WP8 General conference of STREPs and complexity application fields One of the advantages and also problems of the Complexity community is its spread over many application fields. While this gives it vitality it also puts the complexity people always in minority. It also prevents the community from developing a personality and a stable system of connections. We have initiated an annual large complexity conference where STREP members can come and be sure to meet people from the relevant areas. Moreover, as in other fields, the annual conference becomes the arena for a job market and for initiating STREP cooperation projects, for establishing collectively the agenda of the STREPs for the next year. Most of the budget for the 3 annual conferences comes from the WP1 in ONCE, but the participation of the STREPS is ensured by the participation by GIACS with 50000 Euro.

Leading institution

CNRS - CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - PARIS , FRANCE

WP leader

Dr Paul Bourgine
bourgine@poly.polytechnique.fr

Objectives

• To identify the complex systems community
• To coordinate the scientific exchanges taking place in the complex systems community
• To transfer the responsibility of the conference to the European Complex Systems Society

Description of work

The first WP8 activity is partial contribution to the organization of the first large conference, that is aimed to put on very massive foundations the complexity community in Europe (see the description of the annual European Complex Systems Conference 2006 here).

The field of complex systems is not yet structured in Europe (and in the world), even though in recent years a lot has been done in this direction, prominently the initiation of the STREP projects. Not all the people working in CS identify themselves as researchers in complex systems. Those identify themselves as working on complex systems usually do so in a certain context, but don't know people (or the work of people) in other contexts. Existing conferences on complex systems, even when they are not topic specific, do not touch the whole CS community and are very often attended by small or medium size audiences, leaving the community fragmented.

Instruments

Organising three conferences

A big visible and regular event is a very efficient way to give a new dimension to all the local efforts made all around the continent. Organised under the auspices of the major European actors but directed to the whole community with special attention to the STREP projects, new researchers and new regional centres, this conference becomes the natural place in which the STREP members and the complex systems community meets and exchanges, and so the community concretely becomes aware of its own existence.
Such events are very good places for the various STREPs and other sub communities in the field to be in contact. Last, beyond the interest inside the complex systems community, such a conference will also be a way to coordinate communication about STREP research and complex systems science to a wider audience including private companies, politicians, school teachers, and the general public, More than being a place where the complex systems community can be created and structured from the different separated STREPs, such a conference is also the natural place to discuss the paradigms, the methodologies and the criteria of success in our particular field (which are rarely discussed in more specialised conferences): for example, “what is a (good) result?” is a question that has different answers according to different disciplinary fields; so there is a need to collectively think about the answer in the context of STREP scientific effort and complex systems research in order to more deeply understand the domain in all its components.

Format

A series of conferences will be held each year in a different city. The format is 3 days for the main conference and 2 day for satellite workshops in parallel sessions. These workshops are important since they provide a bottom-up procedure for emerging topics not formally included in the main conference.

Specific mechanisms are designed into the conference format to ensure that large numbers of people from different communities and different STREP projects really can meet and interact.

Transferring the responsibility of the conference to the European Complex Systems Society (ECSS)

Because the European Complex Systems Society is completely established as a recognized learned society at 2006 (as stated by WP12), the responsibility of organizing the annual conference is transferred only at this time.

Deliverable

• Deliverable 8.1 Participation of GIACS members to three conferences