Minutes of the AgentLink General Management Committee Meeting Held at IBIS La Vilette Hotel, Paris on Wednesday 8 July 1998 Present: Michael Wooldridge (MJW: chair - general coordinator) Donald Steiner (DS: WP1 coordinator) Yves Demazeau (YD: WP2 coordinator) Gerhard Weiss (GW: WP3 coordinator) Norman Sadeh (NS: European Commission representative) Hyacinth Nwana (HN: WP1 committee) John Perram (JP: WP1 committee) Nick Jennings (NRJ: WP2 committee) Magnus Boman (MB: WP2 committee) Wiebe van der Hoek (WvdH: WP3 committee) Janet Bruten (JB: WP4 committee) Carles Sierra (CS: WP2/e-commerce SIG) Jan Treur (JT: methodologies SIG) Matthias Klusch (MK: intel info agents SIG) Apologies received from: Bernard Burg (WP1 committee) Rosaria Conte (WP4 committee) [Last updated 22 July 1998, to include some corrections from DS.] AGENDA ITEMS 1. Welcome. [MJW] MJW welcomed in particular members of the management committee that had not previously attended AL meetings, and explained that the primary purpose of their attending the meeting was to bring everyone with a managerial role in AL together, so that understanding of role and function of the network could be coordinated. MJW also pointed out that it was important to have a clear understanding of what could and could not be done with the financial resources of the network, and how the finances worked. Finally, MJW stressed the goals of the network, and how the success or otherwise of the network was to be evaluated (primarily in terms of new collaborations, projects, and so on). NS stressed that the network should be focussed on "added value" activities: the primary questions to consider whenever AL was contemplating an activity should be "does this add value?" NS also stressed that AL should be "open" with respect to the different views of agents in the community, and also that AL should not be dogmatic about what comes under the banner of agent work, and that AL should be directed as much as possible by the views of its members, and not be led in a top-down fashion by a small number of sites. He also stressed the importance of "roadmap" activities for the network - generating strategic plans for what the network should do. 2. WP1 Report: Industrial action [DS] DS reported that a questionnaire for finding out about agent-products had been generated, and had been forwarded to MJW. MJW agreed to post this to the members of the network. A number of suggestions were made as to possible industrial events to visit. An obvious candidate was the IST-98 conference, (formerly the ESPRIT conferenec) to be held in Vienna in December. NS stressed that the conference emphasises "visionary" stands. MJW will be attending, and will at least take some fliers. JT will be attending the IFIP conference in Vienna, and agreed to investigate taking a stand their. HN agreed to investigate telecoms conferences. JB suggested the simulation of adaptive behaviour conference, to be held in August 1998, and agreed to take along fliers. With respect to standards, it was reported that there had been no interest in financial support to attend the FIPA Dublin meeting in July 1998, and a discussion ensued with respect to other activities to support standards. It was in principle agreed to provide support for a FIPA agent server (e.g., an NT workstation), so that the many FIPA projects out there could start to inter-work and evaluate the FIPA standard set. It was suggested that this server could also provide a repository for FIPA software. (Apparently, providing such services is not the function of FIPA itself.) DS to come back to MJW with proposal for such. The need to get OMG/mobile agent input on standards was agreed. MJW to put DS in touch with Thomas Magedanz at GMD FOKUS, who is very active in this area. 3. WP2 Report: Research Coordination [YD] MB discussed possible strategies for generating the research skills database for the AL WWW site. Ultimately, it was resolved that MB should provide MJW with this database in a WWW-ready format no later than 21 September. NRJ discussed possible ways of generating the repository of agent-related papers. NRJ proposed two guiding principles: i/ That some form of quality control was necessary - simply allowing people to add links to their own work, without quality control, was likely to lead to a low-value repository. It was accepted that a simple way to ensure quality control was to limit membership of the repository to papers published in quality conferences and workshops. ii/ lists of references, without any further information about content, were not likely to be very useful - it was necessary to add value to the repository, by (for example) indexing the papers using AL's classification scheme. These desires were mediated by the obvious practical limitations of what was realistically possible in the time available. Following a discussion, NRJ proposed to "seed" the online repository with as many high-quality papers as possible, (with added information where realistically possible), and then to have a mediated on-line registration mechanism for new materials. It was resolved that NRJ should provide MJW with the database in a WWW-ready format by 21 September. In order that it could be kept up-to-date, it was agreed to update the database at regularly published intervals (e.g., every 4 months). YD reported that he had received no further requests for conference/workshop support. It was resolved that as a general model for support, workshops and conferences would be expected to reimburse AL out of profits, as the "Agents World" conference has proposed to do. With respect to AW in particular, YD reported that despite the very high level of attendance (of the order of 525 participants), the financial situation was not yet clear. YD to provide AL with a definite, final financial statement as regards Agents World no later than 15 September. A general discussion ensued about financial support for national workshops and conferences. Some participants felt that providing support for such events (inparticular, non-English speaking events) not sufficiently European in nature, while others argued that they provided a useful route for developing agent skills across Europe, and there are other official European languages other than English! Ultimately, it was agreed that no such workshop would be *excluded* from funding, provided that participation in the event was not limited by nationality etc. Of course, the criteria for support of events as agreed at the prior management committee meeting would apply. 4. WP3: Teaching and Training. [GW] GW reported that he had been in touch with the IJCAI organising committee, who had agreed to allow the summer school to co-locate with IJCAI-99 if necessary. It was resolved to hold the summer school in or near Stockholm in the week prior to IJCAI, assuming that an appropriate (cheap!) venue could be found with sufficient local, cheap accomodation. MB to coordinate with GW on finding locations in and around Stockholm. It was agreed that a broad range of courses would be developed, that would appeal to industry as well as academia. In particular, it was agreed to allow industrial participation in the event for an appropriate fee. It was resolved to have a first call for participation, including names of lecturers, etc, no later than 21 September: GW to produce this call. GW to distribute an initial proposal detailing structure of the event and possible courses to the management committee ASAP. 5. WP4: Management & Infrastructure [MJW] MJW reported that the "full" WWW site was live at www.AgentLink.org. In addition, exhibition boards for AL had been developed, as well as a logo. Some inter-network activities had taken place -- a NoE coordinator meeting is to be set up in November. Leaflets advertising AL had been produced, and placed in the conference pack of every participant of "Agents World". MJW reported that such leaflets were available for all participants to use for any conferences and workshops required. A number of enquiries about direct mailshots had been issued, and MJW proposed taking one of these up. MJW reported that some content had been obtained for the 1st issue of the newsletter, but production had been postponed until after "Agents World" so that reports could be included on the events that took place. Finally, MJW reported that the administrator post was about to be approved by QMW [it has subsequently been approved] and encouraged anyone who had a possible candidate for the post to apply. MJW agreed to set up a moderated, members-only mailing list for the network, e.g., using majordomo. MJW also pointed out that the network should actively attempt to play a more central role in shaping/guiding EC policy with respect to agent technology. MJW to come up with a proposal for this. 6. Status of Special Interest Groups [DS, YD] A discussion took place as to exactly what "membership" of a SIG meant. It was stressed that the goal of a SIG was *not* to create a "project within a project", and as such, SIGs should have no formal membership, mailing lists, etc. SIG activities will be open to all AL members, and membership would be defined by those actively participating in them. The main purpose of SIG funding was to "pump-prime" new collaborations, projects, etc. The success (or otherwise!) of SIGs would be evaluated using the number of new collaborations as a major indicator. As a guiding principle, it was agreed that funds would only ever be provided to SIG participants who actively took part in meetings (e.g., by presenting a paper or chairing a session). Additionally, MJW emphasised the very finite nature of AL's resources, and indicated that for each SIG meeting, funds would be available to support only up to about 10-15 participants. Support would only be possible for 6-8 SIGs. Other participants (including, if desired, participants from outside Europe) would be welcome to attend, but would not receive direct or indirect support from AL. While it seemed appropriate for SIGs to maintain their own WWW site, it was emphasised that the "front door" to this site should be through the main AL WWW site. In addition, it was resolved that all official documentation relating to SIGs should be located on the central AL WWW site. It was resolved to support the following SIGs: * Agents for e-commerce (coordinator: Carles Sierra) * Cooperative information systems (coordinator: Matthias Klusch when he returns from the USA, Innes Ferguson until then) * Methodologies/software engineering (coordinator: Jan Treur) All of these SIGs still need some work on finalising their goals, etc. Coordinators to work on this with DS/YD respectively. Coordinators to supply MJW with WWW forms ASAP. CS and MJW reported on a meeting with Paul Timmers, ESPRIT project officer in the area of electronic commerce, as well as a number of ESPRIT projects in the area of e-commerce. It was reported that the main conclusion of this meeting was that these ESPRIT projects could usefully benefit from the AGentLink activities. It was reported that the proposal for a SIG on norms had been withdrawn. Additionally, various members of the meeting reported informal discussions on several different possible SIGs. The most concrete proposals appeared to be in the area of logic & agency, telecoms, simulating societies, and some kind of RoboCup SIG. It was felt that while obviously no decision could be made on such SIGs without seeing a concrete proposal, there all of there areas were potentially interesting for AL. The proposers had been encouraged to develop their SIGs further. A discussion ensued about an informal proposal for a SIG in the area of human factors/HCI for agents - it was pointed out that this strayed very much into the territory of the i3net (intelligent information interfaces network) area, and as such, might not be appropriate for AL. NS emphasised the importance of coordinating such SIGs with other EC activities, (e.g., a logic SIG with COMPULOG). It was agreed to hold kick off meetings of all the SIGs in the same location on 24 September 1998. It was agreed that the purpose of these kick-off meetings would be to find out the "lay of the land" -- establish main issues and a set of goals/agenda for the SIGs. A suggested model was short position papers and discussion/panel sessions. It was emphasised that such meetings should be as open as reasonably possible, and should not be run as if they were refereed workshops or conferences. Each coordinator to generate a call for participation to be sent to MJW for distribution ASAP. 7. The AgentLink Calendar, July 1998-July 1999 [MJW] MJW stressed the need to establish a calendar for AL activities over the next year. In particular, it was proposed that before the end of the first year of AL, it should have a "general" meeting, including as many members of the network as possible. The goals of the meeting would be to bring the members of the network up to speed on its activities, foster a sense of community, and, perhaps most importantly, to get feedback from members on useful directions for the network to go in. It was felt that if possible, such an event should be co-located with an existing conference or workshop, and in addition, with SIG meetings. The primary advantages of such co-location would be to maximise the opportunities for new collaborative activities to take place, to reduce costs by "reusing" funds for multiple activities, and also to gain from the synergy of multiple closely related activities. (This was very much the experience of the extremely successful "Agents World" event held in Paris immediately before the meeting, on 3-7 July 1998, which co-located a number of events and gained enormously from the synergy generated.) After some discussion, it was felt that the likeliest candidate for such an event was the PAAM conference, to be held in London in April. Concern was expressed, however, about the high cost of this event. It was resolved that MJW would investigate possible co-location models with the organisers of PAAM; if no reasonable model could be found, then it was resolved to organise the event in some other cheap and accessible location. To summarise, the main events agreed were: 1998 24 September 98: kick off meeting for SIGs Location: Brussels, exact location to be decided 25 September 98: AM - SIGs reporting back on kick off mtg to mgmt committee PM - next AL management committee meeting Location: Brussels, exact location to be decided between Dec 98 - Jan 99: next meetings of SIGs, each to fix their own location 1999 April 1999: SIG meetings, plus general meeting of AL, to be co-located with a conference (PAAM?) 26-30 July 1999: summer school in or near Stockholm 8. Consideration of membership requests [MJW] MJW reported major difficulties in processing requests for membership, due to the sheer number received (> 100). MJW proposed that until requests for membership tailed off, it might be more useful for MJW to receive applications and make a suggestion for accepting/rejecting them offline. Management committee members would be given a short interval in which to register any objections, and if no comments were received, then the matter would be regarded as agreed. This proposal was agreed by the meeting to be a sensible one, and MJW proposed to move quickly on the large backlog of applications. 9. Summary of Financial Situation [MJW] MJW reported that the financial situation is currently healthy, and that if anything the network is under-spending. 10. Date & location of next meeting [MJW] The next meeting would be held in the day following the kick off meeting for SIGs. Precisely: 9.00am - 5.00pm, 25 September 1998 Room N105 1/92 Avenue des Nerviens 105 1040 Brussels 11. Any other business [MJW] MJW thanked the participants for a helpful day, and a meeting that finished on time!