2023-03-05

There's been a highly gratifying amount of positive feedback and comment on the initial ideas for ontological commoning I wrote up on 2023-02-22. Now is the time to take stock and set out ideas for what we could actually do within the scope of the Ontological Commoning proposal for the CTA Collabathon.

From the start, I have envisaged the eventual goal of this work as being the enabling of better interoperability between projects, tools and platforms that are in tune with the kind of values common to the CTA. In brief, better interoperability allows more specialisation, reduction of duplication and therefore greater reach.

Clearly we can start with interoperability between current or currently planned projects; but beyond this, consider the value of documentation to guide future interoperability. This could be both the principles and generalised guidelines, and also the examples of case studies.

How are we going to progress towards this? Here are my current thoughts.

1. There are already conversations evolving around ontology in general and methodology for ontology in particular. Let's encourage these, and at suitable moments document what seem to be the agreeable outcomes. They can be worked into the next action.
2. Invite, manage and curate the creation of the longer paper, What is Ontological Commoning. This needs actively reaching out for potential co-authors; agreeing who will contribute what; and editing it all. The emergent paper will express an evolving view of the methodology that is under development.
3. Also relating to the first action, I suggested in the proposal that we make contact with any of the other CTA Collabathon projects that have an interoperability aspect. I see this as most likely to be focused around Murmurations (web site; proposal), because it has already been in development for some time.
4. Perhaps the simplest, but also the most important action, is to set up a time for ongoing communication. Out of this, other actions can emerge. I'll explore this now.