) on discussions about real and potential coordinations between the working groups. We'll update the HUML list as appropriate, following the teleconference.

We are not working with Cornelius Rosse on Humanoid Animation- we have to date only discussed collaborating with his team to work through the compatibility and interoperability issues, as well as crosswalks development between Digital Anatomist Ontology, CRM, and related markup- particularly between HumanML and also in coordination with AnatML (Physiome.org and the Bioengineering Institute of Auckland University)- with specific foci on Human Anatomy and Physiology markup, and with some attention to markup of humanoid avatars- but are not (at present) using the Humanoid Animation 2001 specification (actually the Humanoid Animation 200x specification (see http://www.h-anim.org/Specifications/H-Anim200x/ISO_IEC_FCD_19774/) for anything at the present time- howerver, per the teleconference meeting today this is likely to change significantly, at least with regard fro coordination of working group activities.

These humanoid markup and animation tasks are things that we (ATL and Quantum Digital Arts (Rob Nixon)) will address in the Native Dancer project- pending award of funding by NIH. At present we (the ATL) are coordinating with a number of individuals, groups, organizations, and particularly educational institutions (mostly in Europe with a few in the US), on a range of proposed projects that will involve markup language, ontology, and structured vocabulary development for interoperability across and between human heritage digital libraries applications, and at some levels HumanMarkup Language will have vital roles- once it is mature- and with regard for the (future) vision of a (realized and robust) HPCDML, it has potential to play critical roles in a variety of arenas- but we need to create it first, and it needs to be compatible with what the rest of the world is working on- which is why, fopr example, we are having the telecopnference today- to keep abreast of what other teams are doing and determining how best to proceed and coordinate more effectively, etc..

The Research Channel already exists- http://www.researchchannel.org/ and is closely affiliated with Internet2- http://www.researchchannel.org/projects/i2wg/

Sylvia suggested that in approaching the foundations who make grants to Non-Profit organizations, it would be a good idea to package our projects together so that the range of projects we have undertaken will be apparent.

Ranjeeth mentioned that he was trying to get meetings with foundations or associations of foundations which have exhibited an interest in funding projects associated with conflict resolutions. In this regard H-Net Matrix was mentioned. This is a project at the Michigan State university which seeks to provide a common interface environment for the Humanities.

A preliminary search on Google turned up two main components:

http://matrix.msu.edu/innermatrix/about.php

From the "About" page:

"Based at Michigan State University, MATRIX is devoted to the application of new technologies in humanities and social science teaching and research. The Center creates and maintains online resources, provides training in computing and new teaching technologies, and creates forums for the exchange of ideas and expertise in new teaching technologies. ..."

http://www.h-net.org/

From the index/'home' page:

"H-Net is an international interdisciplinary organization of scholars and teachers dedicated to developing the enormous educational potential of the Internet and the World Wide Web. Our edited lists and web sites publish peer reviewed essays, multimedia materials, and discussion for colleagues and the interested public. The computing heart of H-Net resides at MATRIX: The Center for Humane Arts, Letters, and Social Sciences Online, Michigan State University, but H-Net officers, editors and subscribers come from all over the globe. ..."

Rex Brooks reported that his uptake of the work of maintaining a connection to the eGov TC is proceeding well, as part of the overall work of initiating a Mediation Subcommittee, and opened the topic of the proposed charter and mission statement for the Mediation SC.

Sylvia noted that she was struck most by the phrase, inviting participation by individuals and organizations with "... an interest in mitigating conflict." It was proposed, without dissent that this phrase be highlighted prominently at the start of the document.

James said that it was necessary to make a distinction between standardized, structured vocabularies and formal legal vocabularies.

Rex indicated that his use of the term "legal" was in the formal sense, and it was agreed that the distinction, including greater clarity with regard to including formal legal vocabularies as one component of a Human Mediation Markup Language family of vocabularies.

Sylvia noted that a database of case law, called Westlaw should be consulted.

It turns out that Westlaw is a paid collection of databases maintained by Thomson Media, the publisher which has recently published several articles and reports by Russell Ruggiero and Rex Brooks.

http://web2.westlaw.com/signon/default.wl?bhcp=1

Sylvia also mentioned that building or finding a cross-disciplinary thesaurus for Mediation would be a wise decision to take.

James and Sylvia both noted that the Mediation Charter and Mission Statement needed to make it clear that this effort is aimed at individuals as well as groups and organizations.

Russell reported that he had made arrangements to attend the first day of the Federal Office Supply Exposition, FOSE, where the "Emerging Components Third Quarterly Conference is being held simultaneously. He will be attending the morning session: "Scanning Small Business Innovations: A New Source for Breakthrough eGovernment Performance." It should be noted that Christopher Lakey's firm, Image Matters, which will be working with us on SBIR/STTR Grant Proposals, will be making a presentation on the second day. This conference is part of the overall set of such initiatives which we have targetted and to which we made our presentation at the EA Collaboration Expedition Workshop #30 in December. So this effort works with the ongoing eGov TC effort.

Roger Alexander, who recently apprised us of the upgrade of the University of Texas' " 'Limited-Access Logic' Algernon" rules-based inference engine to include the ability to work with W3C OWL constructs as expressed in Stanford Medical Informatics' Prot�g� application, reported that he is teaming up with Sylvia on her work, while attending to his own efforts at Grant Proposal writing, and preparing papers.

New member John Sarazen reported that he is working with Russell, and with Rex, on the intersection of his work with Level 8's Cicero call-center desktop application integration software suite and VXML with particular emphasis on looking at the possibility of developing an telephonic input application to the Common Alerting Protocol Rex is working on in the Emergency Management TC applied in a WSRP Portal-Portlet environment during an emergency scenario.

John noted that he had managed Speech Processing research at Bell Labs in New Jersey in the 1980s and 1990s.

http://act-r.psy.cmu.edu/

"Welcome to ACT-R

ACT-R is a cognitive architecture: a theory for simulating and understanding human cognition. Researchers working on ACT-R strive to understand how people organize knowledge and produce intelligent behavior. As the research continues, ACT-R evolves ever closer into a system which can perform the full range of human cognitive tasks: capturing in great detail the way we perceive, think about, and act on the world. ..."

This coincides with both Sylvia's interest in Cognitive Studies, and Carnegie Mellon University's former OZ Project as well as with its current program using CSTR's Festival Speech Synthesis System. So, it seems likely that this program is what she was referring to in what the writer heard and noted as "ACT argument."

There is also a note at the end of the meeting referring to a Mocrosoft v. ATT case over Codec 508, for which the only English language reference found was:

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:wlgN_La__JQJ:www-mobile.ecs.soton.ac.uk/books/voice-book-sample-chaps.pdf+%22Codec+508%22&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

This refers to a mobile wireless video/audio codec using for handheld PDAs and is no doubt linked to the topic of developing pilot programs or proofs of concept for the combined demonstrations the writer, Rex, anticipates working on with John for on-scene updates to CAP alert messages that simultaneously can be used for Incident Command System uses.

Rob Nixon reported that he will be attending a game conference in San Jose and that there may be opportunities as have been discussed in the recent past for incorporating his work in both cognition and automated behavior generation.

Rex apologizes for the somewhat disjoint nature of these last couple of entries, with the note that once our subcommittees are more firmly established, our TC meetings are likely to evolve in shorter sessions for reports from these subcommittees, whose own meetings will be the venues where more substantive work is done.

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