[agents] 17th Annual Trading Agent Competition (Final CFP)

[Vedran Podobnik]

Call for Participation
***17th Annual Trading Agent Competition***
May-July 2016


We invite you to participate in the 17th Annual Trading Agent Competition (TAC-16), with qualification rounds and finals to be held in May-July 2016. The award ceremony will take place during the IJCAI 16 conference in New York, USA in early July. You may register for the competition at https://goo.gl/nlDeMP.

The TAC-16 will include two games:
1.            *Power TAC*. Sustainable energy systems of the future will need more than efficient, clean, low cost, renewable energy sources; they will also need efficient price signals that motivate sustainable energy consumption as well as a better real-time alignment of energy demand and supply. In Power TAC, agents act as retail brokers in a local power distribution region, purchasing power from a wholesale market as well as from local sources, such as homes and businesses with solar panels, and selling power to local customers and into the wholesale market. Retail brokers must solve a supply-chain problem in which the product is infinitely perishable, and supply and demand must be exactly balanced at all times.
Power TAC Game Master is Wolf Ketter, Erasmus University, Rotterdam. Full documentation and software are available at http://www.powertac.org.
2.            *AdX (Ad Exchange)*. Brand advertising through web display ads, aimed at driving up brand awareness and purchase intentions, is the cornerstone of the Internet economic ecosystem. The ever increasing penetration of the Internet and recent technological advances allow for cost effective targeting and gave rise to an array of new interconnected entities - e.g., the pivotal Ad Exchange (AdX) - offering added value to publishers and advertisers. The new AdX game reflects the challenges faced by an Ad Network as it bids for display ads opportunities. The key challenge that Ad Networks face is to fulfill advertising contracts at minimum cost while sustaining and attracting advertisers by achieving high quality targeting. Therefore, efficient marketing effectiveness is the main concern of an agent implementing the Ad Network strategy.
AdX Game Master is Mariano Schain, Tel Aviv University and Google. More information, documentation and software are available at https://sites.google.com/site/gameadx.
The award ceremony and post-TAC-16 poster session will be organized during the AMEC/TADA-16, the International Workshop on Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce and Trading Agent Design and Analysis to be held at IJCAI-16 on 10 July, 2016.

To officially register for TAC-16, please fill out the registration form at https://goo.gl/nlDeMP not later than 10 June, 2016.

The entry fee will be US$250 per team to enter one game, or $400 for both TAC games. The entry fee (for one game) is waived for teams who send a representative to the post-TAC-16 poster session at IJCAI 16, if that representative registers for the AMEC/TADA-16 workshop (in case a team participates in both games, registration cost is reduced to US$150).

Note: Please send any questions regarding the fees to tac at tradingagents.org. Groups unable to afford the entry fee may also contact tac at tradingagents.org for special consideration.

Exact dates for the qualifying and final rounds are:
***Power TAC***
   * The tournament will start on 17 May, 2016 (additional tournament registration: http://goo.gl/Zlnq7e)
   * Qualification round:  17-25 May, 2016 (test basic functionality)
   * Seeding round: 1-15 June, 2016 (game size will depend on the number of brokers)
   * Finals: 22 June - 6 July, 2016 (game sizes will be 3, 5, and 8 brokers, and at most 10 brokers)

***TAC AdX***
   * The tournament will start on 16 June, 2016
   * Qualification rounds:  16 June, 2016
   * Finals: 10 July, 2016

Information about the International Workshop on Agent-mediated Electronic Commerce and Trading Agent Design and Analysis (AMEC/TADA-16) workshop can be found at: http://www.sofiaceppi.com/AMECTADA2016.

Information about the Association for Trading Agent Research, the organization responsible for TAC, can be found at: http://tradingagents.org.


Please circulate this announcement to anyone who may be interested in participating. Inquiries regarding the competition itself may be directed to TAC-16 General Chair:
   * Vedran Podobnik (vedran.podobnik at fer.hr).

Inquiries about the specific games should be directed to the corresponding Game Master:
   * PowerTAC: Wolf Ketter (wketter at rsm.nl);
   * TAC AdX: Mariano Schain (schain.mariano at gmail.com).



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Vedran