Please see below for the first call for participation in a Memories…

Please see below for the first call for participation in a Memories for Life workshop on
day one of GCCR'08 from Professor Nigel Shadbolt, Chair of Grand Challenge 3:
Memories For Life

Workshop: 18th March 2008

Location: British Computer Society, Southampton Street, London

Call for Participation

The Memories for Life (M4L) Grand Challenge is currently seeking to build on the work
of the EPSRC Network on M4L. One of the chief outputs of the network was a road map
for future M4L-based research, and the M4L workshop at GCCR 08 will focus on
(a) moving research in this area forward in the context of the road map and current
funding opportunities within the Research Councils, (b) presenting current research in
this area, and (c) considering how to widen the scope of the M4L community beyond the
core members of the M4L network.

We therefore call for participants in the M4L workshop to address any of these issues, or
to present current relevant projects. Our aims are to produce concrete actions to widen the
community's scope, to advance the road map, and to identify future areas of
interdisciplinary research into memory and the technology of information storage and
retrieval. In particular, we would hope to identify and develop some emerging proposals
for funding during the course of the workshop. A key objective of the workshop is to help
prioritise current research, and to amend the road map accordingly.

The current version of the road map is at
http://www.memoriesforlife.org/downloads/M4L_ROAD_MAP_2008.pdf. Those
interested in participating should send an expression of interest as soon as possible.
Places are extremely limited due to the small size of venue, and this, though not
compulsory, would be of great help in planning. A short (2pp) position paper outlining a
view of promising lines of future research, preferably with an interdisciplinary slant,
should be sent by Feb 22nd. Key dates are summarised at the end of this call.

Examples of topics that submissions may wish to explore include, but are not limited to:
   · Descriptions of existing or potential systems or applications that use personal
      digital memories. What are the main challenges that the system deals with, and
      what benefits does it provide to users?
   · Descriptions of resources (such as corpora and analysis tools) which can be used
      by Memories for Life researchers.
   · Computer science research issues, including how memories are stored, organised,
      searched, integrated, interpreted, interacted with, and protected (security). Also
      the impact of new technologies, such as the semantic web.
   · Cognitive science research issues, including the requirements and prospects of
      memory prostheses, and analysis of similarities and differences between human
       memory systems and computer digital memories. For example, humans can forget
       memories, is there an analogous forgetting in digital memories?
   ·   Social research issues, including public policy and legal issues (who has rights to
       access and modify digital memories?).

Important Dates:
Distribution of road map:                   Feb 2nd 2008
Expressions of interest                     As soon as possible
Position papers:                            Feb 22nd 2008
Final Programme:                            March 1st 2008
Workshop:                                   March 18th 2008

GC3 Steering Group
Chair: Nigel Shadbolt (University of Southampton)
Andrew Fitzgibbon (Microsoft)
Wendy Hall (University of Southampton)
Ian Horrocks (University of Oxford)
Ehud Reiter (University of Aberdeen)

Send position papers to info@memoriesforlife.org.

For more information on M4L, please see http://www.memoriesforlife.org

For more information on GCCR'08 Please see http://www.bcs.org/gccr08

The GC3 Memories for Life workshop will be sponsored by the BCS and IET.