2008 Quarter 4

    REPORT FROM THE ASSOCIATION FOR CONSTRAINT PROGRAMMING

                 October-December 2008

This is a short summary of activities within the ACP during the months October-December 2008.

The current Executive Committee comprises:

o Officers: Barry O'Sullivan (President), Jimmy H.M. Lee (Secretary), Thomas Schiex (Treasurer), Pedro Meseguer (Conference Coordinator) o Other Members: Christian Bessiere, Francesca Rossi, Christian Schulte, Michael Trick

The ACP Executive Committee welcomes feedback and suggestions from the ACP community. We encourage you to engage with the ACP-EC to help design new initiatives that promote constraint programming.

ACP.1. The New Executive Committee

Bylaw 5 of the ACP Bylaws (see www.a4cp.org) dictates the election procedure and rules. 2008 is a transition year. In the most recent election, the ACP sought to elect (a) three regular members to a four year term and (b) two interim members to a two year term. The top three elected candidates serve as regular members of the EC (four year term), and the next two serve as interim members (two year term).

The five elected members of the new ACP EC are the following CPers: * Barry O'Sullivan, Peter Stuckey, John Hooker (four year term) * Roland Yap, Karen Petrie (two year term)

Francesca Rossi leaves the ACP EC. On behalf of the CP community, the ACP-EC would like to thank Francesca for her tireless work on behalf of the community. Francesca was amongst the people who set about formally establing a representative body for the international constraints community.

The new Executive Committee takes office on January 1st 2009.

ACP.2. ACP-EC Mailing-List and Minutes of the ACP General Assembly 2008

The web-site and ACP-EC mailing-list will be hosted by the Cork Constraint Computation Centre. The new mailing-list for the EC is acp-ec@4c.ucc.ie. The old mailing-list points to the new list at 4C. The web-site is currently moved to 4C. However, in the meantime if any ACP member wishes to obtain a copy of the minutes of the most recent ACP General Assembly, please contact either Barry O'Sullivan (b.osullivan@4c.ucc.ie) or Jimmy Lee (jlee@cse.cuhk.edu.hk), who would be delighted to email you a copy in the interim.

ACP.3. Call for Bids for CP-2010 and CP-2011

In order to promote greater integration with other communities, the ACP-EC is now planning the location for CP two years in advance. Therefore, we are circulating a call for bids for hosting CP 2010 and CP 2011 at this time. [ Please see the attached call ]

ACP.4. Call for Bids for the 2009 ACP Summer School on Constraint Programming

Members of the CP community who are interested in organizing the 2009 CP summer school should send a proposal to Jimmy Lee (jlee@cse.cuhk.edu.hk) by February 28th, 2009, containing at least the following information: * 1. topic of the school * 2. location * 3. dates * 4. organizers * 5. provisional budget Since its establishment, the summer school has been a major success with feedback from student attendees being very positive.

ACP.5. Establishment of a CP Standardisation Working Group

In the Autumn of 2008, Jacob Feldman (4C) and Narendra Jussien (Ecole des Mines, Nantes) proposed to establish a Standardization Work Group inside the ACP. This Group is intended to include representatives of different CP vendors as well as independent CP experts with a solid academic and business background. The Standardization Work Group may concentrate on the creation of at least three CP standards: 1) CP API for main-stream languages (such as Java, C#, C++) 2) CP modeling languages 3) CP XML formats.

The ACP-EC has accepted this proposal and have asked Jacob and Narendra to proceed to establish the group. Barry O'Sullivan will join the Working Group as the representative of the ACP Executive Committee. The EC would like to thank Jacob and Narendra for proposing this initiative and wish them every success, which would be of significant benefit to the CP community. Please contact Jacob Feldman (j.feldman@4c.ucc.ie) and Narendra Jussien (narendra.jussien@emn.fr) for further details.

ACP.6. Sponsorships

The ACP has agreed to provide sponsorship of 2000 euros to the 1st International Conference on Algorithmic Decision Theory. This conference is run in conjunction with the COST Action IC0602 and the EURO Working Group on Preferences. [ See http://events.math.unipd.it/adt2009/ ]


Call for proposals to host CP-2010 and CP-2011

We invite proposals to host the 16th and 17th International Conference on the Principles and Practice of Constraint Programming (CP-2010 and CP-2011). Proposals are due on or before February 28, 2009. These proposals will be evaluated by the Executive Committee of the Association for Constraint Programming and a decision made for the site shortly afterwards.

The CP conferences are the premier international conferences on constraint programming. They have been held annually since 1995. CP 2009 will be held in Lisbon (Portugal). Previous CP conferences have been held in Sydney (AUS), Providence RI (USA), Nantes (Frances), Sitges (Spain), Toronto (Canada), Kinsale (Ireland), Cornell (USA), Paphos (Cyprus), Singapore, Alexandria (USA), Pisa (Italy), Schloss Hagenberg (Austria), Cambridge (USA), and Cassis (France). For 2010 and 2011, proposals from any venue will be considered.

Proposals should be up to two pages of plain text and should address the following numbered topics: * 1. Proposal for conference chair(s). * 2. Local CP community support. * 3. University, government and industry support, especially financial. * 4. Proposed dates, and flexibility around these dates. * 5. Co-located events that might be held alongside CP. * 6. Conference and exhibition facilities (CP typically attracts between 200 and 250 delegates). * 7. Accommodation and food services. * 8. Site accessibility, attractiveness, and desirability. * 9. Previous experience in running conferences and workshops. * 10. Provisional budget.

If available, please include URLs to any additional information (e.g. web site for the conference venue or hotel).

Guidelines for the CP conference organization, as well as the duties of the conference chair(s), can be found on the ACP web site.

Proposals should be sent to the secretary of the Association for Constraint Programming committee preferably by email to Jimmy Lee, jlee[at]cse.cuhk.edu.hk. In preparing a proposal, please feel free to address questions (e.g. regarding the suitability of the proposed dates) to the same address.