OOSSI Follow-on

Here's what's up with OOSSI:

1) We will submit to EOS this week a meeting report for the semantic interoperability workshops. We are aiming for 300 to 500 words, summarizing the workshop results; not sure if they'll publish it though.

2) To EOS, we will propose to submit an overview on Applying Ontologies to Earth Science, which would be targeted at scientists and their data technologists. (Possibly this article can run side-by-side with the Semantic Interoperability workshop report submitted separately.)   This is proposed as part of the eGY Spotlight series.  We suggest approximately 1200 words to cover this breadth.
  The article will explain in lay terms what the Earth science community should expect from semantic technologies, including ontologies, and when those capabilities might become more widely available. The article will provide a necessary introduction and perspective, which so far other articles and presentations have failed to convey. It will build up quickly from basic concepts and give the target audience enough of a basic framework to assess whether, when, and how they want to invest in these technology approaches.
  Specific topics we will address include:
  - basic best semantic practices for describing their data and products and why they are important
  - what are ontologies, how they compare to vocabularies, and how to create, store, and access them
  - a brief overview of some oft-mentioned basic standards
  - currently deployed semantic applications in Earth science,
  - a progression of adoption/application of semantic technologies, from simple to sophisticated, that let scientists ease into the process

Note that we will need breakout reports from every group who was following their own path for the workshop.  Carlos has created a very nice template for breakout reports, which are now being produced. We will edit down this content a lot for our EOS report, and will edit it some for the final report.

You will see more activity following up on the workshop and the repository in coming weeks.  we'll be continuing to improve things steadily over the next year, plus we just finished a proposal submission to NSF (about 2 weeks ago) to expand this work.  So please keep in touch with your thoughts and needs.