Proposal for Organizing ICCBR'01 David W. Aha, Naval Research Laboratory, aha@aic.nrl.navy.mil Ian Watson, U. Salford, I.D.Watson@surveying.salford.ac.uk Qiang Yang, Simon Fraser U., qyang@cs.sfu.ca We propose to organize the ICCBR'01 conference in Vancouver, British Columbia (Canada) for 30 July - 2 August 2001. We have significant experience in successfully organizing national and international meetings. David Aha has (co)-chaired 8 workshops related to CBR and/or machine learning. Ian Watson has chaired the four UK CBR workshops and assisted with organizing several other conferences. Qiang (pronounced "Chung") Yang is the conference co-chair for the 2000 Canadian AI Conference, and is in contact with several colleagues at SFU who have chaired conferences in Vancouver. We will work with several of our colleagues to ensure that ICCBR'01 is a success. Conference Location The conference will be held in the Harbour Centre Campus of Simon Fraser University (SFU) in the heart of beautiful downtown Vancouver, overlooking the waterfront of Burrard Inlet. SFU provides reduced cost access to the conference facilities at this site. Accommodations in downtown will have typical city-centre price ranges. Therefore, we will also arrange for low cost accommodations through SFU's conference accommodations facilities, located at SFU's Burnaby Mountain campus, which is approximately a 30 minute bus ride from the downtown area. Vancouver is easily reachable from Vancouver International Airport. Buses are available between the airport and downtown, as well as between downtown and the Burnaby mountain campus. Vancouver is approximately 100 years old yet young in both its look and feel. It is the largest and most metropolitan city in British Columbia. Its downtown boasts world-class museums, art galleries, parks and a beautiful waterfront. Recent years have brought architectural additions to the city, including The Chan Centre for Performing Arts, the Ford Centre for the Performing Arts, Liberty Square, and the General Motors Place domed sports facility. The Harbour Centre Campus is adjacent to Canada Place, where visitors can see Imax films, cross the Burrard Inlet on an inexpensive water taxi to North Vancouver, or eat at any of many enjoyable restaurants on either side. Simon Fraser University at Harbour Centre is a satellite campus of the main university campus in Burnaby. The Harbour Centre campus offers an accessible, well-designed facility and knowledgeable professional staff to meet the special requirements of a highly functional educational and meeting complex. The facility comprises over 123,000 square feet of instructional resources for advanced education, ranging from the fully computerized library to classrooms, lecture theatres, and computer laboratories designed with an educational purpose in mind and equipped with complete audiovisual resources. A "virtual tour" of this campus is also available at www.harbour.sfu.ca/qtvr, featuring 360 degree Quicktime VR panoramas of many of its meeting rooms. Additional information can be obtained from www.harbour.sfu.ca. Vancouver is nestled between the sparkling blue Pacific and the lofty heights of the Coastal Mountains, bordered by lush emerald forests and wide, sandy beaches. It is replete with opportunities to enjoy the beauty of nature and experience the excitement of downtown action all in the same day. In short, it is a spectacular locale. Vancouver's attractions are numerous and diverse, from the green paradise and beaches of Stanley Park (at 999 acres the largest of North America's urban parks, and only a mile from the conference site) to the charm of Gastown, the colours of Chinatown to the majestic North Shore mountains, museums, and theatres. In addition, Vancouver's weather in late July is generally excellent. Warm sunny days with temperatures in the mid-twenties Celsius and cool evenings generally ranging from 11-13 Celsius. Visitors to Vancouver can easily hike in its nearby mountains, cycle along the water's edge, or even take a short helicopter flight to Victoria to explore its old-world charm and the rest of rugged Vancouver Island. Cruises to Alaska and elsewhere commonly depart from nearby the conference centre site. In summary, the opportunities for recreation are quite diverse. Chairs and Organization Program Chairs: David W. Aha, Naval Research Laboratory, U.S.A. Ian Watson, University of Salford, U.K. Conference Chair: Qiang Yang, Simon Fraser University, British Columbia (Canada) Industrial Chairs: We have not yet secured commitments for the Industry Day chairs. our strategy will be to have two chairs from different continents, (e.g., North America, Asia) including one from Europe, who will work together with us to create an exciting and rewarding atmosphere for attendees. Prospective candidates for these positions include, among others, Hideo Shimazu (NEC), Yoshio Nakatani (Mitsubishi) Ralph Barletta (Inference Corp.), David Stottler (Stottler-Henke Associates, Inc.), and Paul Haley (The Haley Enterprise) from North America, and Sean Breen (IMS), Michel Manago (AcknoSoft), and Stefan Wess (tecInno) from Europe. We are particularly keen on increasing the involvement of our Japanese colleagues in this conference. Organization Committee: The ICCBR'01 will be organized by the SFU professional conference services, who will provide a vast array of support for ICCBR'01 as they have done for many previous conferences located in Vancouver. Qiang Yang and his colleagues will maintain close contact with them to ensure a smooth-running conference. The conference will be held during the Monday through Thursday time period (30 July - 2 August 2001) immediately prior to IJCAI'01, which will be held 140 miles south in Seattle, Washington. A block booking for hotels in downtown Vancouver and for Burnaby Mountain on-campus accommodations will be arranged for this period. Concept for ICCBR'01 The conference will be divided into a scientific and an industrial part which can be booked separately. The industrial part will take place at the second day of the conference (Tuesday). It will be designed to address the interests of companies and people who develop industrial CBR tools and commercial CBR applications, people who are users of the CBR technology, as well as interested people who might consider using CBR for solving their problems. We are considering the following sessions for Industry Day: 1. Tutorials: A. Introduction to CBR B. Commercial CBR Tools C. Research Trends in CBR These tutorials are designed to interest both CBR researchers and practitioners. We would divide them into three presentations, plus two coffee breaks, to be hosted by three experienced presenters. 2. Presentation of industrial success stories of CBR applications, and related topics, by end-users or practitioners. 3. Short presentations of CBR tools and systems by tool providers or consultants (e.g., AcknoSoft, BSR-Consulting, The Haley Enterprise, Inference Corp., Isoft SA, NEC, ServiceSoft Corp., SHAI, tecInno GmbH). 4. Discussion: Practitioners will be invited to comment on industry needs so as to interest academics in pursuing topics related to these needs. 5. Exhibition of industrial and academic CBR tools and applications. We will tailor this program to meet the interests of industrial participants with the goal of maximizing attendance. To achieve this, we are considering various financial incentives and strategies. Unlike previous ICCBRs, our schedule places Industry Day in the middle of the conference, which could increase the number of academic participants in Industry Day. Also, academics not interested in attending could use (part or all of) this day to explore Vancouver. The scientific part of the conference will take place for a total of 2 1/2 days (Monday, Wednesday and Thursday until noon) and particularly addresses researchers in the area of CBR who want to exchange recent research results. We aim at retaining the high quality of the scientific presentations from the last ICCBR conferences. The preliminary program looks as follows: 1. Workshops: The call-for-papers will ask also for proposals for focused workshops on specialized topics. A small number (3-4) of workshops will be accepted. 2. CBR Competition: The call-for-papers will announce two specific important tasks, one with research implications and one with industrial implications. (For example, the latter might involve an extension of an existing academic algorithm that has a known flaw, preventing it from being applied. Code for the algorithm would be supplied so that potential solutions could be incorporated into it.) We will request solutions to be presented for these two tasks, using financial and/or prize incentives to encourage the development of innovative solutions. A set of judges will be appointed to evaluate the responses, and promising solutions will be presented at the conference. 3. Invited talks (final determinations by the PC). We believe that, given the current maturity level of the case-based reasoning community, invited speakers should not be "in-bred", that they should come from outside the CBR community at ICCBR'01. We have some suggestions for specific topics that could be covered in these talks, including: - KDD (e.g., Usama Fayyad) - IR (e.g., Robert Wilensky) - Databases (e.g., Heikki Mannila) - Cognitive Science (e.g., Gary Klein) We also would like to invite Industry Day speakers who have significantly impacted their field but have not participated in previous Industry Days at ICCBRs (e.g., David Stottler of SHAI). In addition, we wish to initiate a new tradition at ICCBRs: invite a leading CBR researcher to present a "State of the Discipline" presentation, intended to summarize (and critique) the field, describe open problems in need of attention, and predict future trends. The talk should be somewhat entertaining and provide a "world-view" rather than a description of efforts at their laboratory. 4. Panels (suggestions by the PC are welcome): We are currently considering two panels, one at the end of Industry Day and one at the end of the conference. 5. Scientific talks (selected by the PC) 6. Poster presentations (selected by the PC) We are confident that by combining a strong industrial program with a strong scientific program will be profitable for both researchers and practitioners. Researchers will be given opportunities to learn more about existing practical problems and to collaborate with industry. It will also enable graduate students to meet potential future employers. In addition, industrialists will learn about research that is relevant for their work and have opportunities to meet potential future employees. In order to enable a good mixture of industrial and academic people, we will consider several methods to financially encourage industry personnel to attend other days at ICCBR, and we believe that holding Industry Day on the second day of the conference (rather than the first) will increase its attendance by academics. Conference Budget Fees for participants: Students: $150 (estimate 40) All other: $300 (estimate 80) Accommodations: Hotel rooms (1-2 people) nearby the conf. site: $40-$140 per night Low budget alternatives for students: $36 (YWCA Hotel, accepts both genders, 20 minute walk) $20 (SFU Burnaby Mountain Campus, 50 minutes bus, 30 minutes car) $20 (UBC, 1 hr bus, 40 minutes car) The fees include reception, banquet, conference proceedings, and refreshments. These calculations were derived from consultations with a professional conference service, visits to the conference site, and adaptations from previous conference cost projections. Costs are given in US dollars based on current US/Canadian exchange rates. We anticipate attendance at approximately 125 people, but the primary conference meeting room can accommodate up to 200 people. Several options exist for renting smaller rooms as needed. Supporting organizations and industry The following organizations have committed to support the conference: Naval Research Laboratory ($5K) Inference Corporation ($5K) ICue ($2K Canadian) tecInno (Amount not yet determined) In addition we will ask the following organizations for support. AAAI AcknoSoft ACM Brightware, Inc. Canadian Department of Defense CaseBank Technologies, Inc. ECCAI IEEE IJCAI Inc. NEC SHAI The Haley Enterprise Additional support will be used to finance student travel grants.