[agents] AAAI-11: Call for Tutorials

[Thomas Lukasiewicz]

/Call for Proposals/
*AAAI-11 Tutorial Forum*
Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence
August 7-11, 2011 * San Francisco, California, USA
http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/AAAI/2011/aaai11tutorialcall.pdf

/Sponsored by the Association for the Advancement of Artificial 
Intelligence/

The AAAI-11 Program Committee invites proposals for the Tutorial Forum 
of the Twenty-Fifth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence 
(AAAI-11). The Tutorial Forum will be held August 7-8, 2011 in San 
Francisco. Anyone interested in presenting a tutorial at AAAI-11 should 
submit a proposal to the 2011 Tutorial Forum Cochairs (listed below) via 
EasyChair.
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*What Is the Tutorial Forum?*
The Tutorial Forum provides an opportunity for junior and senior 
researchers to spend two days each year freely exploring exciting 
advances in disciplines outside their normal focus. We believe this type 
of forum is essential for the cross fertilization, cohesiveness, and 
vitality of the AI field. We all have a lot to learn from each other; 
the Tutorial Forum promotes the continuing education of each member of 
the AAAI. To encourage full participation by technical conference 
registrants, no separate fee will be charged for admittance to the 
Tutorial Forum in 2011.
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*Topics*
AAAI is interested in proposals for advanced tutorials at the leading 
edge of AI. We are particularly interested in tutorials that offer two 
types of knowledge. The first type provides in-depth background tools to 
help educate researchers and students for the purpose of conducting AI 
research; examples of this type of tutorials from AAAI-10 include 
"Sampling Techniques for Probabilistic and Deterministic Graphical 
Models," "Voting Theory," and "Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for 
MDPs." A second type of tutorial provides a broad overview for an AI 
area that potentially crosses boundaries with an interesting application 
area; examples of this type of tutorial from AAAI-10 include "Exploiting 
Statistical and Relational Information on the Web and in Social Media: 
Applications, Techniques, and New Frontiers," "Towards Intelligent Web 
Search: Inferring Searcher Intent," and "Machine Learning Meets 
Knowledge Representation in the Semantic Web."

Our goal is to present a diverse program that includes core areas of AI, 
new techniques from allied disciplines that can inform research within 
AI, and conversely emerging applications of AI techniques to new areas. 
Previous years' tutorial programs provide an indication of the scope and 
variety of possible topics. The list is not exclusive; indeed, we are 
expressly interested in topics that we would not have imagined to 
mention. Finally, note that we very much welcome proposals for 
educational approaches that go beyond the traditional format of 
four-hour tutorials, exploiting the flexibility that the open format 
program offers.
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*Submission Requirements*
We need two kinds of information in the proposals: information that will 
be used for selecting proposals and information that will appear in the 
tutorial description brochure. The proposal should provide sufficient 
information to evaluate the quality of the technical content being 
taught, the quality of the educational material being used, and the 
speakers' skill at presenting this material.

Each proposal should include at least the following:

/Goal of the tutorial:/ Who is the target audience? What will the 
audience walk away with? What makes the topic innovative?
/History:/ List of previous venues and approximate audience sizes, if 
the same or a similar tutorial has been given elsewhere; otherwise an 
estimate of the audience size.
/Content:/ Detailed outline and list of additional materials, augmented 
with samples, such as past tutorial slides and survey articles, whenever 
possible. Be as complete as possible.
/Tutorial description:/ A short paragraph summarizing the tutorial 
outline, and the intended duration of the symposium (default is four hours).
/Prerequisite knowledge:/ What knowledge is assumed of the target audience.

Please also submit the following information about the team of 
presenters: name, mailing address, phone number, email address; 
background in the tutorial area, including a list of publications and/or 
presentations; any available examples of work in the area (ideally, a 
published tutorial-level article or presentation materials on the 
subject); evidence of teaching experience (courses taught or 
references); and evidence of scholarship in AI or computer science.

*Submission Deadline*
Proposals must be received by December 3, 2010. Decisions about the 
tutorial program will be made by January 14, 2011. Speakers should be 
prepared to submit their tutorial descriptions and bios by January 28, 
2011, and to post completed course materials on their websites by July 
1, 2011. Submissions must be in pdf format and made via EasyChair at 
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=aaai2011tutorialforum.

*Tutorial Cochairs*

Thomas Lukasiewicz
Oxford University Computing Laboratory
Wolfson Building, Parks Road
Oxford OX1 3QD, UK
0044-1865-522566
0044-1865-273839 (fax)
Thomas.Lukasiewicz at comlab.ox.ac.uk

Patrick Pantel
Microsoft Research
One Microsoft Way
Redmond, WA 98052
ppantel at microsoft.com