Human Factors in Semantics

Knowledge of each other is knowledge for the machines

about previous workshops PwM2 contact

The 2nd Playing with Meanings (PwM) Workshop

will be held at JOWO 2025 Episode XI: The Sicilian Summer under the Etna, co-located with the 15th International Conference On Formal Ontology in Information Systems FOIS 2025, September 8-12, 2025 in Catania, Italy.

This year we will have a full day workshop, introducing a range of new and improved #ontologygames and group modelling activities. PwM is a fully interactive workshop, which requires no paper submission or acceptance, we only ask that you sign up in advance so that we can prepare sufficient materials for the official workshop sessions. PwM offers a chance to test and evaluate our Interaction Design, Game and Play methods for ontology learning and development, and will be divided into two morning and two afternoon sessions, each introducing a different game and activity. All attendees are welcome to sign up for these sessions and join us for unique and lively discussions, which are the main purpose of our games, which we frame as "discursive artefacts". For those attendees who have co-occurrent sessions, the PwM workshop venue will be open and games available to play throughout the day, during lunch and coffee breaks.

The full range of #ontologygames we will play this year is yet to be determined, yet will include our newest offering "Particular Universes" , our two-level Basic Formal Ontology (BFO) game, which first introduces BFO classifications, then plays with BFO relations between cats, dogs, mummies, donuts, stars and black holes. We will also introduce a new version of a game played at PwM1 exploring future risks, adaptation and mitigation responses concerning risks posed by climate change, social, political, technical and sustainability issues.

The goals of this work shop are to (i) reflect on the challenges of learning and applying ontological notions, (i) introduce the notions of game, play and participatory sense-making, (iii) engage hands-on with a series of ontology-driven games and activities (iv) and experiment with ontology-based tangible artefacts as participatory research tools.

More information on the time and place will soon be forthcoming.

PwM2promo