AAAI Spring Symposium Series 1994 Call for Proposals

[Rick Skalsky]

1994 Spring Symposium Series
Call for Proposals

AAAI invites proposals for the 1994 Spring Symposium Series, to be held 
at Stanford University, March 21-23, 1994. 

The Spring Symposium Series is a yearly set of symposia, designed to 
bring colleagues together in small, intimate forums. There will be about 
eight symposia on various topics in the 1994 Spring Symposium Series. 
All symposia will be limited in size. The symposia will run in parallel for 
two and one-half days.

The symposia will allow for presentation of speculative work and work in 
progress, as well as completed work. Ample discussion time will be 
scheduled in each symposium. Working notes will be prepared, and 
distributed to the participants. Chairs can determine whether the working 
notes of their symposia will be available as AAAI Technical Reports 
following the meeting. 

Most participants of the symposia will be selected on the basis of 
statements of interest or abstracts submitted to the symposia chairs; some 
open registration will be allowed. Participants will be expected to attend a 
single symposium.
Proposals for symposia should be between two and five pages in length, 
and should contain: 
  - A title for the symposium
  - A description of the symposium, identifying specific areas of interest
  - Evidence that the symposium is of interest at this time--such as a 
    completed, successful one-day workshop on a related topic
  - The names and addresses of the organizing committee, preferably three 
    or four people at different sites, all of whom have agreed to serve on the 
    committee
  - A list of several potential participants.

Ideally, the entire organizing committee should collaborate in producing 
the proposal. If possible, a draft proposal should be sent out to a few of the 
potential participants and their comments solicited.

All proposals will be reviewed by the AAAI Symposium Committee 
(cochairs: Lynn Andrea Stein, MIT; and Jim Hendler, University of 
Maryland). The criteria for acceptance of proposals include:
  - An appropriate level of perceived interest in the topic of the symposium 
among AAAI members. (Symposia proposals that appear to be too popular 
to fit in the size constraints should be turned into regular AAAI 
workshops.)
  - No long-term ongoing series of activities in the particular topic. (The 
Spring Symposium Series serves more to nurture interest in particular 
topics than to maintain it over a number of years.) The existence of 
activities in related and more-general topics will help to indicate the level 
of interest in the particular topic. 
  - An appropriate organizing committee.
  - Accepted proposals will be distributed as widely as possible over the 
subfields of AI, and balanced between theoretical and applied topics. 
Symposia bridging theory and practice are particularly solicited.

Symposium proposals should be submitted as soon as possible, but no 
later than June 7, 1993. Proposals that are submitted significantly before 
this deadline can be in draft form. Comments on how to improve and 
complete the proposal will be returned to the submitter in time for 
revisions to be made before the deadline. Notifications of acceptance or 
rejection will be sent to submitters around June 21, 1993. The submitters 
of accepted proposals will become the chair of the symposium, unless 
alternative arrangements are made.

The symposium organizing committees will be responsible for:
  - Producing, in conjunction with the general chair, a Call for Participation 
    for the symposium, which will be published in the AI Magazine
  - Reviewing requests to participate in the symposium and 
    determining symposium participants
  - Preparing working notes for the symposium
  - Scheduling the activities of the symposium
  - Preparing a short review of the symposium, to be printed in the AI 
    Magazine. 

AAAI will provide logistical support, will take care of all local 
arrangements, and will arrange for reproducing and distributing the 
working notes.


Please submit (preferably by electronic mail) your symposium proposals, 
and inquiries concerning symposia, to both of the chairs: 

Jim Hendler
(hendler at cs.umd.edu)
Department of Computer Science
University of Maryland
AV Williams Building
College Park, MD 20742 USA

Lynn Andrea Stein 
(las at ai.mit.edu)
AI Laboratory
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
545 Technology Square #811
Cambridge, MA 02139 USA