[agents] AAAI-11: Final 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