The Agent Technical Fora have been created by AgentLink III following
up on previous special interest groups in AgentLink and AgentLink II
European networks. A Technical Fora session consists of several
working groups called Technical Forum Groups. These groups of
researchers and developers share an interest in a specific sub-area of
agent and multi-agent technology. Since the end of AgentLink, the
Technical Fora have been organized jointly to the EUMAS workshop,
starting last year.

There have been six successful editions of the Agent Technical Fora:
Rome, Italy, 30 June - 2 July 2004; Ljubljana, Slovenia, 28 February -
2 March 2005; Budapest, Hungary, 15-17 September 2005; Lisbon,
Portugal, 13 December 2006; Hammamet, Tunisia, 12 December 2007; and
Bath, UK, 17 December 2008. The Seventh Technical Fora will take place
in, Ayia Napa, Cyprus on 16 December 2009 as a joint event with EUMAS
2009.

The Seventh Technical Fora will be a half-day event (at most a full
day if needed/required/possible) and will be held the day before the
EUMAS workshop (17–18 December 2009). Since there is no available
funding for the participants to the Fora, coupling the event with the
workshop enables the participants to the workshop to attend to the
meetings without further costs. This will make possible for the
interesting and broad discussions, which have been the mark of the
various TFGs, to continue.

The aims of the Technical Fora are:
- to facilitate the dynamic development of communities around
specific areas of strategic importance for European agent R&D,
enabling them to share common problems, issues, and results in a
manner that other meetings (e.g., academic workshops and conferences)
do not allow for;
- to respond dynamically to fast-changing developments;
- to establish links with related areas within computing as well as
other research disciplines, such as economics and biology;
- to encourage common actions among participants, leading to the
promotion of agent technology in projects and standards.

The following are some groups which met in the previous TF:
- AOSE: Agent-Oriented Software Engineering
- BIOAGENTS: Agents in Bioinformatics
- CASA: Coordinating Agent Standardisation Activities
- PROMAS: Programming Multi-Agent Systems
- SELFORG: Self-organisation in Multi-Agent Systems
- SWTOOL: Software tools to build Regulated Multi-Agent Systems
- TRUST: Trust for Open Collaborative Agent Business Environments

Proposal Submission Guidelines

Proposals for holding a TFG in Ayia Napa should be sent to the Forum Chairs:
tf2009-chair@irit.fr, with the following information:

• Title of the proposed TFG.
• Scope and Aims of the TFG activity (short description, max. 200 words).
• TFG Chair: Name, affiliation and mail/Web address of the proposed
  TFG Chairperson.
• Other TFG Promoters: Names, affiliations and mail/Web addresses of
  at least three other researchers committing to participate to the TFG
  activity (from at least two different institutions, other than the TFG
  Chair’s one).
• Related Activities, Connections & Perspectives of TFG Chair &
  Promoters: Why the proposers should be the ones that take care of such
  a TFG? (a couple of paragraphs and if possible a URL to a personal Web
  page for each proposer).
• Assessment of Potential Interest: Who is going to be interested -
  individuals, groups and institutions?
• “Outline plan” of TFG activities: Which sort of actions will be
  pursued before, during and after the TFG meeting?
• Expected duration of TFG: half day (afternoon) or whole day.

Dates

TFG Proposal Submission: 24 October 2008
TFG Notification: 31 October 2008
TFG Program: 21 November 2008
TFG Takes Place in Ayia Napa, Cyprus: 16 December 2008

Contacts

Technical Forum Chairs: tf2009-chair@irit.fr
Massimo Cossentino, ICAR Institute, Palerma, Italy
Ruben Fuentes, Universitad Complutense, Madrid
Marie-Pierre Gleizes, IRIT, Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse
Simon Miles, King’s College London