FactMiners.org - #MCN2014

Our #MCN2014 Presentation Exploring Metamodel Subgraphs - GraphGist Edition

Jim Salmons — Tue, 30 Dec 2014 18:14:48 +0000

We invite you to view the Neo4j-based "GraphGist Edition" of our recent #MCN2014 presentation about FactMiners and The Softalk Apple Project at the annual conference of the Museum Computer Network.

We again thank the Museum Computer Network Association and PICTION for sponsoring our Emerging Professional scholarship that enabled Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky to attend the conference on behalf of our projects to learn, network with Kindred Spirits, and make our presentation to the museum technology community. The opportunity to attend this excellent conference was phenomenal and will be a source of enthusiasm and inspiration for our continued evolution of our grassroots Citizen Science/History projects.

What is the GraphGist Edition?

In the Open Source developers' world and most notably in the GitHub.com community, a gist is most usually written as a convenient document-based "how-to" or helpful short explanation about a useful snippet of programming code or a programming design or method that can be served in a "live example code" format. Folks interested in Python write Python-based gists, Ruby folks do Rudy-based gists, and so on.

In the Neo4j community, we have an incredible learning/sharing "live document" format called a GraphGist. The Neo Technology documentation team developed this clever server-based technology and documentation format standard to facilitate exploring and sharing ideas and techniques using Neo Technology's Open Source Neo4j graph database.

By writing to this standard and serving your GraphGist through the freely available gist.neo4j.org server, a writer can explore Neo4j's Cypher query language by showing and explaining queries that are then run server-side with the results being dynamically visualized in your browser view of the GraphGist. This document technology is obviously valuable for communicating to others in teaching and explanatory contexts. But GraphGists are also useful as an incredible self-learning and project-design documenting resource.

My #MCN2014 presentation includes a section that summarizes the core ideas of the metamodel subgraph design pattern. The "Where Facts Live" - Exploring the Metamodel Subgraph of a FactMiners Fact Cloud: GraphGist Edition provides a "live document" version of the four Cypher queries that I used to build the basic structure of a metamodel subgraph of Softalk magazine during my #MCN2014 presentation.

For those who may be interested in additional details and a "Hello, World" scale introduction to how a metamodel subgraph can be used for computational analytics as part of an Open Culture cognitive computing platform, see this two-part GraphGist on the metamodel subgraph pattern and this "Rainman/Sherlock" piece exploring the cognitive computing aspects of our project's mission.

Our FactMiners & Softalk Magazine Presentation at #MCN2014

Jim Salmons — Wed, 03 Dec 2014 02:37:42 +0000

We invite you to view the "Lively Talkin' Slide" Edition of our recent presentation about FactMiners and The Softalk Apple Project at #MCN2014, the premiere museum informatics conference. We again thank the Museum Computer Network Association and PICTION for sponsoring our Emerging Professional scholarship that enabled Jim Salmons and Timlynn Babitsky to attend the conference to learn, network with Kindred Spirits, and make our presentation to the museum informatics community. The opportunity for growth of both our projects was phenomenal and will be a source of enthusiasm for our continued evolution of these grassroots Citizen Science/History projects.

FactMiners Jim Awarded Emerging Professional Scholarship to Attend #MCN2014

Jim Salmons — Thu, 02 Oct 2014 23:17:42 +0000

I am beyond happy to announce that I have been awarded an Emerging Professional Scholarship to significantly support our attending and presenting at the prestigious Museum Computer Network 2014 (#MCN2014) annual conference next month in Dallas, Texas. While it is an honor to be recognized (at my age and as an unaffiliated Citizen Scientist/Historian) with this award, it is truly the financial impact of the award that mean so much to me and FactMiners "co-host" (my soulmate/wife) Timlynn Babitsky.

Timlynn and I will be attending and presenting on behalf of FactMiners.org and The Softalk Apple Project, our First Of A Kind "sandbox" for development of the FactMiners' cognitive computing-based social game platform for Libraries, Archives, and Museums (LAMs). You will find our proposals for our 30-minute presentation and demo here. Our demo will be on Demo Day, Friday, November 21st, and our presentation will be one of three in the panel "Shoestrings, Subgraphs, and Sharing: New Design Paradigms for Museums" scheduled for Saturday, November 22nd.

Timlynn has already signed up to be a Conference Volunteer. The Emerging Professional Scholarship is quite generous and significantly appreciated:

one full conference registration
complimentary attendance at ANY of the the pre-conference workshops (these are GREAT and not cheap)
a $400 travel/food stipend!
complimentary hotel room in the conference hotel
complimentary 1-year Emerging Professional membership in the Museum Computer Network! :-)
plus... a Cocktail Meet & Greet for Scholarship Recipients (great networking)

So, yes, we are super-stoked. As an independent, unaffiliated Citizen Science project, this kind of support means everything to us. THANK YOU MCN FOLKS! :D :D We will see y'all in Dallas!!!

FactMiners.org Proposals ACCEPTED for #MCN2014

Jim Salmons — Wed, 30 Apr 2014 22:26:15 +0000

We are EXTREMELY pleased to report that BOTH our proposals have been accepted for presentation at #MCN2014! Here are our two proposals for presentations at this year's Museum Computer Network conference to be held in Dallas in November. And even better, we are so pleased to report that FactMiners' Jim Salmons has been awarded an Emerging Professional Scholarship to attend #MCN2014! We're going to Dallas! :-)

30-Minute Presentation Proposal

30-Minute Presentation: 30-minute presentations are deep explorations into specific concepts, often illustrated with examples and case studies from the field. The presentations are typically 20 minutes, with an additional 10 minutes for audience questions. 30-minute presentations will usually be thematically grouped together with one or more other presentations to create 90-minute sessions. Choose this option if you have a specific concept you would like to explore in depth.

Title: The Embedded Metamodel Subgraph Design Pattern: Its Use in Crowdsourced Social-Gaming LOD Repository Generation at The Softalk Apple Project

Abstract: This 30-Minute Presentation is a companion to our proposal for a 10-Minute Case Study, "The FactMiners Social Game Ecosystem."

The FactMiners ecosystem is a social gaming community supported by the FactMiners Open Source developers community (www.FactMiners.org). Our "serious fun" playgrounds are the OpenCulture/OpenData digital collections of LAM (Library, Archive, and Museum) hosts of FactMiners Fact Clouds.

FactMiners Fact Clouds are LOD (Linked Open Data) repositories constructed through the crowdsourced gameplay of FactMiners players. LAM hosts interested in adding a Fact Cloud to their visitor and researcher resources use the FactMiners Fact Cloud Wizard to create a domain-specific extension of the CIDOC-CRM Conceptual Reference Model (hereafter 'cidcoCRM'). These Wizard-generated cidocCRM-compliant domain-specific metamodel instances guide players' generation of new 'facts' about the LAM host's collection.

FactMiners domain-specific cidocCRM extensions can be used in the more-typical descriptive realm of folksonomy (social-tagging) and Open Culture visitor-contributed stories and interpretation. But our project is particularly focused on taking the Fact Cloud Wizard's generated metamodel semantics into the "inner space" of textual and image symbolic and/or referential meaning -- i.e., what the words mean and what we 'see' in the image.

In this deep-dive presentation, we'll detail the FactMiner's use of the "embedded metamodel subgraph" design pattern as it is being applied in the Neo4j graph database implementation of the "self-descriptive" Fact Cloud LOD repositories. The case study example detailed will be The Softalk Apple Project, the first FactMiners Fact Cloud under development.

The presentation will include detailed examination of the cidocCRM metamodel as expressed in a Neo4j graph database with particular attention paid to domain-specific extension points and lessons learned while developing this project.

This exploration will be done 'in vivo' through interactive exploration of the metamodel and accompanying 'actual' data through a collection of Cypher queries on the Neo4j graph database. A side effect of attending this presentation will be learning about to the Neo4j graph database and its Cypher query language through a relevant and non-trivial example -- a magazine is a remarkably complex cidocCRM artifact, as will be demonstrated by this presentation.

The Softalk magazine digital archive of the STAP project is a unique historical collection consisting of 48 monthly issues (9,300+ pages), published between September 1980 and August 1984, detailing the Dawn of the Microcomputer Revolution which so significantly shaped the world we live in today. The FactMiners Fact Cloud under development will be a qualitatively new and innovative "lens" on this previously unavailable* resource. (* While collectors have sets of physical issues and various collectors have made scans of select issues available on-line, the STAP project is collaborating with the Stanford Digital Repository for archival storage of the complete 48-issue collection in high-resolution page-wise reference images as well as full-issue PDFs, etc.)

At proposal submission deadline (April 30th), the best representative resources demonstrating the work in process are these:

* The first two parts of a 4-part GraphGist design document submitted to (and won 1st place in its category within) the Neo4j GraphGist Domain Model Winter Challenge:

- Part 1 - The 'Hello World' Introduction to the Embedded Metamodel Subgraph Design Pattern
http://gist.neo4j.org/?8640853

- Part 2 - The 'Self-Descriptive' Neo4j Graph Database: Exploring The Softalk Apple Project's FactMiners Fact Cloud Metamodel
http://gist.neo4j.org/?7817558

* Initial activity importing the cidocCRM Conceptual Reference Model into Neo4j graph database for use as a Reference Model within the Fact Cloud Metamodel Wizard (tool generating cidocCRM-compliant domain-specific metamodel instances):

- A Py2Neo Python utility to parse the CIDOC-CRM official text document into a Neo4j graph database
https://github.com/FactMiners/factminers/tree/master/Documents/Reference...

- Work-In-Process GraphGist, initial activity exploring the cidocCRM in Neo4j
http://jexp.github.io/graphgist/?9904584

* Currently in development but not published (on-line)

- A second-edition of Part 2 of the above GraphGist design document is in development that recasts first edition metamodel as a domain specific extension of the cidocCRM.

- A 'next step' enhancement to the Neo4j reference dataset for the cidocCRM. The current dataset consists of the cidocCRM Class Declarations as nodes and CRM Properties as graph Relationships. The next step is to "node-ify" the cidocCRM Property Declarations with respective Domain and Range (Neo4j graph) relationships to the appropriate Class Declarations. This representation, BTW, is both consistent with the textual presentation of the cidocCRM AND the embedded metamodel subgraph design pattern.

If possible and allowed by the Program Committee reviewers, I will update this proposal abstract with additional information as it becomes available before the committee's review, especially links to the not-yet-on-line resources mentioned above and in active short-term development. If proposal abstract updating is not possible, I will update information on this page: www.FactMiners.org/MCN2014

In the proposed 10-minute companion case study, we'll provide an overview of the FactMiners social network ecosystem and the Open Source web services platform supporting this LAM-focused social gaming community.

Reference Links:
www.FactMiners.org
www.SoftalkApple.com
http://gist.neo4j.org/?7817558
http://www.softalkapple.com/blogs/factminers-more-or-less-folksonomy

Theme 1: OpenData/OpenAuthority
Theme 2: Software/Programming Languages
Theme 3: Curatorial/Scientist/Historian

Presenter Biography: Jim Salmons is Founder and lead designer/developer of the FactMiners ecosystem, and Founder and Project Director of The Softalk Apple Project. He is an independent researcher/developer (AKA "citizen scientist/historian") and former Executive Consultant in the Object Technology Practice of IBM Global Services where he was a lead designer/developer of Smalltalk-based "executable business model" technologies -- work which now informs his vision for the FactMiners ecosystem. For more information: http://sohodojo.biz/about/JimSalmons or https://www.linkedin.com/in/jimsalmons

10-Minute Case Study Proposal

10-Minute Case Study: Case studies are demonstrations of specific projects (whether complete or in-progress). Presenters will have 10 minutes to give an overview of the project, and then will have an opportunity to meet with other attendees for deep-dive discussions. Choose this type if you would like to demonstrate a specific unique project you’re working on.

Title: The FactMiners Social Game Ecosystem

Presenter: Jim Salmons (@Jim_Salmons), Founder and Project Director, FactMiners.org

Abstract: This 10-Minute Case Study is a companion to our proposal for a 30-Minute Presentation, "The Embedded Metamodel Subgraph Design Pattern: Its Use in Crowdsourced Social-Gaming LOD Repository Generation at The Softalk Apple Project."

In the proposed 30-minute companion presentation, we'll detail the FactMiner's use of the "embedded metamodel subgraph" design pattern as it is being applied in the Neo4j graph database implementation of the "self-descriptive" Fact Cloud LOD repositories. The case study example detailed in the 30-minute presentation will be The Softalk Apple Project, the first FactMiners Fact Cloud under development.

In this demonstration we will provide an overview of the social network (people and organizations) that make up the FactMiners social game ecosystem, and we'll briefly explain how the FactMiners technical platform supports this ecosystem.

The emphasis will be on describing the role of the FactMiners.org Open Source developers community. In particular, we'll describe our active "itches needing scratching" areas of activity. Our goal in presenting at #MCN2014 is to identify Kindred Spirits interested in joining the FactMiners.org developers community or who want to collaborate with us (or point us to helpful resources) as we pursue our mission of Serious Fun for Everyone.

Reference Links:
www.FactMiners.org
www.SoftalkApple.com
http://gist.neo4j.org/?7817558
http://www.softalkapple.com/blogs/factminers-more-or-less-folksonomy

Theme 1: OpenData/OpenAuthority
Theme 2: Software/Programming Languages
Theme 3: Curatorial/Scientist/Historian