University of Birmingham AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 - Alan Turing 2012

2-6 July 2012

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(Call for Proposals for Symposia)

CALL for PROPOSALS for SYMPOSIA

to occur as the main content of the AISB/IACAP World Congress 2012 in honour of Alan Turing

2-6 July 2012
University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK
http://events.cs.bham.ac.uk/turing12/ or via
http://www.aisb.org.uk/convention/aisb12/

organized by

Preamble

AISB and IACAP are delighted to be joining forces to run the above Congress in 2012. The Congress serves both as the year's AISB Convention and the year's IACAP conference. The Congress has been inspired by a desire to honour Alan Turing and by the broad and deep significance of Turing's work to AI, to the philosophical ramifications of computing, and to philosophy and computing more generally. The Congress is one of the events forming the Alan Turing Year (http://www.mathcomp.leeds.ac.uk/turing2012/).

The intent of the Congress is to stimulate a particularly rich interchange between AI and Philosophy on any areas of mutual interest, whether directly addressing Turing's own research output or not.

The Congress will consist mainly of a number of collocated Symposia on specific research areas, interspersed with Congress-wide refreshment breaks, social events and invited Plenary Talks. This format borrows from the normal AISB Convention practice and the theme-session structure used in IACAP conferences. All papers other than the invited Plenaries will be given within Symposia. This format is perfect for encouraging new dialogue and collaboration both within and between research areas.

Symposia are expected normally to last for one day or two days, but somewhat shorter or longer possibilities can be considered. They will probably each involve between ten and fifty participants but there are no particular limits. Symposia can include any type of event of academic benefit: talks, posters, panels, discussions, demonstrations, outreach sessions, etc.

Each Symposium will be organized by its own programme committee. The committee proposes the Symposium, defines the area(s) for it, works out a structure for it, issues calls for abstracts/papers etc., manages the process of selecting submitted papers for inclusion, and compiles an electronic file on which the symposium proceedings will be based (locally produced, and not precluding publication of papers elsewhere).

The Congress organizers are in charge of everything else: overall schedule, plenary talks, registration, creation of the individual symposium proceedings in print, creation of an overall electronic proceedings for the Conference, etc.

Some Research Themes

Proposals for Symposia are welcomed in all areas of AI and cognitive science (as at normal AISB Conventions) and all areas of philosophy related to computing (as at normal IACAP conferences).

We have identified some research areas as being especially appropriate for the Congress. These are as follows, BUT ARE IN NO WAY EXCLUSIVE:

Proposals for symposia touching on these themes will be especially welcome, but we will also very much welcome proposals in other areas relevant to AISB and/or IACAP. In particular, WE WELCOME SEQUELS to PREVIOUS AISB SYMPOSIA or IACAP THEME SESSIONS.

Symposium Proposal Procedure

NB:

The deadline for Symposium proposals is:
1 September 2011

Submissions should consist of:

  1. a title
  2. a description of between 300 and 1000 words of the research areas of the Symposium, the relevance of the Symposium to the Congress, and the nature of the academic events within the Symposium (talks, posters, panels, demonstrations, etc.);
    with special mention of any aspects of the Symposium that bring together AI and Philosophy in an unusual way;
  3. whether the Syposium is intended as a sequel to a symposium or theme session at a previous AISB or IACAP conference - and if so a clear indication of which symposium/session and when;
  4. an indication of whether submissions will be by abstract, extended abstract or full paper;
  5. your preferences about the intended length of the Symposium as a number of days (preferably one day or two, but otherwise anything from half a day to three days), together with a brief justification;
  6. a description (up to 500 words) of any experience you have in organization of academic research meetings (NB: it is not a requirement that you have such experience);
  7. names and workplaces of any invited speakers that you may have in mind for the symposium (NB: it is not a requirement to have invited speakers) ;
    (NB: It is not a requirement to have invited speakers, and indeed it is unlikely that the Congress will be able to fund such speakers except in special cases. Therefore you would probably have to seek alternative sources of funding for them. However, it would be useful for the Congress chairs and proposal-selection group to know about possible invited speakers.)
  8. your names and full contact details, together with, if possible, names and workplaces of the members of a preliminary, partial programme committee.

Submitting The Proposal

Invited Plenary Speakers:

Four invited Plenary speakers have so far been secured, namely:

Congress Chairs

Overall Chairs:

Local Chair:

Proposal Consideration Process, etc.

The proposals will be considered by the committees of both societies, with committee members who have conflicts of interest excluded from discussions as appropriate.

We expect to have selected the successful proposals by 15th September.

We will be requiring the proposers of the successful proposals to put out a first call for abstracts/papers by 15th October, with a view to:

(These dates are provisional and may be adjusted.)