meetings?

[Bill Duncan]

Hey everyone. I noticed we haven't met in a while. Or at least I don't have a meeting on my calendar. 

Are we still meeting?

Bill

[Sebastian Duesing]

I think the calendar invite stopped repeating after the last meeting in 2025, and AFAIK there hasn't been a call since then. I think it'd be good to get the RO calls rolling again, but I'd rather not be the one to organize. Based on the previous schedule, I think the next call date would be May 18.

Best,

Sebastian

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[Bill Duncan]

Hi Jorrit and Sebastian,

I was holding off responding to see if more were interested. Unfortunately, there were not more responses. I am not sure how much community interest there is.

So, let's give it a few more days for others to weigh in.

Community: If you are still interested in having RO meetings, please respond.

Re May 18: I can't meet that day. Perhaps we can set up a meeting between the three of us on a different day.

Best. Bill

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[Chris Mungall]

Hi Bill,

What do you think are the high priority items to tackle? Is this to work through outstanding issues on the tracker? Or just to meet for the sake of meeting?

I think part of the challenge here stems from the early decision to include lots of highly domain specific relations in one ontology; see:

https://oborel.github.io/obo-relations/modules/

While practical in some ways, this leads to issues with meetings. In the past, when I attended RO meetings, it is mostly generalist ontologists discussing an issue in a specific domain without the experts present. This leads to frustration with PRs not being merged etc.

Here is what I have always advocated for, but I don't see it reflected in the online docs. Insofar as RO is cross-domain and deep, there needs to be governance mechanisms set up such that certain branches of the ontology are governed by a particular specialist group. That group should have their own rules for who merges PRs, etc, so long as the change localized to their branch. That group can and should decide when to have regular or ad-hoc meetings, no need to bring in the wider group. These groups would be welcome to use to RO time slot for convenience, but it would be clear who needs to attend each meeting.

The core RO group would meet to discuss pan-domain relations, anything to do with COB (though this might be better done on COB calls), and would be available to answer technical questions from the domain groups.

I would be happy to join a one time call to finalize and document these governance procedures. I'm also happy to join to discuss technical questions.

I people do have immediate technical questions or ad-hoc things to discuss, we also have the slack channel, this can be much better if people need immediate responses.

Another potential topic is the long abandoned RO paper. Having some targeted calls to finish this up might be productive.

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[Bill Duncan]

Hi Chris,

I hear your concerns about generalists vs domain specific relations. I am quite busy as well and don't want to meet for the sake of meetings. However, I think that if we don't meet at all, then RO will fall into a state in which it is not adequately maintained. I don't know what the happy medium is here, or if one even exists.

Re governance group:

This has been proposed in the past (issue), but was not able to be implemented. It was closed as "not planned".

Happy to meet to see how we could possibly make this work.

Re slack: 

If others are willing to requarily monitor the slack channel and forward it to a (particular) "governance committee" (above), then that would be good. It may be the happy medium we want. 

I don't keep slack open anymore. It was too distracting. But, I do check it once or twice a day. So, a concern/question about RO would eventually come to my attention as well.

Re paper:

Yes! I was working on this and then got pulled away/distracted by other responsibilities. Sorry for dropping the ball ...

I am willing to restart my efforts. It would be good to have a second person to work with on it, though.

Bill

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[Damion Dooley]

Just to say I’m happy to attend a monthly RO core type call.

I also have a stake in testing and implementing a few QQV relations within the COB context, the last piece in getting a unified graph view possible, IMHO.

Damion

[Darren A Natale]

I too am willing to meet on whatever basis, even regularly as we have been. 

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[Jorrit Poelen]

Hey y'all RO-ers,

Yes, generalist and specialist interest appear to be different, and I've noticed this during the meeting I've attended. 

I like the idea to figure out a way to maintain both the general structure of RO (generalists) and curate their minutia and shortcuts (domain specific). From my (naive?) perspective, I am assuming that RO is pretty mature and the general structure is not expected to change too much. Also, I imagine that ontologies like GO (a user of RO) has more generalist in it. Is there a way to combine efforts? The RO dedicated meeting can then focus on discussion pull requests and/or assisting those preparing one.

I am sure other on this thread have experience in this kind of organizational structure stuff, so I am curious to hear thoughts on how to keep RO around for a little longer. 

-jorrit

PS Not sure how I could contribute to an RO paper, but happy to try. One thing I had in mind is to share my perspective from the GloBI use of RO and how GloBI use drove some of the introduction of new (short cut) terms (e.g., arbuscular mycorrhizal host of http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/RO_0002806). 

[Jorrit Poelen]

Hey y'all RO-ers - 

As an RO user, I am happy to contribute where I can, just like I've done in the past. I do recognize the generalist vs. specialist split from previous meetings I've attended over the year. Is there a way to combine more generalist meetings (e.g., GO?) to include the maintenance of the (infra)structure of RO (e.g, core terms, releases)? This would allow for the monthly RO meeting to help assist and discuss specialist RO requests. 

Happy to contribute to a paper . One way I can contribute is to share my experience in using RO for over 10 years in GloBI context.

In my mind, the first order of business would be to send out a renewal for the RO meetings, and put the organization topic on the agenda before addressing anything else. Who did this last time? Naomi? 

-jorrit

On Tuesday, April 28, 2026 at 10:29:16 AM UTC-5 Darren Natale wrote:

[Bill Duncan]

Hi All. I haven't forgotten about this. I just had a busy week and I am leaving for vacation in a few days. 

I'll be back from vacation in June. How does everyone's June schedule look?

Best,

Bill

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[Sebastian Duesing]

I'd be happy to meet in June. If we want to keep to the previous schedule (where the RO call was 2 weeks offset from the COB call), I think that would put us at June 15th for a meeting date. Would that work for you, Bill?

Best,

Sebastian

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[Damion Dooley]

Sounds good to me too!

d.

[Jorrit Poelen]

Monday June 15th works for me also! Thanks for your initiative. 

[Bill Duncan]

June 15th, 11am EDT, is fine with me too.

Sebastian: Do you want to set up the invite?

Bill

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[Sebastian Duesing]

Sure, I'll set up the invite, as long as someone other than me will chair that call on the 15th. :)

I'll send it out shortly. I'll use the same Zoom link from the original invite.

-- Sebastian

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