CFP

We would like to draw your attention to the Call for Papers for
AAAI-2002, available on the web at
http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/National/2002/aaai02.html. In the
hope of making the meeting as exciting and stimulating as possible, we
will be experimenting this year with a new format.  As the national
conference for all of AI, AAAI-2002 should play a centralizing and
unifying role which complements more specialized meetings.  We would
like the papers submitted and presented to be meaningful to and
accessible to the whole AI community.  To this end, in AAAI-2002 we
will eschew multiple parallel sessions in favor of a single plenary
track.  All accepted papers will be presented as posters in two
high-profile evening sessions, and a subset of these will also be
presented orally in a plenary track during the day.  All papers will
appear identically in the proceedings, and all will be subject to the
same rigorous review process.  Invited talks will also be part of the
plenary tra!  !  ck.  To fit in as many orally presented papers as
possible, we will extend the AAAI-2002 technical program to a full
three days.

As a potential author, we hope this new format will encourage you to
submit your best work to AAAI-2002, and to describe it in a way that
makes it broadly accessible.  The new format will give your work the
widest possible exposure to the AI community.  In particular, other
meetings in other fields have shown that the kind of poster sessions
we are planning -- with a prominent dedicated time slot and food being
served -- can be a very effective and highly respected means of
presentation.  Based on feedback from attendees, AAAI will decide
whether to continue with this format, modify it, or return to the old.

Most of all, the new format is intended to make the conference more
rewarding for attendees.  Please join us in beautiful Edmonton next
summer and participate in this experiment in AI.

Rich Sutton and Rina Dechter
Program Co-chairs