Aldo de Moor

Mar

2008

Ontology Management book

M. Hepp, P. De Leenheer, A. de Moor, Y. Sure, eds. (2008). Ontology Management: Semantic Web, Semantic Web Services, and Business Applications, Semantic Web and Beyond: Computing for Human Experience series, Springer Verlag, Berlin, ISBN 978-0-387-69899-1

has just been published. It contains a set of state-of-the-art chapters of ontology management. An interesting observation is that concepts like evolution and communities are starting to be seen as core elements of successful ontology management. The very formal and informal semantic worlds are finally starting to meet.

Besides having been a co-editor, I have also been a co-author of one of the book chapters:

S. Christiaens, P. De Leenheer, A. de Moor, and R. Meersman (2008). Ontologising Competencies in an Interorganisational Setting. In M.… Read more...

Mar

2008

Welcome to the Making CommunitySense blog

Since 2004, I have been musing about the “theory and practice on evolving virtual communities” on my GrowingPains blog. Having moved out of academia I started my own company, CommunitySense in 2007. There were many reasons for this small step for mankind, giant step for me. I have now been in business for a while, and feel the need for a new blog, in which I will share the more detailed, technical, some might say boring bits and pieces of the blood, sweat and tears of making online communities really work. Whereas with GrowingPains I try to paint the bigger “what” picture, through this Making CommunitySense blog I hope to share more of the “how to-s” of making people collaborate through the Internet successfully.… Read more...

Feb

2008

What is the Pragmatic Web?

The Pragmatic Web is still in its infancy, as are the explanations about what it is or could become. Here is one of my recent takes on the matter trying to answer some questions by Paola di Maio on the Pragmatic Web mailing list.

——– Original Message ——–
Subject: Re: [PragmaticWeb] following on
Date: Thu, 14 Feb 2008 10:31:54 +0100
From: Aldo de Moor <ademoor@communitysense.nl>
To: pragmaticweb@listserv.uni-hohenheim.de
References:<c09b00eb0802140033q39df5efek8ec3873b28207ba@mail.gmail.com>

Hi Paola,

paola.dimaio@gmail.com wrote, on 14-2-2008 9:33:

> – to fill such a gap, a new paradigm shift is now emerging called
> ‘pragmatic web’ designed primarily to support and automate the
> human-human web based knowlege exchange, particular emphasis is being
> place on – rule based reasoning and intelligent applications based on
> NL

To me, the PW is basically about context and purpose: making web applications more context-aware and serving purposes of (their communities of) use.… Read more...

Jul

2007

Symposium “You Can Do So Much More with a Second Life…”

Second Life is hot. Just having attended the Interdisciplinary Second Life Workshop at the University of Twente, on June 21 another workshop on this themewas organized at Tilburg University by TILT (Tilburg Institute for Law, Technology, and Society), together with ECP.NL, a national platform which tries to improve the Dutch international competitive position with respect to the information society and economy. Although many of the issues were related, the focus was slightly different. The symposion was in Dutch, but the (sometimes translated) titles of the presentations should give a good idea what this was all about:

Barend Raaff (DNB Media): Guided Tour through Second Life
Arno Lodder (Free University Amsterdam): Best of Both Worlds: Physical Characteristics in an Electronic Environment – About Education and Conflict Resolution in Virtual Three-Dimensional Worlds
Jacob van Kokswijk (University of Twente): Virtuality and Interreality
Kees Stuurman (TILT): Rules of the Game or Rules of Law?

Jun

2007

Interdisciplinary Second Life Workshop 2007

On June 14, I was at the University of Twente in Enschede to attend the Interdisciplinary Second Life Workshop. It was organized by the new inter-facultary Center for Information Technology and Society (CITS), part of the Centre for Telematics and Information Technology.

The workshop was very well-attended and lively. The speakers gave a good overview of the main promises and problems surrounding Second Life. The workshop was preceded by an inspiring keynote address by Peter Ludlow, well-known as editor of High Noon on the Electronic Frontier and founder of the Second Life Herald newspaper.

The titles of the presentations give some idea of the kind of issues addressed:

Peter Ludlow (Uni Michigan): Emergent Gameplay, Deviant Ageplay, and the Elusive Payday of Business in Second Life
Dan Seamans (Open Uni, UK): The Vital SPark: Managing a Dynamic Learning Space in Teen Second Life
Patrick Ozer and Albert van Breemen (Philips Research, the Netherlands): Interreality Communication: iCat Meets Second Life
Robert Slagter and Wil Jansen (Telematica Instituut, the Netherlands): Real Business in Virtual Worlds
David Nieborg (Uni Amsterdam): ‘Don’t Sponsor a Game that is a Playground for Criminals!’

Jun

2007

Efficient Task Management

Efficient task management is an essential component of community workflow management, all the more as standardized organizational structures and procedures for coordinating activities are often lacking in collaborative communities. Before starting with group task management, first the task management for individuals (“to do lists”) needs to be taken care of. Countless task management tools, planner web sites, Personal Information Managers etc. are available. However, task management tool support is not enough. Efficient task management requires some form of task management methodology.

Having tried many approaches, I finally chose David Allen’s Getting Things Done methodology. It offers the right mix of comprehensive, yet flexible procedures for collecting, processing, organizing, reviewing, and using to do-items.

As to the tools that best support this methodology, I have settled down on the following two, MonkeyGTD and Remember The Milk.… Read more...

May

2007

Schomer Simpson’s Talk at the 1st Second Life (Inworld) Conference

Below the gallery that contains the pictures taken by Al Mohr (Second Life) / Aldo de Moor (Real Life) of Schomer Simpson ‘s (Second Life) / Peter Twining’s (Real Life) presentation at the Second Life Best Practices in Education International Conference 2007. The topic was “Using Teen Second Life to Explore Visions of Schome (Not School-Not Home-Schome, the Education System for the Information Age)”. As you can see from the pictures, Schomer/Peter’s talk was very well attended. The issues raised were most interesting and he got lots of questions. The Era of Immersive Online Conferences has begun…

Picture gallery

May

2007

Community Lending

An interesting development where web technologies meet real societal needs is the rapidly growing phenomenon ofcommunity lending. Microcredit has been around for longer as a concept to empower poor people and communities by letting them help themselves by creating social systems to provide small loans. These systems help create the trust, do the administration, etc. With the web, however, new socio-technical dimensions are added to the idea. For example, small loans can become global instead of just local in scope, much more background information on debtors can be provided, risks can be reduced by automatically distributing a loan over many lenders and so on.

Some links:

May

2007

1st Second Life International Conference 2007

Everybody interested in Second Life should attend the 1st Second Life International Conference 2007: Best Practices in Teaching, Learning, and Research. Lack of money or travel time are no excuse, since the event will, of course, be held completely in-world. There will be all day events, keynote speakers, and even free bags of goodies from the best SL content creators. So, sign up, and see you on Friday!

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