TC Meeting Minutes 07-28-04

Here are the minutes for this month's meeting:

July 27, 2004

Teleconference meeting of the OASIS HumanMarkup Technical Committee.

Dial in toll free: 877 950 6921
outside of USA toll: 1 203 277 0324

Roll Call:
Voting Members:

Rex Brooks
Ranjeeth Kumar Thunga
Russell Ruggiero
James Landrum III
Sylvia Candelaria de Ram

Minutes taken by TC Secretary Rex Brooks

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

Minutes of previous meeting accepted.

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

We had a quorum. As a result, decisions indicated in these minutes are approved.

We began by taking reports, starting with Rex's report that the Mediation SC had not yet been set up by OASIS, and that he would follow up. This led into a report that the Mediation SC through its effort to create a Human Profile and Preferences ML and resource base will help in recruiting new members from corporate OASIS membership through a working example of how user profiles and user preferences can contribute to the appeal of applications in general and portals in particular in the demonstration portal he will build for his upcoming XML 2004 paper, presentation and demonstration titled, CAP and WSRP, Connecting the Dots. Specifically, HPPML will fit into userProfiles and userCategories in the WSRP Portal.

Likewise, the Medical Symptomology and Treatment Portlet contained within the demonstration of the portal will be used to promote HPCDML and will specifically be posted to the Web 3D Medical Working Group seeking participation.

Sylvia noted that Python has several projects which are open source portal building applications or application suites and suggested that such open source tools could or should be mentioned in the paper and presentation, with which Rex concurred.

James added that the previous request to update progress on the efforts to produce an open source or openly available Xj3D viewer that is capable of being imported with other functional units for use with a portal website, for instance, were proceeding in the NDSU Archeology Technologies Laboratory based on DANA-WH and is expected to be available in late fall.

Rex then reported that one of the components in the XML 2004, specifically the contribution of Level 8 Systems is in doubt, (due to financial difficulties it was later discovered in the course of the meeting).

This was more than offset by the report that Rex had received the Enterprise Corporate Portal Development suite from Plumtree Software, Inc. which will allow him to build the central hub of the XML 2004 paper, presentation and demonstration.

Ranjeeth and Russell reported on the results of the June 23, 2004 Collaboration Expedition Workshop which Russell attended, and from which two opportunities presented by co-host Brand Niemann, EPA, arose.

The first of these opportunities was an invitation to attend the July 7, 2004 "Swing for the Fences" event hosted by the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds, NASVF at the University of Maryland. Ranjeeth attended this event, even though it required a fee. While it turned out not to be the kind of networking opportunity we thought it was, it had some value in terms of its workshop on "Angel" investors and how to successfully approach them. Asked what an "Angel" investor refers to, Ranjeeth explained that these investors are approached first in raising capital, because they function to "identify" early-ROI investment opportunities, e.g. investments considered likely to return a profit quickly. Evidently, Angels serve as a sort of pre-qualifying gateway to full first round investors. In essence, convincing an Angel demonstrates excellent longer term ROI for more conservative venture capital investments. Hence the term, "Seed" in the organization's title. While their explanatory material included Non-Profits as among their audience, this workshop was aimed Cash-Out investors looking for a quick turnaround and those seeking such investors. However, the upshot, that capital raisers need to have two end-users willing to vouch for an intention to purchase the eventual product or service to be developed, is good to know for those of us who will develop products and services as a result of our work.

The second opportunity, an invitation for Rex to present a short demonstration of WSRP and lead one of the breakout teams during the Aug. 17, 2004 Collaboration Expedition Workshop is being pursued. Funding for the travel and accommodations are still being sought at the time of this report. An early effort to engage Oracle Corporation to develop and present an early version of the Medical Portlet mentioned previously did not fit within the schedule and priorities of the 10g Application Server Development Team, whose Director met with Rex and OASIS Healthcare Industry Consultant Brett Trusko in early July. However, Rex indicated that he could conduct the demonstration remotely, if travel funding is not found.

Rex concluded his reports saying that Humanmarkup.org, Inc. had joined OASIS and would provide email accounts for those members who need it or are willing.

James reported that his team's ITR Proposal to NSF was declined with the explanation that while considered worthy, did not exceed the priority of the competing proposals. Apparently the priority of cultural heritage is the effective selector in this field.

James reported that his team had resubmitted the joint Osteological Knowledge Base Proposal with ASU for the second round. Their proposal included Letters of Support from Humanmarkup.org, Inc., the Web 3D Medical Working Group chair, the Digital Anatomist Foundation Model Project Head and others. It will be six months before a decision is made and announced.

James also informed us that he is continuing work on his own, regardless of funding on the backend schema for a proof of concept of the Primate/Hominid taxonomical model, aiming to have a demonstration version running by September. It will be based on an XML-SQL database.

James, and Aaron Bergstron of his team, have joined the Web 3D Consortium to support their participaton in the Web 3D Medical Working Group and he described the activities of the med working group as it relates to HPCDML and his team's work with Yumetech to develop an X3D-based Xj3D import/export converter for standard DICOM image files from CAT and MRI scans and X-Rays.

The ontological aspect of that work along with Primate/Hominid Taxonomy prompted Sylvia to report that in the course of returning to her work after lingering illness, she had indentified a resource that could be valuable in this arena, a Python Ontological Plug-In for Protégé.

Russell reported on the June 23 Collaboration Expedition Workshop and the results of his participation in it. The workshop itself involved breaking into teams to explore aspects: "Organizing Around Networked Communities of Practice to Improve the Dialogue between Government and Citizens to Deliver More Citizen-Centric Services...."

To paraphrase his report, this "team" process approach to conducting successful collaborations relates directly to the goals of HumanMarkup and our inclusion in it demonstrates that our efforts are beginning to show tangible results, as evidenced by our recent invitation to the Aug. 17 workshop based on our ongoing participation and our presentation last December.

We adjourned at 1:10 p.m. Eastern Time.

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