Call for Papers
Virtual Worlds and Simulation 2003 (VWSIM'03)
Part of the 2003 Western MultiConference
Sponsored by:
The Society for Modeling and Simulation International (SCS)
January 19 - 23, 2003
VWSim 2003, we will again a series of conference presentations for the first two and half days and a special day of workshops. We have received very good responses on the workshop format - participants enjoyed a chance to really talk. However, participants also wanted to attend more of the talks that were scheduled in individual workshops and they felt that having the hardbound publication at the conference was very
desirable.
For the last few years, we have had three major topics: Active Intelligent Environments, Experience And Experimentation In Social Worlds, and Integration Places: Infrastructure and Middleware in Virtual Worlds. In addition, if there is interest, we are considering a new track specifically on "Developing a Theory of Intelligent Systems and Virtual Worlds". We are open to suggestions for additional sessions, workshops, or tracks. We would also like to work with other groups that are interested in setting up a possible virtual session within the conference dates.
Several government groups are helping to sponsor this year's workshops, and hence there will be a small, but helpful amount of support available for conference fees and travel on a per need basis. If you need some help in order to attend the workshops, please send a note EARLY along with your submissions. We regret that we cannot cover the expenses for everyone!
Below we summarize each of the three workshops: The Workshops' descriptions purposely omit the domains of the applications (e.g., education and training, business and management, engineering and design, crisis management and situation rooms, etc.), because we have found that people working with applications for different domains have a great deal to say to each other, and can gain a lot from being gently put (thrown?) together.
Brief Descriptions of Tracks:
 | Active Intelligent Environments
 | What are the services and the processing capabilities needed in Virtual Worlds dedicated to collaborative activities, such as joint simulations, data exploitation, planning, and analysis? How can a virtual space actually shape data analysis or other intellectual activities? How does a Virtual World change the evaluation of human and processing activities? How can a Virtual World be used to organize a variety of intellectual activities within the same environment? What impact do Virtual Worlds have on the ability to
"live" with new national information architectures and new technologies? |
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| Experience and Experimentation in Social Worlds
| For a number of years, researchers and cyber-citizens have observed -- both informally and formally -- the growth of social virtual communities. More and more social scientists are using Virtual Worlds as an important testbed for research on human behavior, including emotional agents, social interactions, and the growth of cultures. Technologists are using VWs as testbeds for designing new types of intelligent utilities, educational software, robots, and other technology that must be designed to support and work closely with humans. This track brings together both those cyber-citizens who have experience in organizing and maintaining virtual communities for a variety of reasons and modelers and scientists who are using VWs in their research. |
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| Integration Places
| Infrastructure and Middleware in Virtual Worlds. The goal of Virtual Worlds (VWs) is to allow a number of people and processes access to a common "world." In many VWs, this means that multiple people have access to heterogeneous tools within a common world. In other VWs, this means that people have access to a world where activities must be synchronized in real time. In still other VWs, this means that multiple people are allowed to not only access but build or change the world both synchronously and asynchronously. Each of these types of VWs and others pose challenging problems to the underlying integration strategies and distributed infrastructure. In this track, examples of different integration strategies, infrastructure, and middleware are discussed. |
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| Developing a Theory of Intelligent Systems and Virtual Worlds
| An increasing number of theorists and researchers, ranging from mathematicians, logicians, cyberneticists and semioticians to anthropologists and linguists have been using Virtual Worlds as testbeds for the development of new formal methods and languages. Others have been working on developing better theoretical understanding on the use of virtual places. Still others have been working within Virtual Worlds to develop better theories and formal methods for agent architectures or other objects within a Virtual World. In this track, we are looking for both reports on progress in the development of formal methods and speculative papers on potential new mathematical applications within Virtual Worlds. |
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