Highlights between April and July 2016

The Ontology Summit 2016 has been ongoing since February and is concerned with the theme "Framing the Conversation: Ontologies within Semantic Interoperability Ecosystems". It will culminate in the Summit Symposium in Arlington, Virgina, USA on May 9-10.

After its last edition in 2014, IAOA's flagship conference Formal Ontology in Information Systems, FOIS 2016, will be held in Annecy, France during July 6-9, co-located with the International Conference on Conceptual Structures, ICCS 2016, July 4-7. FOIS 2016

• comes with a novel Demonstrations Track,
• hosts an Early Career Symposium  and
• a Formal Ontology Competition  as well as
• the Joint Ontology WOrkshops, JOWO 2016, constituted by five thrilling workshops.

During the week before FOIS, IAOA's 3rd Interdisciplinary School on Applied Ontology, ISAO 2016, is organized in Bozen-Bolzano, Italy on June 27-July 1. A limited number of participants may look forward to a broad program presented by world-class experts.

Some events concern matters of more internal nature. IAOA continuously pursues its relocation to Switzerland. The founding act of a Swiss Association is planned for April or May 2016. In this connection, membership registration and renewal had been suspended, but is available again, such that Members are kindly asked to

renew their membership for the remainder of 2016 within April, please.

Likewise in April, the 1st 2016 IAOA Assembly requests the approval of the 2015 Financial Statement and announces the 2016 Budget. If you are an IAOA Member, please cast your vote in the corresponding ballot!

2015 Election of Executive Council Members

The second 2015 IAOA Virtual Assembly is being held in September and October in order to elect new members for the Association's Executive Council (EC). The current terms of Marion Haemmerli, Janna Hastings, Oliver Kutz, Frank Loebe, Fabian Neuhaus and Leo Obrst will come to an end at the end of 2015, those of João Paulo Almeida, Roberta Ferrario and Michael Gruninger last until December 2016.

In order to maintain nine EC members, six positions need to be filled. The election of new or continuing councilors proceeds in three main phases:

• Sep 15 - Sep 30: Candidature phase
• Oct 01 - Oct 20: Campaigning phase
• Oct 21 -  Oct 27: Virtual Assembly eBallot

Details are provided on the election wiki page, and members find the corresponding announcement by the President via the membership mailing list [iaoa-member].

All IAOA members are kindly invited to participate in the election. Please engage in candidate nominations in September. In the actual ballot, a quorum of 50%+1 of the membership is to be met. Thus each IAOA member is asked to log in to the Member's Area during October 21-27, to proceed via Utilities to the personal voting page and to cast your vote, please!

1st 2015 Assembly on finances and 2015 Events

The first 2015 IAOA Assembly is being held in April in order to discuss the 2014 Financial Statement and the 2015 Budget. Moreover, a ballot during April 09-15 is part of the Assembly and is legally required in order to approve the 2014 Financial Statement. Details can be found on the ballot wiki page and members find the corresponding announcement by the President via the membership mailing list [iaoa-member].

Accordingly, these days all IAOA members are addressed and kindly invited to review and discuss the documents. In the ballot we need to meet the quorum of 50%+1 of the membership. If you are an IAOA member: please log in to the Member's Area, proceed via Utilities to the personal voting page and please cast your vote!

The Ontology Summit 2015 on the theme "Internet of Things: Toward Smart Networked Systems and Societies" culminates in the Summit Symposium on April 13-14 in Arlington, Virginia, USA. As in previous editions, a communique is developed during the Summit and will be adopted at its Symposium.

Further IAOA co-organized events in 2015:

• IAOA Summer Institute, co-organized together with the Vespucci Initiative in Bar Harbor, Maine, USA, June 21-27
• FOMI - 7th Workshop on Formal Ontologies meet Industry, associated with RuleML, in Berlin, Germany, August 5

IAOA Supported Events in 2015:

• ICBO - International Conference on Biomedical Ontology
  in Lisbon, Portugal, July 27-30.
• JOWO - Joint Ontology Workshops at the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, July 25-31, where Episode 1: The Argentine Winter of Ontology comprises 
• WoMO - Workshop on Modular Ontologies
• FOfAI - Formal Ontologies for Artificial Intelligence
• Ontologies and logic programming for query answering
• Workshop on Belief Change and Non Monotonic Reasoning in Ontologies and Databases