Workshop: Human Centered Case-Based Reasoning HCCBR @ ICCBR 2009

Update: Due to the lack of enough submissions the workshop needed to be cancelled.

The human is always at the center of my research. So it is no surprise that I’ll try to investigate another facet of socio-technical computational systems in the upcoming workshop on Human Centered Case-Based Reasoning HCCBR. The workshop is part of the 8th International Conference on Case-Based Reasoning ICCBR 2009 and will take place 20–23 July 2009, in Seattle, Wahington. Here is an excerpt of the call for papers (submission deadline: 23 March 2009):

Human-centered computing focuses on methodologies and technologies to improve the interaction and performance of socio-technical systems. Intelligent systems are not longer considered to be black boxes that provide a full solution to a problem on their own, instead, problem solving is seen as an interactive process. Case-Based Reasoning would appear to be a natural fit for such integrated human/computer systems.

A number of important questions are raised by Human-centered approaches. It is important to gain a better understanding of how each part of the combined system can help to extend the capabilities of the other. It is also of interest to examine how human knowledge modelling and construction can best be supported through technology.

Many of these issues are already being addressed in other disciplines, however, the question remains as to how findings from the social sciences and psychology may be integrated into the design of CBR systems. This integration ranges from psychologically plausible knowledge models to the delivery of an attractive end user experience.

Another important research topic in human centred computing centres around the issue of communication and, in particular, explanations. Problem descriptions, as well as other input, can be incomplete and changing. As a consequence, there has to be communication between human and software agents. Communication requires mutual understanding that can be essentially supported by explanations.

Further, context sensitive processing plays a key role in many modern IT applications. Context-awareness and context-based reasoning are essential not only for mobile and ubiquitous computing, but also for a wide range of other areas such as collaborative software, web engineering, personal digital assistants, information sharing, health care workflow and patient control, adaptive games, and e-Learning solutions.

From an intelligent systems perspective, a further challenge is to integrate context with other types of knowledge as an additional major source for reasoning, decision-making, and adaptation and to form a coherent and versatile architecture. There is a common understanding that achieving desired behaviour from intelligent systems will depend on the ability to represent and manipulate information about a rich range of contextual factors.

This workshop aims to bring together researchers and practitioners exploring human aspects of the design, implementation, and use of intelligent systems, from a broad range of areas, to share their problems and methodologies across different research and application areas. The workshop will examine methods, mechanisms, and techniques to keep the human in the centre of attention during the whole lifecycle of an intelligent system, from initial problem description through to knowledge acquisition and modelling and on to interactive use and maintenance.

Please consider submitting a paper!

The making of another doctor

“Dr. Who?”, you might ask out of reflex. On 19 December 2008 Juan Antonio Recio Garcia defended his phd thesis “jCOLIBRI: A multi-level platform for building and generating CBR systems” gracefully and successfully. I feel very honoured to have been invited to play an important part in the reviewing process. Not to forget dinner and night clubbing in Madrid afterwards …

The photo shows the reviewers and supervisors. Juan Antonio is the third from the left.

UKCBR and AI 2008 in Cambridge

Already a month ago I enjoyed very much going to the 28th International Conference on Artificial Intelligence AI 2008 and the UK Case-Based Reasoning workshop UKCBR 2008. The workshop was the thirteenth of this successful series. It was the first time I went to either event and I intend to go again. That they took place in Cambridge at Peterhouse college was an added bonus. You can find some photos here.

I had my hands full with four presentations over the course of the three days.

At UKCBR I presented the “Explanation Capabilities of the Open Source Case-Based Reasoning Tool myCBR” (co-authored with my student Daniel Bahls). I am also happy that Miltos Petridis, organiser of UKCBR invited me to demonstrate the rapid prototyping capabilities of myCBR in a demonstration session.

A special highlight was the invited talk “Using Statistical Translation Models for Textual CBR” by Luc Lamontagne from Laval University, Québec, Canada.

At AI-2008 I gave two talks, both related to my explanation research. The presentation “Code Tagging and Similarity-based Retrieval with myCBR”, also co-authored with Daniel, presented the coTag system. coTag is a code tagging plug-in that allows annotating code snippets in the integrated development environment eclipse. It offers an easy-to-use interface for tagging and searching not only for exactly the same but for similar tags. For better understanding how coTag comes up with its solution we used the above mentioned explanation capabilities of myCBR.

My second talk was based on a paper I wrote with another student, Florian Mittag: “ReduxExp: An Open-source Justification-based Explanation Support Server”. Here we worked on a mechanism for recording decisions of information systems. In the talk I described the architecture of ReduxExp and first experiences with the system.

Highlights of AI 2008 surely were the machine intelligence competition with live presentations (strictly limited to 15 minutes each) and the Gala Dinner held by candlelight (and without enough heating!) in the dining hall of Peterhouse college.

KI 2008 – Artificial IntelIigence comes to (K-)town

This week will become quite a busy week at the German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI) in Kaiserslautern*. The 31st annual German conference on AI KI 2008 is co-organised with the University of Kaiserslautern. KI 2008 and takes place at DFKI and the University of Kaiserslautern. DFKI celebrates also its 20th birthday, which added considerably to my workload over the last year. I am also very much looking forward to MATES 2008, the German Conference on Multi-Agent System Technologies, co-located with KI 2008.

 

31st Annual German Conference on Artificial Intelligence KI 2008

As with every conference, it is a pleasure to finally start with the conference. Nearly all my work as Workshop Chair is done and in a few hours I will meet again friends and colleagues from all over Europe. This evening we just hold an informal reception for the early arriving participants who already want to register. Tomorrow is dominated by the workshops and tutorials, followed by nearly full three days of technical programme with talks, demos and robots, and a poster session. The conference dinner is a joint event of KI / MATES and the 20th anniversary celebration of DFKI.

With KI 2008 we introduce conference link (C-LINK), the new platform for one’s individual conference organisation and social networking with other attendees. C-LINK features

• Sharing papers, slides and other resources,
• Recommendations for KI 2008 events (talks, posters, demos),
• Your personal conference plan,
• Finding similar c-link users,
• Whiteboard, Chat,
• And more.

C-LINK uses several technologies developed at DFKI:

• ALOE, the social resource and metadata hub,
• DynaQ, dynamic desktop search for document-based, personal information spaces, and
• myCBR, the open-source case-based reasoning tool that I develop together with my colleague Armin Stahl.

We are looking forward to the comments by the conference attendees.

* Kaiserslautern is often called K-Town by American soldiers stationed in this region.

Sunny Social Semantic Desktop Summer School Successful

Participants, lecturers, and tutors of the the first Nepomuk Social Semantic Desktop Summer School on Malta

I have spent last week on Malta where I had co-organised the first Nepomuk Social Semantic Desktop Summer School. The summer school was a great experience and, from what we learned from the participants, a great success. (Read more about the summer school in general here.)

The working atmosphere was enthusiastic from beginning to end. The students were eager to learn—something one would like to see at university in one’s own courses a bit more from time to time. The summer school students indeed wanted to be there. They had had to apply for a seat on the summer school. They worked for their success and they did so wholeheartedly.

Having so much time together at hand for talking and discussing alongside with a lot of fun (and sun!) helped tremendously to concentrate on the topics and to deepen one’s knowledge. There surely was knowledge and experience transferred both ways, from lecturers and tutors to students and vice versa.

A highlight for me were the mini-projects where students worked in groups on topics they had chosen to their liking. Until deep into the night one found groups sitting in different places discussing and programming towards their self-imposed goals. On the last day the student groups presented their impressive results. I was amazed by how much they achieved in so few days.

I surely would like to organise another summer school in the future.

ECCBR 2008

Last week I attended the ninth European Conference on Case-Based Reasoning ECCBR 2008 in Trier, Germany. Just around the corner of Kaiserslautern, one could say.

The conference was again a great experience. The community is special. I always feel welcome and at home. From talking to other participants to this conference series I know that even people who attended the conference for the first time feel the same.

A first highlight of this year’s conference was the invited talk by Pádraig Cunningham and Barry Smyth. They analysed research themes in CBR conference literature. One motivation was to check whether our often pessimistic view of our community was founded. It was quite nice to learn that they found that the CBR community is in fact quite healthy. What a relief Their analysis discovered a few evolving CBR themes such as recommender systems and diversity, case-base maintenance, adaptation, creativity and knowledge-intensive CBR, and conversational CBR. Their evaluation shows clear evidence of sustained innovation and maturing research. An important discovery surely is that the impact factor is comparable with big AI conferences such as ECAI and ECML.

ECCBR 2008 also presented an innovation: The Computer Cookery Contest CCC. The task:

Write your own software application for the live competition. Show that your program is more creative than the average kitchen user. Let your computer’s recipe creations be evaluated by a professional cook and an international jury of scientists! [From the call for participation]

The competition was quite entertaining. Some of the systems provided, well, interesting recipes when they needed to change ingredients in order to accommodate for ingredients at hand / in the fridge. You can find the results here.

There were also two personal highlights: I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on open source software and I had a talk together with Armin Stahl where we presented myCBR for rapid prototyping and also its explanation capabilities.

The discussion panel was chaired by Ralph Traphöner, a former colleague. Mehmet Göker, with whom I have organised ECCBR 2006, took the view of a global player in software use whereas Eyke Hüllermeier, professor at University of Marburg, took on the role of academia. They discussed with three open source software providers, i.e., with Christian Brockmann (eclipse project smila), Pedro Gonzalez Callero (jColibri), and me (myCBR).

The talk about myCBR was received very well. Over the course of the conference I was asked to show the tool to several attendees who either planned to evaluate myCBR in commercial settings or want to use it for teaching purposes. In my part of the talk I presented some of the explanation capabilities built into myCBR. Go and check out myCBR

Philosophy’s Relevance in Information Science: Call for Papers

The University of Paderborn organises the symposium on Philosophy’s Relevance in Information Science in association with the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) and SIG Philosophy and Informatics.

The conference aims to present the multilayered reciprocal effects between philosophical basic reflection and applied research in the context of Philosophy and Information Science. It addresses a larger public and offers a forum of discussion between experts from different specialist areas. [From Philosophy's Relevance in Information Science 2008]

 

The submission deadline is 15 August 2008.

Philosophy and Computing at E-CAP 2008 in Montpellier, France

The European chapter of the International Association for Computing and Philosophy (IACAP) held its yearly conference E-CAP in Montpellier, France. I am still delighted and honoured to have been invited to the conference again. This year, I did not give a talk, but became a member of the E-CAP steering committee.

This conference introduced for the first time Wiki-Debate, a new tool that allows commenting and discussing the accepted abstracts. E-CAP 2008 was a trial run for this new kind of conference preparation and participation. At last year’s E-CAP 2007 (see my blog entries [1], [2], [3], and [4]) I was lucky to discuss the concept of Wiki-Debate with Jean Sallantin, this year’s conference chair. I had pointed Jean to Stéphane Lauriére at XWiki. After that, Jean and I had, unfortunately, lost contact to each other. I was happily surprised about seeing Wiki-Debate implemented. I look forward to working on its improvement as Wiki-Debate is intended to be used at E-CAP 2009 organised by Jordi Vallverdú in Barcelona.

The programme of the conference was manifold. Typical for a multi-disciplinary conference.

Introduction and closing were a bit too informal for my liking, but one got used to this stress-free way of running a conference over the three days

Initially, it was planned to organise the agendas of days two and three according to the interests stated in Wiki-Debate by conference participants. But as the implementation was running a bit late a prepared agenda needed to be used instead. There were several complaints from participants that they had trouble to plan their travel itineraries because there was no agenda outline whatsoever on the website. We will take care of this and a lack of transparency about what was going on next year.

From the many interesting talks I would like to mention just two:

Carson Reynolds, MIT alumni and Assistant Professor at the University of Tokyo, discussed the question of whether perception is bodily and how perception can be manipulated. Migraines and artificial sensors such as cochlear implants (hearing aide) give evidence that perception is bodily. Additional support is provided by artificial synesthesia or fusion of senses, e.g., when sounds are smelled or colours are heard. The goal of this research is to use the ability of our body to learn to react to new stimuli, to produce new sensations / perception that do not exist yet. Carson showed a short (and quite funny) video where test participants wore blindfolds. Around the head they wore a number of sensor-actor units that can detect the distance of another object. The closer an object is to the head the stronger the actor vibrated. The test person easily avoids other objects based on which sensors vibrates and how strong the vibration is. They learn to use the new sensation. Very entertaining and very interesting.

Another very interesting talk was given be Jean-Gabriel Ganascia, Professor at Paris VI university, on “The Soul-Machine Quarrel”. This talk was in part lecture-like, in the most positive sense as it wrapped up philosophical discussions of a few thousand years with a clear focus. Jean-Gabriel compared definitions of “soul” given by Descartes as well as Aristotle, where the first attributes a soul only to humans and the latter distinguished three levels of soul. He then poses the question whether machines can possess a soul and of which kind that possibly would be. In the end, the talk left the answer open, but the talk was nevertheless thought-provoking.

I am looking very much forward to next years conference with the full intention of submitting an abstract this time.

[More photos on my flickr account: E-CAP 2008 and Montpellier]

Join the NEPOMUK Social Semantic Desktop Summer School 1.0

Together with Yngve Sundblad, Siegfried Handschuh, Tudor Groza, and Charlie Abela I organise the First NEPOMUK Social Semantic Desktop Summer School at Hotel Victoria, Sliema, Malta 7-13 September 2008.

Application deadline: 9 June 2008

The NEPOMUK Social Semantic Desktop EU project develops a comprehensive solution for extending the personal desktop into a collaboration environment which supports both the personal information management and the sharing and exchange across social and organizational relations.

The summer school will provide a very good opportunity for postgraduate students to refine their knowledge in a variety of topics such as Semantic Web, Personal Information Management, P2P, HCI or Social Networking, all in the context of the Social Semantic Desktop. It will consist of a range of theoretical and practical sessions taught by leading researchers in the field and combined with a series of mini-projects to encourage collaboration between participants. In addition to the taught and practical sessions, the students will also benefit from and enjoy a stimulating environment through social interactions with the lecturers, tutors, and the other students.

Please visit the NEPOMUK Summer School website for details of the application process and further information on topics, lecturers, and tutors.

ExaCt2008 deadline extended

When I plan a workshop I always look for interfering deadlines. This time I overlooked an obvious deadline, even though this deadline—Call 3 for IST project proposals in the seventh research framework programme (FP7) of the European Union—was also very important to me. I will blog about my proposals later.

Well, as my third workshop on Explanation-aware Computing ExaCt 2008 (see also my blog entry here) is affected by the FP7 deadline I extended the submission deadline to 16 April 2008.