Abstract
Collaborative conceptualisation processes are pervasive to most technical and professional activities, but are seldom addressed explicitly due to the lack of theoretical and practical methods and tools to support it. However, it seems not to be a popular research topic in knowledge representation or its sub-areas such as ontology engineering. Our view is that collaboration between stakeholders for specifying an ontology should be addressed at the conceptual, semi-formal level, in order to foster a collective learning of the domain and reaching agreements about its representation. We developed a method to support conceptual integration based in the conceptual blending theory - ColBlend - and implemented it in a collaborative modelling environment. This "conceptual modelling environment - conceptME" supports teams of specialist and facilitators in eliciting conceptual structures with the help of collaborative model editing and terminology services. Conceptual integration and agreements are achieved through the ColBlend method. This paper overviews ColBlend and ConceptME and describes in detail a test case.

Abstract
A case study involving a new method to support the collaborative construction of semantic artefacts in an inter-organizational context is described. The method aims at being applied, in particular, in the early phases of ontology development. We share the view that the development of semantic artefacts in collaborative networks of organizations should be based on a continuous construction of meaning, rather than pursuing the delivery of highly formalized accounts of domains. For that, our research is directed to the application of cognitive semantics results, specifically by developing and extending the Conceptual Blending Theory to cope with the socio-cognitive aspects of inter-organizational ontology development. An evaluation experiment for this method is accomplished in the scope of a large European project in the area of industrial engineering. The method evaluation and its results are described.

Abstract