Monday June 14

Speaker: Dr. Giovanni Rimassa, , Whitestein Technologies, Zurich, Switzerland

Title: Applying Agent Technology for Enterprise-Wide Solutions

Abstract: The challenges set forth by the ever increasing need for effective resource and application integration on an enteprise-wide scale or even across ad-hoc collaborating groups of enterprises demand enormous flexibility from today software technologies and infrastructures. The integrated approach of multi-agent systems, combining language philosophy and social sciences ideas with distributed systems and artificial intelligence technologies, is perfectly tuned to these complex and dynamic domains.

The talk will provide an essential overview of Agent Technology from the perspective of enterprise and cross-enterprise collaboration. After the conceptual discussion, real sample cases will be presented, drawing from actual past and present experiences of Dr. Giovanni Rimassa and his employing company Whitestein Technologies in building software systems and solutions leveraging the power of Agent Technology.

Tuesday June 15

Speaker: Prof. Franco Zambonelli, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Italy

Title: Self-organization and Spatial Abstractions in Modern Distributed Computing

Abstract: The complexity of modern distributed computing scenarios is such that they can no longer be managed with traditional approaches to distributed systems engineering. Novel approaches supporting self-configuration and self-adaptation of activities are required.

A variety of heterogeneous approaches exploiting, to different extent, some forms of self-organization are emerging. The question of whether a single unifying approach, applicable with little or no adaptations to scenarios as diverse as P2P world-wide networks and local networks of embedded sensors, is still open.

In this context, the talk will analyse the important role that will likely be played by spatial abstractions. In fact, a promising directions towards a unifying and comprehensive approach to self-organizing distributed computing may be in the exploration of "spatial" computing models, in which the activities of application components are abstracted as taking place in some sort of abstract metric space, and in which self-organization emerges from the autonomous capability of components of sensing, acting in, and navigating that space.

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