SIG KM NEWSLETTER Issue March 2008 Newsletter of the German Special Interest Group on Knowledge Management www.fgwm.de Subscribe or unsubscribe via http://www.fgwm.de Send contributions to: 'bergmann' or 'minor' at 'uni-trier.de' TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. Final Call for Papers: ECCBR'08 Extended deadline: March 17, 2008 2. Final Call for Papers: ProGility'08 Extended deadline: March 17, 2008 3. Call for Papers: Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context (MRC'08), Extended deadline: March 28, 2008 4. Call for Chapter Proposals: Strategies for Knowledge Management Success: Exploring Organizational Efficacy, Deadline: March 31, 2008 5. Second Call for Papers: Sixth German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies (MATES'08), Deadline: April 11 6. Call for Papers: International Workshop on Case-Based Reasoning on Multimedia Data (CBR-MD 2008), Deadline: May 5, 2008 7. Call for Papers: 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC'08), Abstracts due: May 9, 2008 8. jCOLIBRI 2.1 RELEASE. Recommender Systems Extension. (why not use it for the CCC @ ECCBR, see 1.?) 9. Postdoctoral research positions (5-year contracts, CISUC, Portugal), deadline: April 19, 2008 10. Research Assistant (Wiss. Mitarbeiter/in, BAT IIa) (Kassel, Germany) ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... *************************************************************** E X T E N D E D D E A D L I N E : March 17, 2008 9th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning ECCBR 2008 1-4 September 2008, Trier (Germany) http://2008.eccbr.org/ *************************************************************** Due to several requests, we hereby extend the deadline for the submission of papers to ECCBR 2008 until March 17, 2008. If you have already submitted a paper you can also upload an improved version till the extended deadline. Further we are happy to announce that ECCBR 2008 will issue TRAVEL GRANTS for students. Information about the conditions for applications will be shortly available on the ECCBR Web page. With best regards, Ralph Bergmann & Klaus-Dieter Althoff (Programm Co-Chairs) *************************************************************** CALL FOR PAPERS ECCBR 2008 is the 9th European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) following a series of successful European conferences and workshops. This four-day conference will be held at the University of Trier in Germany. The conference programme will include invited talks, oral and poster presentations as well as workshops (see separate calls) on both fundamental and applied research in CBR. Additionally, the Industry Day will focus on industrial-strength technology and industrial applications of CBR. A new element of the ECCBR programme is the Computer Cooking Contest (CCC) intended as a CBR system competition (see separate call) demonstrating the application of case retrieval, adaptation, and combination methods for cooking recipes. Submission Topics The ECCBR 2008 Program Committee invites submissions of original research and application papers on all aspects of Case-Based Reasoning, such as: - Representation, modelling, acquisition, adaptation, maintenance and visualization of cases, similarity measures, ontologies, and other knowledge relevant for CBR - Methods and tools for retrieval, reuse, revision and retention in CBR - Theoretical foundations of CBR - Human Computer Interaction: CBR user interfaces, conversational CBR, personalization user modelling and context, explanation - Distributed CBR including agent architectures, service-oriented architectures or peer-to-peer networks for or involving CBR - Integration of CBR with other methods, such as: rule-based reasoning, ontological reasoning, model-based reasoning, constraint satisfaction problem solving and optimisation, information retrieval, machine learning, natural language processing, etc. - CBR systems for specific tasks such as: planning, scheduling, design, workflow management and process enactment, diagnosis, decision support, classification - Analogical reasoning, cognitive models, creative reasoning, and argumentation approaches based on or related to CBR - Formal, empirical, and psychological evaluations of CBR models, components, and systems - Methodologies and tools to support the development, operation, and maintenance of CBR applications - Applications of CBR, for example in customer support, electronic commerce, pattern recognition, image processing, legal reasoning, education, manufacturing, process control, signal processing, robotics, ambient intelligence - CBR-related areas such as: knowledge and experience management, corporate memories, decision support, information retrieval, instance-based learning, software reuse and engineering redesign In addition to those general aspects, ECCBR 2008 will put a particular focus on two special areas with relevance to CBR. We call for conference submissions as well as workshops related to the following areas: The Role of CBR in the Future Internet (Area Chair: Enric Plaza) ---------------------------------------------------------------- With the Web 2.0 and 3.0 and particularly with the emergence of social networks and social software, there is a new opportunity for CBR to support the sharing and reuse of experience from/for communities of people. Related to this area, the following topics are relevant: - Acquisition, representation and processing of personal experience, opinions, and practical knowledge - Social tagging and folksonomies as representations for CBR - Natural language processing for case extraction from text - Reuse of experience in Wikis, Blogs, RSS-feeds and all kinds of multi-media formats - Emergent semantics from usage of experience in a community of users - Combination of experience from different users or sources (ensemble effect, collaborative recommendation) - CBR in the context of the semantic web and service-oriented architectures CBR in Healthcare (Area Co-Chairs: Isabelle Bichindaritz, Stefania Montani) --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The opportunities for applying CBR in healthcare are significantly increasing during the past years and expand its application beyond traditional medical diagnosis. The following topics are relevant: - Evidence-based medicine and CBR - Medical decision-support systems (partially) using CBR - CBR in point-of-care diagnostics, personalized monitoring, and prediction of adverse events - CBR and knowledge discovery from electronic health records - Case-based processing of medical guidelines - CBR in enabling technologies for those with physical disabilities or chronic health problems - Integration of CBR-based solutions in health care environments - CBR in medical imaging - Theoretical framework for CBR in medical reasoning - Applications of CBR in bioinformatics Submissions ----------- Authors must submit a full paper with a maximum of 15 pages through the ECCBR web site by the paper submission deadline. The details of the submission procedure will be published in time at the ECCBR web site. All accepted papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by Springer Verlag in the Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence series. Review Criteria --------------- Submissions must be identified as either research or application papers and will be reviewed using criteria appropriate to their category. Review criteria for research papers will include scientific significance, originality, technical quality, and clarity. Review criteria for application papers will include practical or economic significance, potential to lead to more powerful technology, technical quality, and clarity. Further, as we aim at highlighting contributions to the special areas amongst the submissions on the above topics, the authors must indicate whether a submission should be considered to one of these areas. Important Dates --------------- March 17, 2008 Extended Paper submission deadline April 14, 2008 Acceptance notification May 12, 2008 Camera-ready copy due Program Chairs ----------------- Klaus-Dieter Althoff, University of Hildesheim Ralph Bergmann, University of Trier Local Chair ----------- Mirjam Minor, University of Trier Industry Day Chair ------------------ Ralph Traphöner, empolis Workshop Chair -------------- Martin Schaaf, University of Hildesheim ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... CALL FOR PAPERS Third IEEE Workshop on Agile Cooperative Process-Aware Information Systems (ProGility 2008) http://is.tm.tue.nl/staff/heshuis/progility/ EXTENDED PAPER SUBMISSION DEADLINE: March 17, 2008 Held at the 17th IEEE International Workshops on Enabling Technologies: Infrastructures for Collaborative Enterprises (WETICE-2008), Rome, Italy, June 23-25, 2008 http://www.wetice.org Workshop theme --------------------------------------- The economic success of an enterprise more and more depends on its ability to react to changes in its environment in a quick and flexible way. Business trends such as increasing product and service variability, fast time-to-market, and increasing division of labor along a global supply chain of goods and services force enterprises to collaborate with each other in networks that are dynamic, flexible, ad-hoc, and adaptive. Thus enterprises are developing a growing interest in new concepts, systems, and solutions which help them to flexibly align their organizational structures, business processes, and supporting information systems to these new requirements and to optimize interactions with customers and business partners. While there has been major progress in disciplines that are interested in structured and unstructured intra-organizational business processes, the agile enterprise is still a vision. Agility in this context refers to the ability of an enterprise to rapidly set up new business processes and projects in order to quickly adapt to changes in the environment. To support these changes, traditional enterprises have to align their existing information systems while virtual enterprises need to customize and integrate the individual partner processes. In order to meet its business objectives, the agile enterprise continuously re-aligns its business processes as well as the interactions with its partners and customers to meet the current requirements. Building upon the success of last year's workshop, the goal of the third ProGility workshop is to bring together practitioners and researchers from different communities such as BPM, software engineering, service-oriented computing, artificial intelligence, and CSCW/Groupware who share an interest in flexibility of cooperative process-aware information systems and team support in both an intra- and inter-organizational setting. The workshop aims at discussing the current state of ongoing research and sharing practical experiences. Submitted papers will be evaluated on the basis of significance, originality and technical quality. Papers should clearly establish the research contribution and the relation to previous research. The workshop will also provide opportunity for demonstration sessions, where participant can present advanced prototypes based on their research. Topics --------------------------------------- Workshop topics include, but are not limited to: * ad-hoc establishment of process-aware collaborations, * adaptive processes, * agile management of business processes, * autonomic processes, * configurable processes, * cross-organizational processes, * data-driven processes (e.g.,case handling), * dynamic composition of processes, * electronic contracts, * emergent workflows, * evolving choreographies, * flexible groupware, * knowledge-intensive processes, * workflow change and exception handling, * process evolution, * process interoperability, * process lifecycle management, * process monitoring, * process mining and learning, * process security and conformance, * processes matching and similarity of processes, and solutions related to these topics in terms of: * architectures, * infrastructures (middleware), * methods and tools, * patterns, * semantics, * user interfaces. Important Dates --------------------------------------- Extended deadline for paper submission: March 17, 2008 Decision to paper authors: April 21, 2008 Final version of accepted papers due to IEEE: May 26, 2008 WETICE-2008: June 23-25, 2008 For accepted papers at least one of the authors has to register and participate in WETICE'08. Submission Guidelines --------------------------------------- Papers must be written in English. Each paper will be reviewed by at least three program committee members. Papers should contain original contributions not published or submitted elsewhere, and should refer to related state-of-the-art work. Authors of accepted papers must present the paper at WETICE in order have the paper included in the post-conference proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Press. Papers must be formatted in the IEEE Proceedings Format (LaTeX formatting macros, Word format) which is single spaced, two columns, 10pt Times/Roman font. Length of full papers must not exceed 6 pages (IEEE Proceeding style, double column including figures, tables and references). Position papers and tool reports should be no longer than 2 pages. Papers should include a title, the name and affiliation of each author, an abstract of up to 150 words and no more than eight keywords. All submissions should be electronic (in PDF). Please upload first your abstract and then your paper via the submission system at http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=ProGility2008. Chairs --------------------------------------- Barbara Weber, University of Innsbruck, Austria Rik Eshuis, Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands Jan Mendling, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Mirjam Minor, University of Trier, Germany Programme Committee --------------------------------------- Wil van der Aalst, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands Antonio Brogi, University of Pisa, Italy Christoph Bussler, BEA Systems, USA Peter Dadam, University of Ulm, Germany Marlon Dumas, Queensland University of Technology, Australia Schahram Dustdar, Vienna University of Technology, Austria Mati Golani, Braude College, Israel Paul Grefen, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands Yanbo Han, Chinese Academy of Science, China Patrick Hung, University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Canada Dimka Karastoyanova, University of Stuttgart, Germany Rania Khalaf, IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, USA Heiko Ludwig, IBM TJ Watson Research Center, USA Heiko Maus, DFKI, Germany Michael Maximilien, IBM Almaden Research Center, USA Massimo Mecella, Universita di Roma 'La Sapienza', Italy Nikolay Mehandjiev, University of Manchester, UK Bela Mutschler, Daimler Research, Germany Gil Regev, Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale, Lausanne, Switzerland Manfred Reichert, University of Twente, Netherlands Hajo Reijers, Eindhoven University of Technology, Netherlands Stefanie Rinderle-Ma, University of Ulm, Germany Michael Rosemann, QUT Brisbane, Australia Rainer Ruggaber, SAP Research, Germany Shazia Sadiq, Univ. Queensland, Australia Wasim Sadiq, SAP Research, Australia Pnina Soffer, Univ. of Haifa, Israel Mark Strembeck, WU Vienna, Austria Lucineia Thom, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil Mathias Weske, HPI Potsdam, Germany Werner Wild, Evolution Consulting, Austria Andreas Wombacher, University of Twente, Netherlands ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... Second Call for Papers MRC 2008 Fifth International Workshop on Modelling and Reasoning in Context In conjunction with the Third International Conference on Human Centered Processes (HCP-2008), at Delft University of Technology Submission deadline: March 28, 2008 http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008 ======================================================================== You can submit you contribution for MRC 2008 now at the EasyChair conference system: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mrc2008 ======================================================================== Where traditional software applications "know" by design in which situations they are to function, applications in pervasive computing and ambient intelligence do not necessarily have this luxury. Due to the very nature of the dynamism in the world with which these systems interact, they have to dynamically adapt their behaviour in run time. To do this, they must be able to somehow interpret the environment in which they are situated. This ability is often referred to as being context aware, or even situation aware. Being aware of the environment facilitates the ability to adapt behaviour by being context sensitive. Context sensitive processing plays a key role in many modern IT applications, with context-awareness and context-based reasoning essential not only for mobile and ubiquitous computing, but also for a wide range of other areas such as collaborative software, web engineering, personal digital assistants, information sharing, health care workflow and patient control, adaptive games, and e-Learning solutions. From an intelligent systems perspective, one of the challenges is to integrate context with other types of knowledge as an additional major source for reasoning, decision-making, and adaptation and to form a coherent and versatile architecture. There is a common understanding that achieving desired behaviour from intelligent systems will depend on the ability to represent and manipulate information about a rich range of contextual factors. These factors may include not only physical characteristics of the task environment, but many other aspects such as the knowledge states (of both the application and user), emotions, etc. This representation and reasoning problem present research challenges to which methodologies derived amongst others from artificial intelligence, knowledge management, human-computer interaction, and psychology can contribute solutions. One specific problem is to deal with uncertainty on different levels, from interpretation of uncertain sensor input data up to identification of contexts with fuzzy borders. Another issue is how to integrate findings from the social sciences and psychology into the design of context aware systems and how to build psychologically plausible knowledge models. A third aspect is the ability of the system to use explanations, both as a part of its reasoning and as a means of communication with the user. This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring modelling and reasoning issues and approaches for context sensitive systems, from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and techniques across different research and application areas. The workshop will examine mechanisms and techniques for structured storage of contextual information, effective ways to retrieve it, and methods for enabling integration of context and application knowledge. The Modeling and Reasoning in Context workshop series, established in 2004, provides a forum for scientists and practitioners addressing the above issues to exchange and discuss issues and ideas in a friendly, cooperative environment. ======================================================================== Agenda ======================================================================== The workshop will last two full days and will be organised into three main parts. The first part will consist of short presentations of the accepted papers, grouped into sessions. Each session will be followed by a discussion period. The goal of these sessions is to introduce the work of all the participants. The second part will consist of three panel discussion sessions, each dedicated to one specific issue. The suggested issues are "key issues for modelling context", "key issues for reasoning in context" and one "open topics", but are subject to change dependent on the interests of the attendees and the nature of submissions. The goal of these panels is to discuss the various approaches to each of these basic issues and to identify the critical problems in need of attention and the most promising research directions. The workshop will be concluded with an open discussion summarising the most important lessons learned. ======================================================================== Topics of Interest ======================================================================== The major goal of the workshop is to bring researchers, scientists from both industry and academia, and representatives from different communities together to study, understand, and explore issues of development and application of IT systems utilising context. Jdifferent fields. Areas of interest includes, but are not limited to: * Generic and specific context models * Explicit representations * Representation of and reasoning with uncertainty * Retrieval of context and context information * Context-based retrieval and reasoning * Socio-technical issues * Context awareness and context-sensitivity * Context awareness in applications * Evaluation of context-aware applications * Explanation and context * Mobile context * Information aging * Context focusing and context switching * Context management ======================================================================== Submissions ======================================================================== Workshop submissions will be electronic, in PDF format only, using the EasyChair submission system through the workshop website. Paper length should not exceed 12 pages in the Springer LNCS format. Guidelines and templates are available at the Springer website (http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html). Three members of the program committee will review each submission. A review form will direct submitters to evaluate submissions for appropriateness, technical strength, originality, presentation, and overall evaluation, as well as recording the reviewer’¡Çs confidence in the topic. Papers will be published in accompanying proceedings. Authors of accepted papers will be invited to submit extended versions for inclusion in a book or a special journal issue on context aware systems. ======================================================================== Important Dates ======================================================================== * Submission of papers: March 28, 2008 * Notification: April 14, 2008 * Camera-ready copies: April 21, 2008 * MRC Workshop: June 9-10, 2008 ======================================================================== Organisation ======================================================================== Chairs Anders Kofod-Petersen Department of Computer and Information Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology Joerg Cassens Department of Computer and Information Science Norwegian University of Science and Technology David B. Leake Computer Science Department Indiana University, USA Marielba Zacarias Faculdade de Ciencias e Tecnologia Algarve University, Portugal Program Committee - Patrick Brezillon, University of Paris 6, France - Henning Christiansen, Roskilde University, Denmark - Lorcan Coyle, University College Dublin, Ireland - Chiara Ghidini, FBK-irst, Italy - Eyke Huellermeier, University of Marburg, Germany - Boicho Kokinov, New Bulgarian University, Bulgaria - John Krogstie, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Norway - Ana G. Maguitman, Universidad Nacional del Sur, Bahia Blanca, Argentina - Enric Plaza, Spanish Council for Scientific Research, Spain - Thomas R. Roth-Berghofer, German Research Center for Artificial Inteligence, Germany - Hedda Schmidtke, Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, Korea - Stefan Schulz, The e-Spirit Company, Germany - Sven Schwarz, German Research Center for Artificial Inteligence, Germany - Patricia Tedesco, University of Pernambuco, Brazil - Santtu Toivonen, Idean, Finland - Jose Tribolet, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal - Roy Turner, University of Maine, USA - Rebekah Wegener, Macquarie University, Australia ======================================================================== Submission deadline: March 28, 2008 http://events.idi.ntnu.no/mrc2008 http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=mrc2008 ======================================================================== ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... CALL FOR CHAPTER PROPOSALS Proposal Submission Deadline: March 31, 2008 Book title: "Strategies for Knowledge Management Success: Exploring Organizational Efficacy" A book edited by Dr. Murray E. Jennex, San Diego State University, and Dr. Stefan Smolnik, European Business School (EBS), Germany Introduction: Knowledge management (KM) and knowledge management system (KMS) success is an issue that requires exploration. During the Knowledge Management Foundations workshop held at the Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS-39) in January 2006, it was agreed that for the credibility of the KM discipline, it is important to define KM success. Additionally, HICSS-40 (2007) and HICSS-41 (2008) hosted each a minitrack focused on presenting research on KM success and measurement. Jennex, Smolnik, and Croasdell presented a definition of KM success based on two exploratory surveys generated from the literature. The definition presented was: KM success is a multidimensional concept. It is defined by capturing the right knowledge, getting the right knowledge to the right user, and using this knowledge to improve organizational and/or individual performance. KM success is measured by means of the dimensions: impact on business processes, impact on strategy, leadership, and knowledge content. However, much work remains to be done in establishing a foundation for KM success and acceptable measures. Additionally, other aspects of KM measurement need to be explored and established. Objective of the Book: This book will aim to establish relevant theoretical frameworks and present the latest empirical research findings in the area of KM success and measurement. It will be written for professionals who want to improve their understanding of KM success and measurement and/or who need to implement KM measurement in organizations. Target Audience: The target audience of this book will be composed of professionals and researchers working in the field of information and knowledge management. Moreover, the book will provide insights and support executives concerned with the management of expertise, knowledge, information, and organizational development in different types of work communities and environments. Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following: * KM Success definitions and models * KM critical success factors * KM metrics * KM measurement * Organizational issues with respect to KM success and measurement * KM success and measurement implementation issues * Case studies and empirical research into KM success and measurement Submission Procedure: Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before March 31, 2008, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by April 28, 2008, about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines. Full chapters are expected to be submitted by July 31, 2008. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis. The book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), www.igi-global.com, publisher of the IGI Publishing (formerly Idea Group Publishing), Information Science Publishing, IRM Press, CyberTech Publishing, Information Science Reference (formerly Idea Group Reference), and Medical Information Science Reference imprints. Inquiries and submissions can be forwarded electronically (Word document) or by email to: Dr. Murray E. Jennex, email: murphjenaol.com or mjennexmail.sdsu.edu or Dr. Stefan Smolnik, email: Stefan.Smolnikebs.edu ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS MATES 08 - Sixth German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies September 23 - 26, 2008 in Kaiserslautern, Germany www.wi2.uni-trier.de/mates08 AIMS & SCOPE The German Conference on Multi-Agent system Technologies (MATES) provides an interdisciplinary forum for researchers, users, and developers to present and discuss latest advances in research work as well as prototyped or fielded systems of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems. The conference covers the whole range of agent- and multi-agent technologies and aims to promote its theory and applications. For the sixth time, the German special interest group on Distributed Artificial Intelligence organizes this international conference in cooperation with the steering committee of MATES and thereby continues this very successful track of events. MATES 2008 will be co-located with the 31st German Conference on Artificial Intelligence (KI 2008) and will take place from September 23 to 26, 2008 in Kaiserslautern. The participants of MATES 2008 will also have full access to the concurrently running program of the KI 2008 conference. TOPICS OF INTEREST Topics of interest of MATES 2008 include all aspects of agent-oriented computing and agent technologies. Moreover, the principles and methods of agent-oriented computing in the context of service-oriented architectures (SOA) are of interest for the MATES community. Furthermore, Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is a new emerging area for the application for agent-oriented computing, including, for example, agent-based mobile environments or sensor networks. We solicit research papers that report on recent advances in the area of intelligent agents and multi-agent systems in general. Also papers reporting on the successful application of agent technologies in any kind of domain are very welcome. Additionally, we encourage the submission of elaborated vision and challenge papers that discuss mid-term and long-term directions for research and application. Topics of interest for MATES 2008 include, but are not limited to: * Adaptive agents and multi-agent learning * Advanced theories of collaboration: Modelling and formation of teams, coalitions, groups, and organizations * Agents and autonomic computing * Agent and multi-agent architectures * Agents and peer-to-peer computing * Agents and pervasive computing * Agents for Ambient Intelligence * Agent-based service discovery, matchmaking, brokering, and composition * Agent communication languages * Agents for e-business and e-government * Agent technologies in the context of service-oriented computing and architectures * Agent to non-agent interoperability * Agents in novel applications * Application of agent-technologies in industrial practice * Artificial social systems: Conventions, norms, institutions; trust and reputation * Autonomous robots and robot teams * Commitment, delegation, responsibility, and obligations in artificial and hybrid societies * Complex systems and their management * Coordination, negotiation, argumentation, and conflict resolution * Deployed agent-based business applications * Hybrid human and agent societies * User modelling and interface agents * Embodied conversational actors and believable agents * Mobile agents * Model-driven design of multi-agent systems * Multi-agent planning and scheduling * Multi-agent platforms and tools * Multi-agent (social) simulation and (cognitive) modelling with agents * Practical aspects of programming agent systems: Robustness, fault tolerance, scalability and performance measurement * Roles and structures, adaptive learning and cognition in organizational models * Semantics of the dynamics of organizational models * Standards for agents and multi-agent systems DOCTORAL MENTORING PROGRAM MATES 2008 will include a doctoral mentoring program, aimed at PhD students at advanced stages of their research. This program will provide an opportunity for students to interact closely with established researchers in their fields, to receive feedback on their work and to get advice on managing their careers. PROCEEDINGS and SUBMISSION Papers must be submitted in Springer LNCS Format and should not exceed 12 pages. The proceedings of MATES 2008 will appear in the Springer-Verlag series, Lecture Notes in Artificial Intelligence (LNAI). AWARDS MATES will issue a "MATES 2008 Best Paper Award". Important Dates * Submission Deadline: 11.4.2008 * Notification of Acceptance: 30.5.2008 * Camera Ready Copy: 27.6.2008 * Conference Date: 23.-26.9.2008 - 23.9.2008: KI 2008 Workshops and Tutorials (open for MATES participants) - 24.-25.9.2008: MATES 08 Main Conference Program - 26.9.2008: MATES 08 Doctoral Mentoring Program CONFERENCE OFFICIALS Program Co-Chairs: Ralph Bergmann (U Trier, Germany) Gabriele Lindemann (HU Berlin, Germany) General Co-Chairs: Stefan Kirn (U Hohenheim, Germany) Michal Pechoucek (CTU Prag, CZ) Steering Committee: Hans-Dieter Burkhard (HU Berlin, Germany) Stefan Kirn (U Hohenheim, Germany) Matthias Klusch (DFKI, Germany) Joerg P. Mueller (TU Clausthal, Germany) Rainer Unland (U Essen, Germany) Gerhard Weiss (SCCH Hagenberg, Austria) Local Arrangements: Stefan Zinsmeister (DFKI, Germany) CONTACTS Ralph Bergmann Universitaet Trier Wirtschaftsinformatik II D-54286 Trier Deutschland Tel: +49-651-2013876 Fax: +49-651-2013396 Email: bergmann 'at' uni-trier.de Gabriela Lindemann Humboldt Universitaet zu Berlin Institut fuer Informatik Rudower Chaussee 25 D-10099 Berlin Deutschland Tel. +49-30-20933170 Fax. +49-30-20933168 Email: lindeman 'at' informatik.hu-berlin.de ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... CALL FOR PAPERS 7th International Semantic Web Conference (ISWC'08) October 26-30, 2008 Kongresszentrum (Congress Centre) Karlsruhe, Germany The Web continues to grow and new technologies, modes of interactions, and applications are being developed. Building on this growth, Semantic Web technologies aim at providing a shared semantic information space, changing qualitatively our experiences on the Web. As Semantic Web technologies mature and permeate more and more application areas, new research challenges are coming to the fore and some unsolved ones are becoming more acute. These issues include creating and managing Semantic Web content, making Semantic Web applications robust and scalable, organizing and integrating information from different sources for novel uses, making semantics explicit in order to improve our overall experience with information technologies, and thus enabling us to use the wealth of information that is currently available in digital form for addressing our everyday tasks. To foster the exchange of ideas and collaboration, ISWC brings together researchers in relevant disciplines such as artificial intelligence, databases, social networks, distributed computing, web engineering, information systems, natural language processing, soft computing, and human-computer interaction. ISWC 2008 calls for papers to its research track. The research track solicits the submission of original, principled research papers dealing with both analytical theoretical and practical aspects of Semantic Web research. Papers of the latter type are encouraged to present repeatability of their experiments, and share with the community their data and test harnesses. Topics Topics include, but are not limited to, the following. * Applications of the Semantic Web o Applications with clear lessons learned or evaluations o Semantic Web for large scale applications, desktops or personal information management o Semantic Web technologies for multimedia, sensors, and situational awareness o Semantic Web technologies for P2P, services, grids and middleware * Management of Semantic Web Data o Languages, tools and methodologies for representing and managing Semantic Web data o Database, IR and AI technologies for the Semantic Web o Search, query, integration, analysis of the Semantic Web o Robust and scalable knowledge management and reasoning on the Web o Machine learning and information extraction for the Semantic Web o Cleaning, assurance, trust, provenance of Semantic Web data, services and processes * Ontologies o Ontology modeling, reuse, extraction, and evolution o Ontology mapping, merging, and alignment o Searching and ranking ontologies o Ontology evaluation * Social Semantic Web o Social networks and processes on the Semantic Web o Semantic Web technology for collaboration and cooperation o Representing and reasoning about trust, privacy, and security * User Interfaces o Visualization of and interacting with Semantic Web data o Semantic Web content creation and annotation o Mashing up Semantic Web data and processes Dates * Abstracts due: May 9 * Submissions: May 16 * Rebuttal phase: June 14-16 * Notification: July 11 * Camera ready: August 15 Further information at http://iswc2008.semanticweb.org/ ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... ---------------------------------------- Call for Papers ----------------------------------------- International Workshop Case-Based Reasoning on Multimedia Data CBR-MD 2008 Submission deadline: May 5th 2008 July 17, 2008, Leipzig Germany http://www.data-mining-forum.de/cbr in connection with Industrial Conference on Data Mining, ICDM Call for papers Multimedia systems are becoming increasingly popular in medical, industrial, ecological, biotechnological and many other application domains. Multimedia data includes signals of 1-dimensional, 2-dimensional or 3-dimensional nature, video, audio, text, trajectories, and data streams. Existing statistical and knowledge-based techniques to analyse and interpret these signals lack robustness, accuracy and flexibility. New strategies are needed that can adapt to changing environmental conditions, signal variation, user needs and process requirements. Applying Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) strategies in multimedia data interpreting systems can help satisfy these requirements. CBR can be used to control signal processing in all phases of an interpreting system to derive information of the highest possible quality. Beyond this, CBR supports different learning capabilities throughout the signal interpretation process that satisfy different needs during the development phase of the system. The unique data and the necessary computation techniques require extraordinary case representations, similarity measures and case-based reasoning strategies to be utilised. This workshop should provide a forum for discussion of the specific topics related to CBR on multimedia data. For more information about Case-Based Reasoning for Multimedia Data please see: Image Processing in Case-Based Reasoning, P. Perner, Alec Holt, Michael Richter The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 20:3, 311-314 P. Perner (Ed.), Case-Based Reasoning on Signals and Images, Springer Verlag, 2007 For general information on CBR see the special issue: CBR Commentaries: The Knowledge Engineering Review, Vol. 20 The goals of this workshop are to: * provide a forum for identifying important contributions and opportunities for research on case-based reasoning as it applies to multimedia data * promote the systematic study of how to apply case-based reasoning to images, signals, video, audio, trajectories and data streams * show case applications of case-based reasoning on multimedia data. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to): * CBR for signals, images, video, audio and text * Similarity assessment for signals, images, video, audio, and text * Case representation and case mining for multimedia data * Retrieval and indexing of signals, images, video, audio and text * Conversational CBR for multimedia retrieval systems * Meta-learning for model improvement and parameter setting for processing with CBR * Incremental model improvement by CBR * Case base maintenance for systems with multimedia data * Case authoring * Life-time of a CBR system * Measuring coverage of case bases * Analogical reasoning for computer vision, signal processing and others * CBR in robot navigation * CBR for medical applications using multimedia data * CBR for biotechnological applications using multimedia data * CBR for chemical applications using multimedia data * Ontology learning with CBR * CBR for image processing applications * CBR for video applications Submission Requirements All papers will be published in the Workshop Proceedings by IBaI publishing. The selected papers will be published after revision in a special issue in the Journal Pattern Recognition Letters. Paper submissions should be formatted according to Springer LNCS format, with a maximum of 15 pages. Author's instructions along with LaTeX and Word macro files are available on the web at http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html. Please e-mail your submission as doc file and pdf file to cbr 'at' data-mining-forum.de --------------- Important Dates Submission Deadline: May 5th, 2008 Notification Date: May 31st, 2008 Camera-Ready Deadline: June 10th, 2008 Workshop date: July 17th, 2008 --------------- Workshop Chair Petra Perner, Institute of Computer Vision and applied Computer Sciences, IBaI, Germany Linda Shapiro, University of Washington, USA Organisational Chair Suzanne Little, Institute of Computer Vision and applied Computer Sciences, IBaI, Germany Program Committee * Isabelle Bichindaritz, University of Washington, USA * Enis Cetin, Bilkent University, Turkey * Peter Funk, Malardalen University, Sweden * Dimitris Karras, Chalkis Institute of Technology, Greece * Fei-Fei Li, Princeton Vision Lab, USA * Ramon Lopez de Mantaras, Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (IIIA), Spain * Erkki Oja, Helsinki University of Technology, Finland * David Patterson, UC Berkeley, USA * Michael Richter, University of Calgary, Canada * Ovidio Salvetti, National Research Council, Italy * Rainer Schmidt, University of Rostock, Germany * David Wilson, University of North Carolina, USA * Xingquan Zhu, Florida Atlantic University, USA ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... From the GAIA group at the Complutense University of Madrid, Spain we inform of the release of the new version of jCOLIBRI v2.0, 2007/08/05 jCOLIBRI is a framework in Java for building Case-based Reasoning (CBR) systems. It includes mechanisms to Retrieve, Reuse, Revise and Retain cases and is designed to be easily extended with new components. To find out more about jCOLIBRI, visit http://gaia.fdi.ucm.es/projects/jcolibri/ or contact us Juan Antonio Recio (jareciog@fdi.ucm.es) Belen Díaz-Agudo (belend@sip.ucm.es) Pedro González-Calero (pedro@sip.ucm.es) The source code is totally available and released under the terms of the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL). == Release notes == jCOLIBRI 2.0 is a major release where most of the jCOLIBRI 1.x framework has been reimplemented. The aim of this new version is to improve the architecture of the framework making it more robust and easier to extend. However, jCOLIBRI 2.0 does NOT include the graphical authoring tools that in version 1.x allow to build a CBR system without writing a single line of code. Authoring tools are under development for jCOLIBRI 2.x but, in the meantime, version 1.1 can be a better solution for those users that don't want to write Java code. == What's new in Version 2.0 == -- Text retrieval based on TFDF Implemented through Apache Lucene. -- Text clustering Implemente through Carrot2. -- Classification and maintenance methods Developed by Derek Bridge and Lisa Cummins from University College Cork, Ireland. -- Case base visualization methods Developed by Josep LLuís Arcos from Artificial Intelligence Research Institute, Spanish Scientific Research Council. -- Improved methods for textual CBR Using OpenNLP and GATE new and more sophisticated similarity measures have been included for textual CBR (like the compression based similarities developed by Derek Bridge). -- Improved connectors to store case bases Connector to databases through Hibernate, a high performance open source object/relational persistence and query service developed as part of the popular JBoss J2EE middleware. Connector to ontologies through OntoBridge (http://gaia.fdi.ucm.es/grupo/projects/ontobridge/) a simple wrapper for Jena/DIG reasoner (it communicates between JAVA and OWL). Connector to textual files. The connector requires cases implemented as JavaBeans. -- Improved ontology-based similarity measures New ontology-based similarity functions are included. Ontologies are accessed through OntoBridge what makes the implementation more robust and efficient. -- Improved access to Wordnet Wordnet is now easier to use than in version 1.1, and it can be loaded into memory through our WordNetBridge library, so there is no need to install it separately. -- Improved Tomcat integration jCOLIBRI 2.0 jar file can be registered in a servlet engine and call from servlets. Running jCOLIBRI 1.1 as a servlet required some bizarre hacking. -- Examples jCOLIBRI includes 16 completely documented examples and a stand-alone CBR application that uses the library to easily learn to use the framework. Enjoy it. jCOLIBRI Team. ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... Postdoctoral research positions (5-year contracts) - deadline 19 April 2008 CISUC Centre for Informatics and Systems University of Coimbra Portugal Applications are invited for Senior Researcher positions for candidates with at least 3 years post-doctoral experience in the thematic areas of "Cognitive and Media Systems" including CBR and others, including a broad area of "Informatics". The positions offered are for a 5-year contract to carry out research work at our research institution, in the University of Coimbra. In exceptional cases, duly justified, we may consider accepting applicants with less than 3 years of post-doctoral experience. The research activities involve several Projects, national and International ones, including the possibility of performing research within European Projects. To consult the official posts of the most relevant positions for the AI community please follow these links: Position in Cognitive and Media Systems: Position in Informatics: The monthly amount to be paid is between 2067.91 Euro and 3101.87 Euro 14 months a year, before 35% tax retention, according to the Scientific Research Career regulation. The contract includes social benefits and retirement fund. Any effective hiring/contract is subject to available vacancies supported by the National Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT), and its Agreement Program regulation. CISUC is a 16-year-old research centre with European Projects in the framework of the EU FP7. With a research team of around 150 members, it carries out research in several areas of Computer Science. To get more information on the Centre and about other positions please visit the website http://www.cisuc.uc.pt The Faculty of Science and Technology of the University of Coimbra has close to 7000 students, both undergraduate and postgraduate. It offers a large array of different degrees, in Engineering, Life Sciences, Exact Sciences, Architecture and Anthropology. This Multidisciplinar characteristic of the Faculty is also reflected in the R&D activities of their Research Units. ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* ......................................................................... The Hertie Chair of Knowledge and Data Engineering, University of Kassel, Germany, opens a position of a Research Assistant (Wiss. Mitarbeiter/in, BAT IIa). Further information can be found at . As the position requires at least basic knowlede of the German language, the remainder of this mail will be in German. We apologise to all non-German speakers. Die Hertie-Stiftungsprofessur Wissensverarbeitung der Universität Kassel besetzt baldmöglichst für zunächst zwei Jahre eine Stelle als wissenschaftliche/r Mitarbeiterin/ Mitarbeiter (BAT IIa, ganztags). Sie sollten Interesse an einem oder mehreren der Bereiche Knowledge Discovery, Web 2.0 (social bookmarking, folksonomies), Social Network Analysis, Semantic Web, Ontologien haben. Kenntnisse in einem dieser Gebiete sind von Vorteil; Programmierkenntnisse und Kenntnisse in der Systemadministration sind nötig. Wenn Sie einen sehr guten Universitätsabschluss in Informatik, Mathematik oder einem verwandten Gebiet haben, eine Dissertation anstreben und an teamorientierter Forschungsarbeit auf internationalem Niveau in einem interdisziplinären Team von Informatikern, Mathematikern und Wirtschaftsinformatikern interessiert sind, freuen wir uns über Ihre Bewerbung. Die Aufgaben umfassen Mitarbeit in der Forschung auf dem Gebiet der Wissensverarbeitung, insbesondere in internationalen Projekten wie Tagora und rund um unser Soziales Lesezeichensystem BibSonomy . Das Fachgebiet finden Sie im Internet unter http://www.kde.cs.uni-kassel.de/ . Weitere Auskünfte können bei Dr. Andreas Hotho (0561/8046252, hotho@cs.uni-kassel.de) eingeholt werden. Die Hochschule ist bestrebt, den Anteil an Frauen zu erhöhen und begrüßt deshalb besonders die Bewerbung von Frauen. Schwerbehinderte Bewerber/innen werden bei entsprechender Eignung bevorzugt berücksichtigt. Bewerbungsschluss ist der 28. Februar 2008. Bitte richten Sie Ihre Bewerbung per Email an Prof. Dr. Gerd Stumme und Dr. Andreas Hotho < { stumme, hotho } at cs . uni - kassel . de >. ......................................................................... *sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm*sigkm* .........................................................................