Call for Workshop Proposals

The ICAPS 2008 Organizing Committee invites proposals for the Workshop Program of the 18th International Conference on Automated Planning and Scheduling (ICAPS). The workshops are intended to provide a forum for people to discuss issues with a selected focus.

The ICAPS 2008 Workshop Program will consist of several concurrent workshops held on September 14 and 15, 2008. Most proposals should aim for a length of one day. To facilitate interaction, each workshop will be limited to 25-50 invited participants. Workshop registration is free for ICAPS 2008 participants.

We solicit proposals in all areas related to AI Planning and Scheduling including:

Technologies for planning and scheduling (CP, OR, graph theory, SAT, model checking, decision theory, distributed problem solving, machine learning, meta-heuristics, etc.)

Integration of planning and scheduling

Knowledge engineering

Planning under uncertainty (MDPs, POMDPs, conformant planning, contingent planning, etc.)

Execution and replanning

Planning and scheduling extensions (optimization criteria, temporal domains, preferences, soft constraints, oversubscribed problems, etc.)

Planning and scheduling languages and semantics

Evaluation and benchmarking of planning and scheduling systems, planning competition

Less standard topics are also welcome provided the proposal shows community interest.

Important Dates

Deadline for proposal submission: March 3, 2008
Acceptance notification: April 7, 2008
CFP submission: May 2, 2008
Paper submissions: June 18, 2008
Notifications: July 11, 2008
Technical program: August 1, 2008
Edited working notes: August 15, 2008
Workshops: September 14 and 15, 2008

Workshop Proposal Content

To submit a workshop proposal, organizers must provide the following information:

A description of the workshop topic. The workshop should focus on specific issues or themes rather than broad, general topics.
A brief discussion of why the topic is of interest at this time, and why this topic is not adequately addressed by other meetings or conferences.
A brief description of the proposed workshop length (if other than one day) and format. Formats should maximize opportunities for discussion and interaction, and should seek to involve all workshop participants. Innovative approaches to fostering interaction are encouraged.
Names and full contact information for the organizing committee, plus short descriptions of their relevant expertise. Strong proposals include organizers who bring differing perspectives to the workshop topic and who are actively connected to the communities of potential participants.
A list of potential attendees. Optionally, if some proposed attendees have positively indicated potential (non-binding) interest in coming, this may be noted.

Workshop Organization

Workshop organizers will be responsible for:

Producing a Call for Participation (CFP) due May 2, 2008. The CFP will be placed on the ICAPS Web site. Workshop organizers will be responsible for additional publicity such as distributing the CFP to relevant newsgroups and electronic mailing lists, and especially to potential audiences outside of the ICAPS community
Maintaining the workshop’s web site.
Reviewing submissions and issuing invitations to participate in the workshop. Submissions should be received by June 20, 2008, and notification to authors sent by July 18, 2008
Formulating the detailed technical program for the workshop and making it available on the web by August 1, 2008.
Assembling camera-ready copy for the workshop proceedings by August 15, 2008 in close interaction with the Workshop Program Chair.

Proposal Submission

Workshop proposal submissions should be sent via email to the ICAPS 2008 Workshop chair (please Cc: to Jussi Rintanen), and must be received no later than March 3, 2008. Plain text or PDF submissions are preferred, using no more than two pages, not including the proposed list of attendees. Organizers will be notified, by email, of the acceptance or rejection of their proposals by April 7, 2008.

Workshop Chair

Ronen Brafman, Ben-Gurion University, brafman AT cs.bgu.ac.il