RuleML-2008: Open Calls, Deadline August 22nd

[Adrian Paschke <paschke@in.tum.de>]

[ our apologies should you receive this message more than one time ]


=============================================================================

2008 International RuleML Symposium
on Rule Interchange and Applications (RuleML-2008)

October 30-31, 2008, Orlando, Florida
http://2008.ruleml.org

=============================================================================
Open Calls
for
RuleML-2008 Challenge/Showcase Demos,
Lightning/Highlight Talks & Fast Abstracts

Deadline: August 22nd
=============================================================================


RuleML-2008 Challenge/Showcase Demos – Prestigious prices will be awarded!!!
------------------------------------

The RuleML-2008 Challenge is one of the highlights of RuleML-2008. It
addresses solutions and system demonstrations showcasing the practical 
use of rule
technologies in distributed and/or Web-based environments. The focus of the
challenge is on rule technologies (including rule languages and engines),
interoperation, and interchange. The challenge offers participants the 
chance
to demonstrate their commercial and open source tools, use cases, and
applications. Prizes will be awarded to the two best applications. All
accepted demos will be presented in a special Challenge Session.

A submission to the RuleML-2008 Challenge has to meet the requirement that
explicit (declarative) rules play a central role in the application. For the
2008 Challenge this means that:
- Rules are available in the explicit representation of a declarative format
and are decoupled from the application (rather than only existing in a form
that is compiled or hard-coded into the application logic).
- Rules are used in interesting and practically relevant ways, e.g. to 
derive
new information, transform knowledge, provide decision support; or, to 
enable
automated monitoring, enforcement, validation, or management of the
behavioral logic of an application.

The demo should preferably (but not necessarily) be embedded into a 
web-based
or distributed environment so that there will be a need for features related
to the RuleML symposium topics, as listed in the call for papers.

Submissions to the RuleML Challenge 2008 consist of (1) a link to 
information
about the demo/showcase, e.g. a project site, an (embedded link to an) 
online
demonstration, a presentation, or a download site and (2) demo description
material (up to 3 pages), which can be either in the form of a paper (e.g.,
in LNCS format) and/or contain other descriptive material. The demo
description material will be distributed at the Symposium as part of the
official Symposium handouts and it will be published at the Symposium's Web
site. The demo description material will be subject to evaluation, so the
material should contain a substantial presentation of the system to enable a
proper evaluation of the techniques used.

The demo link should be submitted through the Challenge Website
(http://ruleml-challenge.cs.nccu.edu.tw/), while the demo paper should be
submitted as a pdf file by email to: ruleml2008@easychair.org with the text
'Submission to RuleML-2008 Challenge' in the subject by August 22, 2008.
After the submission of the demo link, it will be immediately available on
the Web, which can provide instant visibility to information about
demos/showcases. If the (embedded) link to your demo/showcase is password-
protected, then please submit a password for anonymous login from any Web
browser, giving us the permission to pass the password on to 3 PC members.

Decisions will be notified by September 1st. The demos/showcases themselves
will be evaluated during RuleML-2008, and prizes will be awarded to the 
first
two best applications.


Fast Abstracts
--------------

Fast Abstracts at RuleML-2008 are short presentations, either on new ideas
or work in progress, or radical opinions that can address any issue
relevant to RuleML-2008. Fast Abstracts provide an opportunity to receive
early feedback from the community. Contributions are particularly solicited
from industrial practitioners and academics that may not have been able to
prepare full papers, but seek an opportunity to engage with the RuleML
community.

Fast Abstracts should be 4-pages long, and must be formatted in LNCS format
(http://www.springer.de/comp/lncs/authors.html).
The submission deadline is August 22, 2008.
Submissions should be sent directly by email to ruleml2008@easychair.org,
and they will be refereed on the relevance to RuleML 2008, but also on
their novelty of idea and/or on their capacity to stimulate and intrigue
the reader. Accepted contributions will be published in electronic form (at
the Symposium's Web site and on CD), and an author will deliver a short
talk in the Fast Abstracts track at the conference. Decisions will be
notified by September 1st. Authors of accepted fast abstracts must provide
the camera ready version by September 15. At least one author of each
accepted Fast Abstract is expected to register to the conference before or
on September 15.


Lightning Talks
---------------

A lightning talk is a five-minute presentation on any topic of interest to
the RuleML community; it can be a new idea, a technology, an evaluation, an
observation, a complaint, an explanation, a suggestion, a report of success
or failure, a call to action, a description of a technique, or a lament. In
general, it is supposed to be a short visionary talk which should initiate
discussion. If you are a rule developer working on an exciting project and
you do not have the time to submit a full paper, Lightning talks are a
great way to interact with the RuleML community and receive feedback on
your ideas. Lightning talks are presented back-to-back with a strictly
enforced five minute limit, so make sure that you can fit your presentation
within this time span.

People interested at giving a lightning talk during RuleML-2008 should show
their their interest by sending an email to ruleml2008@easychair.org by
August 22, 2008, including a title and a 250-word abstract of their
intended talk.

Decisions will be notified by September 1st.


Highlight Talks
---------------

We invite the submission of outstanding full papers that have been
published between 2007 and the submission deadline (August 22, 2008).
Publications that are "in press" and already linked on the journal web site
are also welcome. A group of experts will select the papers to be presented
at the meeting considering the impact of the work on the field, the
likelihood that the work makes a good presentation, and the relevance for
the topics of RuleML-2008, in general.

Submissions should be sent directly to the RuleML-2008 chairs at
ruleml2008@easychair.org by August 22, 2008, and must include the
following:

* Name/affiliation/email of submitter (assumed to be the presenter; note
that the presenter cannot change because the identity and ability to
present of that person will be an essential selection criterion).
* Names/affiliations/email of ALL coauthors (note: any name appearing on a
published paper has to be added here). Note that all co-authors have to
agree to the submission and that it is the responsibility of the
submitter to guarantee that all co- author email addresses are correct
(email notifications of the submission will be sent to all co-authors).
* Additional contact information (for presenter).
* A 250-word abstract-like argument that explains how the submitted
paper(s) suit the goal of presenting highlights that impacted the field.
* Sources of original publication(s) (Year, Journal, Vol., pages).
* PDF with paper(s) (note: in case of the submission of 2 papers, both have
to be merged into one single PDF; all reviews will be based on the
content of this PDF).
* Note that we will need PDF submissions. It is the responsibility of the
submitter to verify that the PDF is completely viewable/printable by all
major operating systems.
* Each presenter can submit a maximum of one application to present a
highlight. The maximal number of submissions per author/co-author is 5.

All submissions will be evaluated by a group of reviewers.
Reviewers will consider the following criteria:

* Relevance, interest, and value of the topic to RuleML-2008 attendees,
* Impact of the paper(s) on rules (while the impact of papers on science is
not fully reflected by ISI/Google-like impact factors or high number of
downloads, high values in such factors will clearly stand as a strong
argument for acceptance),
* "Presentability" of the work to a large, diverse audience,
* Quality of oral presentations by the submitter (if none).

These "soft" criteria attempt to capture the underlying concept, namely the
presentation of exciting and thought-provoking seminars that will both
contribute to the success and attraction-value of RuleML-2008 and to the
impact the meeting has on advancing rule interchange and applications. The
criterion of "presentability" accounts for the fact that some papers that
will completely change the field, or will become citation records may not
translate to exciting seminars.

The selected Highlights will be presented in a special track during the
RuleML-2008 Symposium. All presentations will have to be completed within
20 minutes and will be followed by 5-minute discussions. While presenters
are expected to focus mostly on the chosen paper(s), short infusions of
more recent data are welcome.

Decisions will be notified by September 1st.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

=========================
The RuleML-2008 Symposium
=========================

Collocated with the 11th International Business Rules Forum, the 2008
International Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications 
(RuleML-2008) is
the second symposium (after last year's highly successful RuleML-2007)
devoted to work on practical distributed rule technologies and rule-based
applications which need language standards for rules operating in the 
context
of, e.g., the Semantic Web, Intelligent Multi- Agent Systems, Event-Driven
Architectures and Service-Oriented Computing Applications. The RuleML
symposium is a new kind of event where the Web Rules and Logic community
joins the established, practically oriented Forum of the Business Rules
community to help cross- fertilizing between Web and Business Logic
technology.

The goal of RuleML-2008 is to bring together rule system providers,
representatives of, and participants in, rule standardization efforts
(e.g., SBVR, RuleML, RIF, PRR, CL) and open source rules communities (e.g.,
jBoss Rules, CLIPS/Jess, Prova, OO jDrew, Mandarax, XSB, XQuery),
practitioners and technical experts, developers, users, and researchers.
They will be offered an exciting venue to exchange new ideas, practical
developments and experiences on issues pertinent to the interchange and
application of rules in open distributed environments such as the Web.

The Symposium gives emphasis on practical issues such as technical
contributions and show case demonstrations of effective, practical,
deployable rule-based technologies, rule interchange formats and
applications as well as discussions of lessons learned that have to be
taken into account when employing rule-based technologies in distributed,
(partially) open, heterogeneous environments. We also welcome groundwork
that helps to build an effective, practical, and deployable rule standard,
improve rule technology, provide better understanding of the integration
and interchange of rules, and make the current generation of rule engines
and rule technology more usable for advanced Web and Service Oriented
Architectures.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
RuleML-2008 Highlights

* Keynote speakers:
o Michael Kifer (State University of New York at Stony Brook), on WC3's
Rule Interchange Format (RIF). Joint keynote between RuleML-2008 and
RR2008.
o David Luckham (Stanford University, USA) on "The Power of Events: An
Introduction to Complex Event Processing in Distributed Enterprise
Systems".
o Paul Haley (Haley Systems, Inc) on business rules.
o Benjamin Grosof (Vulcan, Inc.) on the SILK KRR system of the
HALO project.
* Joint Lunch Panel held in conjunction with the co-located Business Rules
Forum on "Rules on the Web".
* Lightning talks/Highlight talks
* A RuleML-2008 Challenge with prizes to demonstrate tools, use cases, and
applications.
* Industry, demo and scientific research & development papers and
presentations advancing and assessing the state of the art in event and
rule-based systems selected in a peer-reviewed fashion by an
international program committee.
* Papers will be published as a Springer LNCS proceedings. A special issue
(IEEE TKDE pending) will be forthcoming.
* Social events to promote networking among the symposium delegates in an
informal setting.


=====================================================================
Co-located with:

The 11th International Business Rules Forum
http://www.businessrulesforum.com
=====================================================================
Sponsored by:

Gold level : Vulcan Inc
Silver level: Model Systems
Bronze level: STI Innsbruck, ruleCore, JBoss

Sponsoring opportunities: http://2008.ruleml.org/sponsoring/
=====================================================================
In Co-operation with:

AAAI, W3C, BPM-Forum, Business Rules Forum , ECCAI, OASIS, OMG,
Dallas Rules Group, Belgium Business Rules Forum,
MIT Sloan CIO Symposium,
ACM, ACM SIGART, ACM SIGMIS, ACM SIGWEB, Open Research Society,
IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society
IEEE SMCS TC on Intelligent Internet Systems
IEEE SMCS TC on Distributed Intelligent Systems
IEEE Computer Society TC on Autonomous and Autonomic Systems
=====================================================================
Media Partners:
Springer LNCS, MoDo Marketing
=====================================================================