Call for Tutorial Proposals

Fifth International Joint Conference on AUTONOMOUS AGENTS AND MULTIAGENT SYSTEMS (AAMAS 2006)
Future University, Hakodate, Japan, May 8-12, 2006

http://www.fun.ac.jp/aamas2006/

The AAMAS-06 Organising Committee invites proposals for the Tutorial Program, to be held immediately before to the technical conference (May 8-9). AAMAS-06 Tutorials should serve one or more of the following objectives:

• Introduce novices to major topics of AAMAS research.
• Provide instruction in established practices and methodologies.
• Survey a mature area of AAMAS research and/or practice.
• Motivate and explain an AAMAS topic of emerging importance.
• Introduce expert non-specialists to an AAMAS subarea.
• Survey an area of agent research especially relevant for people from industry

Submission Requirements

Proposals should be from two to four pages in length, and should contain the following information:

• A brief description of the tutorial, suitable for inclusion in the conference registration brochure.
• A detailed outline of the tutorial, including preferred length (1/2 or 1 day).
• Characterization of the potential target audience for the tutorial, including prerequisite knowledge.
• A description of why the tutorial topic would be of interest to a substantial part of the AAMAS audience.
• A brief resume of the presenter(s), which should include name, postal address, phone and fax numbers, e-mail address, background in the tutorial area, any available example of work in the area (ideally, a published tutorial-level article on the subject), evidence of teaching experience (including references that address the proposer's presentation skills), and evidence of scholarship in the area.
• The name and e-mail address of the corresponding presenter. The corresponding presenter should be available for e-mail correspondence during the evaluation process, in the case clarifications and discussions on the scope and content of the proposal are needed.

The evaluation of the proposal will take into account its general interest for AAMAS attendees (e.g., a tutorial on object-oriented inheritance will be hardly accepted), the quality of the proposal (e.g., a tutorial that simply lists a set of concepts without any apparent rationale behind them will be judged badly) as well as the expertise and skills of the presenters. We emphasize that the primary criteria for evaluation will be whether a proposal is interesting, well-structured, and motivated, rather than the perceived experience/standing of the proposer.

Those submitting a proposal should keep in mind that tutorials are intended to provide an overview of the field; they should present reasonably well established information in a balanced way. Tutorials should not be used to advocate a single avenue of research, nor should they promote a product.

All proposals should be submitted by electronic mail to the Tutorial Chair, Yves Lesperance (lesperan@cs.yorku.ca), in plain ASCII text, no later than October 23, 2005. Proposers will be notified of the committee's decision no later than November 13, 2005.

The selection of the tutorials to be included in the final AAMAS program will be based upon a number of factors, including: the scientific/technical interest of the topics, the quality of the proposal, the need to avoid strictly overlapping tutorials, and the unavoidable need to limit the overall number of selected tutorials.

Responsibilities of AAMAS and of Tutorial Organizers

For all accepted proposals, AAMAS will be responsible for:

• Providing logistic support and a meeting place for the tutorial.
• Together with the organizers, determining the tutorial date and time.
• Duplicating tutorial material and distributing them to the participants.

Tutorial organizers will be responsible for the following:

• Providing AAMAS with a legible PDF copy of their tutorial notes by the deadline of February 5, 2006.
• Presenting the tutorial at AAMAS-06.

AAMAS reserves the right to cancel any tutorial if the above responsibilities are not fulfilled, if deadlines are missed, or if too few attendees register for the tutorial to support the costs of running the tutorial.

Important Dates

October 23, 2005:

Tutorial Proposal Submission Deadline

November 13, 2005:

Tutorial Acceptance Notifications

February 5, 2006:

Deadline for submitting tutorial materials

May 8 - 9, 2006:

AAMAS-2006 Tutorials

Submissions and Inquiries

Proposals and inquiries should be sent by email (in ASCII) to the tutorials chair:

Yves Lesperance
Dept. of Computer Science & Engineering
York University
Toronto, Canada
lesperan@cs.yorku.c