[esip-semantictech] Debreif/Outcomes from RDA Meeting

[John Graybeal]

I don’t know if it was just me, but I thought there was an unusual level of semantic activity and interest this RDA. Presenting for a colleague in schema.org BoF, having a BioPortal poster, and helping run the Harmonizing FAIR Descriptions of Observational Data BoF may have biased my perspective considerably.

Even the “How do we improve RDA outputs?” session was looking to define what metadata should be collected for RDA outputs. (And what kind of metadata *isn’t* semantic, really? ;->)  Topic came up again at the Unsession, but I couldn’t stick around for much of that.

If you go to any of the pages for sessions you were interested in (viewable at https://www.rd-alliance.org/rda-13th-plenary-programme), you will almost always find a link at the top for a common set of meeting notes, which often points to slides.

Of all the sessions, the most semantically important may be the BoF organized by Barbara Magagna, who wants to create a Working Group to improve labeling conventions for Observational Data. This is a richly complicated topic, just look at everything referenced in the notes page (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVSUDcglbZmFrRYpcFUmgxSWHvilQdLBALzRI1Ilqxc/edit <https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PVSUDcglbZmFrRYpcFUmgxSWHvilQdLBALzRI1Ilqxc/edit>). An interesting summary of the ‘survey’ filled out by the speakers is at https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f5S7TFaH3M4_caZAoIDpK1Tvqt8DZkUYheCO_1u8k24/edit <https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1f5S7TFaH3M4_caZAoIDpK1Tvqt8DZkUYheCO_1u8k24/edit>.

The other topic I found intriguing was the Schema.org BoF <https://www.rd-alliance.org/bof-using-schemaorg-and-enriched-metadata-enableboost-fairness-research-resources-rda-13th-plenary>, the presentations were good but the discussion was particularly intriguing. It included topics like “How should RDA’s technology-neutrality policy be taken into account in considering schema.org?” We flirted with discussing the risks and benefits of using a moderately bespoke technology, but deferred that topic to another day. On the key question of whether or not the group should become a Working Group, I don’t know that the group clearly determined the answer, though there continued to be strong interest in the approach and a number of participants suggested RDA could contribute far more effectively to schema.org if it worked as a group.

John

> On Apr 5, 2019, at 11:57, Mcgibbney, Lewis J (398M) via esip-semanticweb <esip-semanticweb at lists.esipfed.org> wrote:
> 
> Good Afternoon Folks,
> I took badly ill this week with the flu and only really coming back online today.
> How did things go at RDA? Would anyone like to share experiences or does anyone know of notes which were taken?
> Thanks,
> Lewis

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