Outlook on 2014

For 2014, we are eagerly anticipating a wide range of major events. Foremost, we have our flagship conference
Formal Ontology in Information Systems, occurring this year September 22-25 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is the 8th edition in the FOIS conference series and highly promising for the latest ontological research. Up-to-date information is available at the FOIS website.

One week before FOIS, the 2nd Interdisciplinary Summer School on OntologicalAnalysis will also take place in Vitoria, Brazil. Details on the program/courses of the school, venue, accommodation and registration procedures are available at its website.

Starting on January 16, the Ontology Summit 2014 continues towards its Symposium on April 28-29 in Arlington, Virginia, USA. This year's motto is "Big Data and Semantic Web Meet Applied Ontology", which aligns well with the youngest of IAOA's SIGs: since November 2013 the Semantic Web Applied Ontology Special Interest Group (SWAO SIG) is being established, e.g. with the second virtual meeting on February 2.

Further outlook to 2014 and a compact review of 2013 can be found in a post of January 14 in the IAOA blog.

With great sorrow we learned that E. J. (Jonathan) Lowe passed away on January 5th, 2014. His premature departure is a great loss for the worldwide ontology community. 

Newly Elected Executive Council Members

On Oct 4, 2013 the ballot of the annual election of members for the IAOA Executive Council (EC) was closed. There were six vacant positions for the period of office Jan 1, 2014 to Dec 31, 2015.

Congratulations for being (re-)elected go to (in alphabetic order of surnames):

• Marion Haemmerli
• Janna Hastings
• Oliver Kutz
• Frank Loebe
• Fabian Neuhaus
• Leo Obrst

They will join John Bateman, Stefano Borgo and Michael Gruninger in the new EC.

For further information on this EC election, see [1]. A link with more detailed results has been announced to the membership [2].

Many thanks moreover to all candidates and all members who participated!

[1] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IAOA_ExecutiveCouncil_Election_2013
[2] http://ontolog.cim3.net/forum/iaoa-member/2013-10/msg00018.html

Executive Council Election 2013

As initiated in 2012, about half of the members of the IAOA Executive Council (EC) are newly elected each year. In September 2013, this year's EC election is being held in the context of the regular annual, this time fully virtual, IAOA assembly. There are six vacant positions in the EC, for which councillors will be elected (possibly re-elected in some cases) for the period of office Jan 1, 2014 to Dec 31, 2015.

The election proceeds in phases of nomination (Sep 1-15), campaigning (Sep 16-22), and the actual electronic ballot (Sep 23-30).

While the major communication channel for this event is the member's mailing list [1], a public wiki space for the election is provided at [2], as well.

@ IAOA members: Please feel invited to actively engage in every phase of the election, and, of course, please cast your vote and help all of us meet the quorum of half plus one of all members!

[1] iaoa-member@ontolog.cim3.net
[2] http://ontolog.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?IAOA_ExecutiveCouncil_Election_2013