1. Communities and standards Hugo Besemer “Bircim.net”

2. Two cultures? Snow’s world (1959) Literary intellectuals Scientists In our little world Knowledge managers Techies

3. Exchange standards as a community process Communities like (I)DML The Agricultural sector (Agstandards / AgMES / AOS / AgCo) Open Knowledge Network (OKN)

4. IDML = International Development Markup Languange Started 1998 Purpose: investigate use of XML in development community Education project> Angola Worldbank USAID Education project Angola Worldbank USAID

5. IDML - what happened E-community created DTD for project information By Bellanet, based on CEFDA Face-to-face meetings Proof of concept demos

6. “The proof of concept”

7. “laid the basis for AIDA Varying sources => “who, what, where rather than aggregate statistics

8. IDML - problems Development community does not “own” a problem like: how to encode mathematical or chemical formulae Initiatives attracted technofiles rather than information service managers e-discussion did not set an agenda Unclear who owned the initiative

9. IDML - results Increased awareness of opportunities Catalyst for other initiatives (AIDA, Eland) mailing list kept growing

10. What IDML did not achieve Create a home for standards in the community Go beyond markup (vocabularies, services)

11. Initiatives in the agricultural sector (Agstandards, AgMES, AOS, AgCo) Started in 2000 when everybody was aware XML would come… Only service managers invited A number of general standards were arising (e.g. Dublin Core) So what can a community do?

12. AgMES (Agricultural metadata set)

13. AgMES: namespaces and application profiles The Agricultural Metadata Element Set Project (AgMES) AgMES Project AgMES FAO, Rome (Italy). Library and Documentation Systems Div.

14. Need to map vocabularies: Agricultual Ontology Service

15. What was different than IDML, and did it work in the Ag community? Real stakeholders (server owners) got involved One organisation felt responsible for process Communities have been formed Vocabulary issues have been addressed but… It is only a first step Standards do not have a “home”

16. AgCo = Coherence in International Agricultural Information Systems June 2003 (on invitation from DfID) Trail: coherence donor interventions Trail: collaboration and exchange between services

17. AgCo: services trail Clearinghouse for vocabularies Clearinghouse for markup Several services wanted to investigate Webservices SOAP => envelopes for exchanges between systems WSDL = Webservices Definition Language UDDI => registry of trusted services (clearinghouse!)

18. OKN = Open Knowledge Network Local content creation at public access points in the South Extension of WWW where there is no permanent connection Driven by meta-data and standards Standards not created by community Standards create conditions for community

19. OKN meta-data Standardisation on different levels than IDML / AgCo Should there be okn:// instead of http:// Important to know where meta- data comes from => RDF = Resource Description Framework Triplets of Resource => Propertytype =>Property

20. Example OKN Metadata Expressed in RDF ]> <rdf:RDF xmlns:rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" xmlns:okn="http://openknowledge.net/2003/06/core#" xmlns:ags="http://www.fao.org/agris/agmes"> R. Mangalakshmi J. Mangalakshmi Herbal treatment for sprain

21. kshkljsh kljhdkjds ljhsds tam An indigenous treatment from a traditional healer in Pondicherry in South India, for sprain on any part of the body, using a widely available plant called, Erukkan chedi 2002-02- 21T12:00:00+01:00 2002-02- 22T12:00:00+01:00 2002-02-28T12:00:00+01:00 text/xml 1000 <dcterms:audience

22. rdf:resource="&okn;audienceTypes#farmers"/>

23. General remarks These are supply driven processes They create conditions for new demand- driven services These are technology-driven processes Spontaneous (e)-communities are not good at institutional tasks Standards do not develop easily in a vacuum, better in a co-operative service