CALL FOR PAPERS IJCAI-01 Workshop on -------------------------------- E-BUSINESS & THE INTELLIGENT WEB -------------------------------- Seattle, USA - August 5 2001 http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/ebiweb/ WORKSHOP CONTEXT Two trends appear likely to transform the web as we move further into the 21st century: (1) The e-business community is creating new infrastructures to support high-level business-to-business and business-to-consumer activities on the web. (2) The so-called "semantic web" movement is developing a range of proposals aimed at supporting intelligent information-seeking and information-management operations over the web. In the first trend, the main foci are on defining a new generation of electronic data interchange protocols, mostly based on XML (prominent initiatives include BizTalk, eCo, OASIS, and RosettaNet) and on creating new kinds of e-business services such as agent-mediated b2b e-commerce, and knowledge-driven customer relationship management. In the second trend, the emphasis is on enriching the web's data markup languages with knowledge representation features, to permit inference over the content of web pages (prominent initiatives include DAML, OIL, and RDF). Goals include the production of: internet-scale inference mechanisms, knowledge markup languages, and active information-seeking services. Viewed from a high level, these trends seem well-matched: semantic processing of web content has the potential to widen the scope of e-business hugely, while e-business provides a major application for the intelligent web. However, a closer look suggests that the two trends may not be moving towards a harmonious marriage! It is possible that the e-business community may adopt standards ill-suited to supporting semantic processing, and it is equally possible that the intelligent web proposals may not meet the real needs of e-business. WORKSHOP GOALS The goal of this workshop is to bring together members of the e-business and intelligent web communities to consider the current state of the two fields, and identify strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in the interaction between the two areas. Key questions that the workshop aims to address are: Strengths: What are the promises for e-business of the emerging intelligent web technologies? Weaknesses: Are there mismatches between the intelligent web proposals, and what's actually needed for e-business? Are there decisions being taken by the e-business community that may restrict exploitation of intelligent web technology? Opportunities: What are key areas in which to invest effort? Where will be the biggest e-business pay-offs from using intelligent web technology? Threats: How could failure to exploit intelligent web technology harm growth in e-business? How might the intelligent web miss the e-business boat? INTENDED AUDIENCE This workshop is specifically aimed at bringing together members of two communities: those focussed on e-business applications, particularly the emerging applications that an intelligent web might support, and those with an interest in providing intelligent web services. While previous international AI conferences have hosted workshops on these individual topics, there has not yet been a workshop designed to facilitate discussion across all the areas, and to consider risks as well as opportunities. WORKSHOP FORMAT The workshop is planned to include four kinds of session: Invited talks: Prominent members of the e-business and intelligent web communities will set out their stalls. Technical papers: Developers will present emerging e-business and intelligent web technologies. Application papers: Practitioners will review lessons-learned in exploiting current e-business and intelligent web solutions. Panel/discussion sessions: Key issues will be debated by panellists and the workshop participants as a whole. One of the planned sessions will be a shared session between this workshop and the workshop on Ontologies and Information Sharing. Submissions will be posted on this website in advance of the event. In most cases, presentations will be kept short, with speakers requested to highlight only key contributions, in order to set aside the maximum possible time for discussion and interaction. HOW TO CONTRIBUTE Contributions to the workshop can be either technical papers or statements of interest: Statements of interest should not exceed 3 pages in IJCAI format. Please indicate clearly if your paper is intended to be a statement of interest. Technical Papers should not exceed 12 pages in IJCAI format. All submissions should be made electronically if possible, either by email attachment or URL, and preferably in PDF or Postscript format. Only if electronic submission is impossible should you send three hardcopies. All submissions must be sent to the primary workshop contact, Alun Preece, at the address below. Please indicate if you would like your paper considered for the joint session with the workshop on Ontologies and Information Sharing. IMPORTANT DATES 10 Feb 2001 Sumission of papers and statements of interest 15 March 2001 Notification of acceptance 15 April 2001 Camera-ready papers WORKSHOP ORGANISING COMMITTEE Alun Preece (Co-chair / Primary Contact) University of Aberdeen Department of Computing Science Aberdeen, Scotland, UK Email apreece@csd.abdn.ac.uk Phone +44 1224 272291 Fax +44 1224 273422 Dan O'Leary (Co-chair) University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA, USA Email oleary@rcf-fs.usc.edu Dieter Fensel Division of Mathmatics & Computer Science Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam The Netherlands Email dieter@top.cs.vu.nl Jim Hendler Program Manager DARPA/ISO Arlington, VA, USA Email jhendler@darpa.mil Robert Plant University of Miami Department of Computer Information Systems Coral Gables, FL, USA Email rplant@exchange.sba.miami.edu Rudi Studer University of Karlsruhe Institute AIFB Karlsruhe, Germany Email studer@aifb.uni-karlsruhe.de PROGRAMME COMMITTEE Grigoris Antoniou, Griffith University, Australia Richard Benjamins, isoco.com, Spain Stefan Decker, Stanford University, USA Frank van Harmelen, AIdministrator, The Netherlands Matthias Klusch, DFKI, Germany Craig Knoblock, University of Southern California, USA Sergei Melnik, Stanford University, USA Steve Minton, Fetch Technologies, USA Luc Moreau, University of Southampton, UK Bob O'Keefe, Brunel University, UK Paul O'Brien, BT, UK Tuomas Sandholm, Carnegie-Mellon University, USA Nigel Shadbolt, University of Southampton, UK Carles Sierra, IIIA-CSIC, Spain Katia Sycara, Carnegie-Mellon University, USA Mike Uschold, Boeing, USA Workshop website http://www.csd.abdn.ac.uk/ebiweb/ IJCAI website http://www.ijcai-01.org