Whence Algorithmic Game Theory?

I recently saw the slides for the invited talk delivered by Moshe Vardi at SR 2015, the third International Workshop on Strategic Reasoning, which was held in Oxford in the period 21-22 September 2015. The talk was entitled A Revisionist History of Algorithmic Game Theory and must have stimulated some discussion at the workshop.

Moshe's message was that algorithmic game theory is older than the "official history" would make one believe and that

• it was initiated by logicians in 1957,
• it was revitalized by Vol. B TCS in 1989 , and 
• has been active in Volume B TCS since then. 

The most important message, however, is that one should tear down the wall between Vol. A and Vol. B. As readers of this blog may have realized, this is a message to which I wholeheartedly subscribe, perhaps because in the small research community I live in, we have to go to each other's talks to even have an audience at all.

Call for Workshops Proposals affiliated with ICALP 2016

Irene Finocchi asked me to distribute the appended call for workshop proposals for ICALP 2016. If you plan to organize a TCS workshop, why not co-locating it with that conference in Rome? The workshop chair is Nicola Galesi.

Call for Workshops Proposals affiliated with ICALP 2016
July 11-15, 2016,  Rome, Italy

Workshop proposals are solicited for ICALP 2016. A workshop may relate to any of the three tracks of ICALP, but proposals related to all aspects of theoretical computer science will be considered as well.

ICALP workshops typically feature a number of invited speakers and a number of contributed presentations.  Workshops will be held on the first day of the conference (July 11, 2016) and will have a duration of at most one day.

Workshop proposals should be no longer than two pages and should include:
- title of the workshop;
- person(s) responsible for the workshop (name and email address);
- a short scientific summary and justification of the proposed topic. This should include a discussion of the particular benefits of the topic to the ICALP community;
- the proposed format and agenda;
- procedures for selecting participants and papers;
- expected number of participants.

Proposals should be sent in pdf format to icalp2016@di.uniroma1.it

Important dates
Submission due: December 20, 2015
Notifications: January 10, 2016
Final program due: 15 May 15, 2016

Further information

We provide the following aspects of the workshop organisation:
- registration;
- wireless network, conference rooms, etc. (as for ICALP);
- a link to the web page of the workshop;
- local support and organization.

We do not provide:
- management of any scientific aspects of the workshop program (the workshop organizers are responsible for call for papers, call for participation, notification, program, workshop webpage, publication of workshop proceedings or journal special issues, etc.);
- publicity for the workshop.

PC chairs for ICALP 2017

I am happy to inform you that the PC chairs for ICALP 2017, which will be held in Warsaw, Poland, in the period 10-14 July 2017 will be:

• Track A: Piotr Indyk (MIT, USA)
• Track B: Anca Muscholl (LaBRI and Université Bordeaux, France)
• Track C: Fabian Kuhn (University of Freiburg, Germany)

The conference chairs will be Mikolaj Bojanczyk and Piotr Sankowski.

On behalf of the EATCS, I thank these colleagues for their willingness to serve.