Bill Mandrick at the Ontology Summit
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Ken Baclawski
May 24, 2026, 10:27:38 PM (7 days ago) May 24
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We are very pleased to announce that the next Ontology Summit session on Wednesday 27 May 2026 will feature
Bill Mandrick
who will present
Ontology Engineering 101 - From Expert Knowledge to Ontological Models
As usual, all summit sessions are zoom sessions on Wednesdays at Noon US/Canada Eastern Time and each session lasts one hour. The summit is open to the public and no registration is necessary. All summit sessions are recorded and are available on the summit web pages and on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.
The session page is: https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_05_27
Zoom information:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86994661673?pwd=mMUeaWyWhBMSzTw3SgH5GjMv2Qx4rH.1
Meeting ID: 869 9466 1673
Passcode: 803090
Abstract: Ontology engineering is a technical field, but at its core it begins with a familiar philosophical task of making distinctions clear. Organizations routinely depend on data whose meaning is only partly understood. Ontology engineering provides a disciplined method for moving from informal expert language to reusable, inspectable, machine-checkable representations. In this talk, Bill Mandrick will present an overview of the weekly Ontology 101 series, 6-week cycles focused on developing foundational ontology skills with hands-on practice. The first two weeks involve participants learning how to work with subject matter experts without trying to turn them into ontologists, the goal being to elicit and refine competency questions: clear, testable questions that the ontology should help answer. In the second two weeks, those questions are translated into visual design patterns that expose the relevant entities, relations, roles, processes, and constraints. In the last pair of weeks, the patterns are implemented in OWL using tools such as Protégé, tested with reasoners, and evaluated against the original competency questions. Throughout the aim is not to master ontology engineering in a single session, but to understand the basic rhythm of the work, engage experts, clarify meaning, model the structure, encode the result, test it, and revise.
Bio: Bill Mandrick, Ph.D. is a senior ontologist at CUBRC and retired U.S. Army Colonel whose work has focused on ontology development, OWL/RDF representation, Basic Formal Ontology compliance, and military/intelligence applications of ontology. Dr. Mandrick is a long-time contributor to early military ontology work and to NCOR/CUBRC best-practices work in ontology development. He also co-authored work with Barry Smith on the philosophical foundations of intelligence collection and analysis, including the role of BFO and the Common Core Ontologies in semantic interoperability for intelligence systems. Dr. Mandrick is the chair of the rather successful "Ontology 101” weekly working group, sponsored by NCOR.
We had a very well attended session on 20 May 2026 during which John Beverley presented Ontology Engineering Tradecraft. If you were unable to attend, be sure to check out the videos on the session page at https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_05_20 or on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.
Ken Baclawski
Chair, Ontology Summit 2026
Bill Mandrick
who will present
Ontology Engineering 101 - From Expert Knowledge to Ontological Models
As usual, all summit sessions are zoom sessions on Wednesdays at Noon US/Canada Eastern Time and each session lasts one hour. The summit is open to the public and no registration is necessary. All summit sessions are recorded and are available on the summit web pages and on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.
The session page is: https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_05_27
Zoom information:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/86994661673?pwd=mMUeaWyWhBMSzTw3SgH5GjMv2Qx4rH.1
Meeting ID: 869 9466 1673
Passcode: 803090
Abstract: Ontology engineering is a technical field, but at its core it begins with a familiar philosophical task of making distinctions clear. Organizations routinely depend on data whose meaning is only partly understood. Ontology engineering provides a disciplined method for moving from informal expert language to reusable, inspectable, machine-checkable representations. In this talk, Bill Mandrick will present an overview of the weekly Ontology 101 series, 6-week cycles focused on developing foundational ontology skills with hands-on practice. The first two weeks involve participants learning how to work with subject matter experts without trying to turn them into ontologists, the goal being to elicit and refine competency questions: clear, testable questions that the ontology should help answer. In the second two weeks, those questions are translated into visual design patterns that expose the relevant entities, relations, roles, processes, and constraints. In the last pair of weeks, the patterns are implemented in OWL using tools such as Protégé, tested with reasoners, and evaluated against the original competency questions. Throughout the aim is not to master ontology engineering in a single session, but to understand the basic rhythm of the work, engage experts, clarify meaning, model the structure, encode the result, test it, and revise.
Bio: Bill Mandrick, Ph.D. is a senior ontologist at CUBRC and retired U.S. Army Colonel whose work has focused on ontology development, OWL/RDF representation, Basic Formal Ontology compliance, and military/intelligence applications of ontology. Dr. Mandrick is a long-time contributor to early military ontology work and to NCOR/CUBRC best-practices work in ontology development. He also co-authored work with Barry Smith on the philosophical foundations of intelligence collection and analysis, including the role of BFO and the Common Core Ontologies in semantic interoperability for intelligence systems. Dr. Mandrick is the chair of the rather successful "Ontology 101” weekly working group, sponsored by NCOR.
We had a very well attended session on 20 May 2026 during which John Beverley presented Ontology Engineering Tradecraft. If you were unable to attend, be sure to check out the videos on the session page at https://ontologforum.com/index.php/ConferenceCall_2026_05_20 or on the Ontology Summit YouTube channel.
Ken Baclawski
Chair, Ontology Summit 2026
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