AGENTLINK UPDATE # 12 --- 11 January 1999 This is the email newsletter of AgentLink -- Europe's Network of Excellence for Agent-based Computing. The AgentLink WWW site is http://www.AgentLink.org/ IMPORTANT: Please take the time to ensure that every member of your group receives a copy of the AgentLink update. If you have a group mail alias, why not ask for this alias to be added to the AgentLink update list? To add someone to this mailing list (not necessarily a member of AgentLink), just send a request to mailto:coordinator@AgentLink.org ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Contents: * AgentLink Newsletter Issue 2 -- Now Available! * Agent standards workshop in London * REMINDER: Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce SIG 2nd meeting -- call for participation * REMINDER: Intelligent information agents SIG 2nd meeting -- call for participation * REMINDER: Methodologies & software engineering SIG 2nd meeting -- call for participation * REMINDER: Agent Based Social Simulation SIG 1st meeting -- call for participation * REMINDER: IATA-SIG Kick off meeting * Three workshops of interest... * Research skills database (READ THIS!) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * AgentLink Newsletter Issue 2 -- Now Available! The second issue of the AgentLink newsletter is now available. To get the PDF version of the newsletter, go to the AgentLink home page and follow the sidebar link to "newsletter". As before, we will be sending out a nice hardcopy version to all AgentLink members, but if you can't wait (and who could blame you?) the electronic version is available online now. The deadline for articles for issue 3 is *Friday March 5, 1999*. If you are interested in contributing, please contact the editor, Paul Davidsson (mailto:Paul.Davidsson@ide.hk-r.se). We have obtained an ISSN number for AgentLink news, (ISSN 1465-3842), so articles published in the newsletter count as real publications! Contents of Issue 2: Features JACK Intelligent Agents - Components for Intelligent Agents in Java Paolo Busetta, Ralph Ronnquist, Andrew Hodgson, and Andrew Lucas ZEUS: A Toolkit for building Distributed Multi-Agent Systems Divine Ndumu, Jaron Collis, Gilbert Owusu, Matt Sullivan, and Lyndon Lee Project Reports ACTS CLIMATE: An Overview Thomas Magedanz ADE: An Architecture type-based Development Environment for Agent Application Systems Mario Kupries Site Reports The Mole Mobile Agents Research group Markus Schwehm The DAI Unit at Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London Nick Jennings and Mike Wooldridge Conference Reports Second International Workshop on Cooperative Information Agents Matthias Klusch Second International Workshop on Mobile Agents (MA'99) Fritz Hohl and Markus Schwehm AgentLink/SIG Reports What's happening in AgentLink? Mike Wooldridge What is a 'Special Interest Group'? Mike Wooldridge Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce Carles Sierra Intelligent Information Agents Innes Ferguson (and Matthias Klusch) Methodologies and Software Engineering for Agent Systems Jan Treur Conference and Workshop Calendar ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Agent standards workshop in London AgentLink is supporting a two-day seminar on agent standards, to be held in London on 23-24 March 1999. The seminar, being organised by UNICOM Seminars Ltd, will cover a range of issues, and will include presentations from OMG and FIPA. See http://www.unicom.co.uk/forthcoming_events.asp for information. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * REMINDER: Agent Mediated Electronic Commerce SIG 2nd meeting -- call for participation DATE, TIME & LOCATION The meeting will be held on April 21 & 22, 1999, right after the international PAAM-99 conference in London, UK. The AMEC SIG meeting is co-located with meetings of other SIGs of AgentLink. On April 23rd there will be a plenary session, at which each SIG co-ordinator will present the results of the meetings. Everyone attending the SIG meeting is invited to attend this plenary session. ORGANIZATION OF THE MEETING The meeting will be organised around four working groups. A chair for each working group will be selected among the members of the SIG. These chairs will organise the discussions in the appropriate form. The co-ordinator will discuss with the other SIGs' co-ordinators the creation of working groups where members of different SIGs will have the oportunity to meet. The four working groups that appeared to be most relevant for the participants on the first meeting were: * Negotiation * Market and protocol specification * Preference modelling * Security PARTICIPATION The number of attendees of this meeting is limited to 40 persons. If you like to attend the meeting, please send a statement of interest not later than JANUARY 15, 1999, including your name, affiliation, topic of interest (try to include one of the above four ones) and full contact address by email. AgentLink SIG meetings are by invitation only, i.e., all participants have to confirm their attendance to the meeting, and have to be confirmed by the SIG co-ordinator. TRAVEL FUNDING AgentLink (AL) will fund a *maximum* of one person from each AL member node to attend *each* SIG meeting, provided that these people are *actively participating* (e.g. by presenting something). AL won't pay people to come and watch. The maximum of funding is 750 ECU per person for max. 10 person per SIG. AL will allow up to 2 people from each AL node to attend each SIG meeting (i.e., if 2 people attend a single SIG meeting, then at most one will be funded.) Please indicate your need to be funded not later than January 15, 1999 by email. You will be notified on acceptance or rejection of your claim for travel funding by email on February 10, 1999. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * REMINDER: Intelligent information agents SIG 2nd meeting -- call for participation The main aim of this special interest group (SIG) is to promote collaborative projects and cross fertilisation of ideas between academic nodes with similar interests in the research area of INTELLIGENT INFORMATION AGENTS (I2A). This shall be done, e.g., by putting groups with related interests in touch with one-another, providing and disseminating information about work of national and international groups and projects in the I2A area, supporting workshops and conferences of interest. For more details about the I2A-SIG, please, see the SIG's home page in the Web, bookmark it and check back often for up-to-date informations: http://www.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~klusch/i2a-SIG.html This SIG meeting is *not* an academic workshop. Topics concern SIG's further activities in European R&D of intelligent information agents, presentation and discussion of collaborative efforts and advances in R&D in the area. PARTICIPATION The number of attendees of this meeting is limited to 40 persons. AgentLink SIG meetings are **by invitation only**, i.e., all participants have to confirm their attendance of the meeting, and have to be confirmed by the meeting chair. If you like to attend the meeting please send a STATEMENT OF INTEREST to arrive not later than JANUARY 15, 1999, including (1) your name, affiliation and full contact address (2) list of recent and ongoing collaborations and participation in national and European research programs or projects of your group/institute in R&D of intelligent information agents. Available I2A prototypes for demonstration at the meeting. (3) a short (update of the) report about your group (in plain text, pdf or postscript). You may check the following URL for reports on European R&D in intelligent information agents carried out by entities in the SIG: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~klusch/sig/reports.html by email (to klusch@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) or mail (see address below). You may find more information on the I2A SIG's activities at: http://www.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~klusch/i2aActiv.html Date & Location The meeting will be held at APRIL 21 & 22, 1999, and will be co-located with the PAAM-99 conference in LONDON, UK. More detailed info will be available soon. The I2A SIG meeting is co-located with meetings of other SIGs of AgentLink. On April 23rd will be a plenary meeting of the AgentLink network, which Everyone attending the SIG meeting is invited to attend. The plenary day will consist of presentations and discussion both on the future of AgentLink and the future of agent technology generally. Travel Funding AgentLink (AL) will fund a *maximum* of one person from each AL member node to attend *each* SIG meeting, provided that these people are *actively participating* (e.g. by presenting something). AL will allow up to 2 people from each AL node to attend each SIG meeting (i.e., if 2 people attend a single SIG meeting, then at most one will be funded.) Note that travel support will *only* be available to AgentLink members. Please indicate your need to be funded not later than January 15, 1999 by email (to klusch@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de) or mail (see address below). You will be notified on acceptance or rejection of your request for travel support by email on February 10, 1999. Contact For all inquiries concerning the I2A SIG/meeting please contact: Matthias Klusch Technical University of Chemnitz Strasse der Nationen 62 09111 Chemnitz, Germany email: klusch@informatik.tu-chemnitz.de phone: +49-371-531-1511 fax: +49-371-531-1530 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * REMINDER: Methodologies & software engineering SIG, call for participation The main aim of this Special Interest Group is to promote co-operation and cross fertilisation of ideas between academic and industrial nodes with similar interests in the area of Methodologies and Software Engineering of Agent Systems. For more details about this SIG, and a report of the first SIG meeting held on September 24, 1998, see the SIG's home page. http://www.cs.vu.nl/~treur/SIG.meth0.html Your are cordially invited to join us at this second meeting. DATE AND TIME The meeting will be held at APRIL 21 & 22, 1999, and will be co-located with the PAAM-99 conference in LONDON, UK. More detailed info will be available soon. The SIG meeting is co-located with meetings of other SIGs of AgentLink. On April 23rd will be a plenary meeting of the AgentLink network, which Everyone attending the SIG meeting is invited to attend. THE MEETING If you like to attend the meeting please send a STATEMENT OF INTEREST to arrive not later than JANUARY 15, 1999, by email (to treur@cs.vu.nl). The aim of the second meeting for this SIG will be to further define and refine an agenda for the area covered by the SIG, mapping out the key issues that need to be addressed in order to make agent-based software development a reality, and the key interests and problems of participants. See the report of the first SIG for the current state of this agenda. To participate in the SIG, you should send a position paper (in Word, HTML or ASCII format), addressing one or more key issues that you consider worth while to be discussed in more detail at the meeting (possibly in a smaller group). These issues may be taken from the list produced at the first meeting, or, if you believe important issues are missing, as an addition to this list. Please relate you contribution to this report as much as possible. The position papers will be included in the SIG's Website. The meeting itself will consist of plenary presentations and discussion sessions, and possibly smaller working groups. TRAVEL FUNDING AgentLink (AL) will fund a *maximum* of one person from each AL member node to attend *each* SIG meeting, provided that these people are *actively participating* (e.g. by presenting something). AL will allow up to 2 people from each AL node to attend each SIG meeting (i.e., if 2 people attend a single SIG meeting, then at most one will be funded.) Note that travel support will *only* be available to AgentLink members. Please indicate your need to be funded not later than January 15, 1999 by email (to treur@cs.vu.nl). You will be notified on acceptance or rejection of your request for travel support by email on February 10, 1999. CONTACT If you have further questions, please contact: Jan Treur (SIG coordinator) Artificial Intelligence Group Department of Mathematics and Computer Science Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands Email: treur@cs.vu.nl URL: http://www.cs.vu.nl/~treur Phone: +31.20.4447763 Fax: +31.20.4447653 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * REMINDER: Agent Based Social Simulation SIG 1st meeting -- Call for Participation Computer simulation has proved useful for modelling phenomena of traditionally social scientific interest, such as cooperation, coordination, organizational behavior, social dynamics, group and coalition formation, and the evolution of conventions and norms. Multi-agent researchers soon came to realize how crucial these topics are within their field. In particular, the study of emergence of social phenomena such as organizational performance and optimization, cultural norms, institutional forms has become a major direction of research in MAS. In turn, such social modelling rings into play a variety of normative concepts, such as conventions and obligations, and phenomena, such as commitment and responsibility, and draws attention to how these phenomena evolve among computational agents in interaction. These concerns have led social simulators to pay increasing attention to agent modelling. Dissatisfied with the model of the rational social actor, they have developed simulation models of evolutionary social phenomena incorporating representations of cognition derived other disciplines such as cognitive science and social psychology. However, the model of the agent used is essentially behavioural and frequently more rudimentary than those developed in some areas of AI. The computational study of social organizations and institutions is a topic of growing interest in both the computer science and social science communities. In the formal/computational scientific communities, logical philosophy and social philosophy have a long tradition in studying institutions and obligations. Interest in such issues is rapidly growing. This is shown by several indicators, including (a) the number of workshops, etc.; (b) the diffusion of notions of obligation, convention, trust, commitment, reciprocity, right, permission, etc. in the research on intelligent agents; (c) the attention paid to norm-based phenomena in designing and implementing situated intelligent agents (consider the trade-off between robust performances and flexibility: formal and computational research on commitment essentially proceeds from the question of how to design intelligent, adaptive, flexible agents that exhibit robust performances; moreover, think of the research on conventions as solutions to problems of coordination among autonomously interacting agents). DATE, TIME & LOCATION The meeting will be held at April 21 & 22, 1999, right before the international PAAM-99 conference in London, UK. The I2A SIG meeting is co-located with meetings of other SIGs of AgentLink. On April 23rd will be a plenary session, at which each SIG coordinator will present the results of this meeting. Everyone attending the SIG meeting is invited to attend this plenary session. PARTICIPATION The number of attendees of this meeting is limited to 40 persons. If you like to attend the meeting please send a statement of interest not later than JANUARY 15, 1999, including 1. your name, affiliation and full contact address 2. list of recent and ongoing collaborations and participation in national and European research programs or projects of your group/institute in R&D of agent-based social simulation 3. short (update of the) report about your group (in plain text, pdf or postscript) by email or mail to the meeting chair (see address below). AgentLink SIG meetings are by invitation only, i.e., all participants have to confirm their attendance of the meeting, and have to be confirmed by the meeting chair. Please do not turn up unannounced and expect to be allowed in since AgentLink has to pay for each person attending the meeting. MEETING SCHEDULE Topics of interest concern SIG's further activities in European R&D of agent-based social simulation, presentation and discussion of collaborative efforts and advances in R&D in the area. A preliminary schedule will be available soon. TRAVEL FUNDING AgentLink (AL) will fund a *maximum* of one person from each AL member node to attend *each* SIG meeting, provided that these people are *actively participating* (e.g. by presenting something). AL won't pay people to come and watch. The maximum of funding is 750 ECU per person for max. 10 person per SIG. AL will allow up to 2 people from each AL node to attend each SIG meeting (i.e., if 2 people attend a single SIG meeting, then at most one will be funded.) Please indicate your need to be funded not later than January 15, 1999 by email or mail (see address below). You will be notified on acceptance or rejection of your claim for travel funding by email on February 10, 1999. REGISTRATION There is now an on-line form for registering interest in participating in the London meeting of the Agent Based Social Simulation (ABSS) Special Interest Group of AgentLink. The form is accessible from the CfP page at http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/abss/meeting1.html Please note that the form requests a statement of your interests and a statement of a proposed presentations. The presentations are NOT intended to be academic papers, nor reports on completed research but suggestions for future work and collaborative research projects in agent-based social simulation. Presentation of research results should be limited to what is necessary to explain/justify proposals for the direction of future work in the field. Finally, please remember that THE DEADLINE FOR SUBMITTING THE REGISTRATION FORM IS FRIDAY, 15 JANUARY. CONTACT For all inquiries concerning the SIG meeting please contact the coordinator: Rosaria Conte Division of AI, Cognitive and Interaction Modelling PSS (Project on Social Simulation) IP/Cnr, Viale Marx 15 - 00137 Roma Tel +39+06+86090210 Fax +39+6+86090214 mailto:rosaria@pscs2.irmkant.rm.cnr.it ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * REMINDER: IATA-SIG Kick off meeting The main purpose of this SIG is to provide a forum for discussion and collaboration between telecommunications service and network providers (telco industry), universities and other research institutions as well as European research projects (ACTS, EURESCOM, ...), on the topic of intelligent agents for telecommunications applications and telematics services (IATA). The overall aim of the IATA SIG is to support the rapid and timely adoption of new telecommunications applications and telematics services in the telco industry based on agent technology, and to firmly establish agent technology in the telco industry. The IATA SIG promotes synergetic efforts on applying agent technology to telecommunications. It is expected to establish new cooperation between both researchers and telcos in the area mentioned above, but also to tighten contacts and focus dispersed research and development efforts. Agent technology is to be investigated as to how it can be usefully applied to the area of telecommunications applications and telematics services. Specifically, the following goals are to be pursued: * Identification and analysis of the telecommunications requirements for an open, scalable agent platform * Identification and analysis of telecommunications applications and telematics services where agent technology can add substantial value as opposed to other, more conventional technologies. These applications and services include - service and network management - mobility supporting services - electronic commerce * Identification and analysis of requirements for an infrastructure for agent-based applications and services * analysis of a methodology for agent-oriented software development for telecommunications applications and telematics services. PARTICIPATION ============== The number of attendees of this meeting is limited to 40 persons. AgentLink SIG meetings are **by invitation only**, i.e., all participants have to confirm their attendance of the meeting, and have to be confirmed by the meeting chair. If you like to attend the meeting please send a STATEMENT OF INTEREST to arrive not later than JANUARY 31, 1999, including (1) your name, affiliation and full contact address (2) list of recent and ongoing collaborations and participation in national and european research programs or projects of your group/institute in R&D of intelligent information agents and available IATA prototypes for demonstration at the meeting. (3) a short (update of the) report about your group (in plain text, pdf or postscript). by email (to iata-sig@dailab.cs.tu-berlin.de) or mail (see address below). Date & Location ============= The meeting will be held at APRIL 21 & 22, 1999, and will be co-located with the PAAM-99 conference in LONDON, UK. More detailed info will be available soon. The IATA SIG meeting is co-located with meetings of other SIGs of AgentLink. On April 23rd will be a plenary meeting of the AgentLink network, which everyone attending the SIG meeting is invited to attend. Travel Funding ============ AgentLink (AL) will fund a *maximum* of one person from each AL member node to attend *each* SIG meeting, provided that these people are *actively participating* (e.g. by presenting something). AL will allow up to 2 people from each AL node to attend each SIG meeting (i.e., if 2 people attend a single SIG meeting, then at most one will be funded.) Note that travel support will *only* be available to AgentLink members. Please indicate your need to be funded not later than January 31, 1999 by email or mail (see addresses below). You will be notified on acceptance or rejection of your request for travel support by email on February 28, 1999. About AgentLink ============== IATA SIG is part of AgentLink: Europe's ESPRIT funded Network of Excellence for agent-based computing. For further information about AgentLink and its activities (including how to join), see http://www.AgentLink.org/. Contact ======= For all inquiries concerning the IATA SIG/meeting please contact: Dr. Sahin Albayrak DAI-Lab Technical University of Berlin Sekr. FR6-7 Franklinstr. 28/29 10587 Berlin Germany Phone +49 30 314 24943 Fax +49 30 314 21799 Email: iata-sig@dailab.cs.tu-berlin.de http://dai.cs.tu-berlin.de/deutsch/news/SIG-IATA/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Three workshops of interest... As you may by now have noticed, this AgentLink update mailshot does not normally carry advertisements for conferences or workshops. This is a deliberate policy, to avoid filling your in tray with yet more copies of announcements you have already seen half a dozen times. If you want to find out what workshops and conferences are happening in the agent area, (and there are a *lot* in 1999) we have an *extensive*, coherently organised list online at http://www.AgentLink.org/resources/other-events.html However, it is worth drawing attention to three workshops of specific interest to AgentLink members as they match AgentLink SIGs: - AmEC 99 (Agent mediated electronic commerce) see http://ecommerce.media.mit.edu/amec99/ - CIA-99 (Cooperative information agents) http://www.informatik.tu-chemnitz.de/~klusch/cia99.html - IATA 99 (Intelligent agents for telecoms applications) http://dai.cs.tu-berlin.de/deutsch/news/tagungen/IATA99/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- * Research skills database (READ THIS!) Please, if your institution has not yet completed the research skills database, could you do so! It will only work if we all do it! To remind you, one of the goals of WorkPackage 2 in AgentLink is to establish a research skills database for AgentLink members. Once constructed, this database can be used for finding partners for collaboration within AgentLink, including future joint applications for the fifth frame program. Your important contribution to this process is to fill out an electronic form, which can be found at http://www.dsv.su.se/~mab/AL/Index.html. In the near future, you will be informed about the progress in the process of constructing the database. If you have any questions about this process, or about this questionnaire, do not hesitate to ask Magnus Boman (mailto:mab@dsv.su.se). END ------------------------------------------------------------