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Welcome to the first ESSA Newsletter! |
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Welcome to the first ESSA Newsletter! |
ESSA is a professional association for those working within the European
social simulation community.
An association created specifically to promote and support
European based social simulation at the researcher, practitioner and student
levels.
We have had a very good response to our call for interest which was publicised in JASSS (the Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation) and distributed at recent conferences and workshops. I would like to take this opportunity on behalf of the signatories of thanking all of you who have registered your interest in participating in ESSA during this inaugural stage (and a special thanks to those who have offered practical help and support). Over 60 individuals have registered so far from across the EU and beyond. This means we already have a presence at a good proportion of the institutions that practice social simulation within the EU. Remember that ESSA does not restrict membership to only those within the EU but is focused on those who participate within the EU social simulation community. We have already had a good response from colleagues beyond the EU - and we welcome this. We encourage you to approach colleagues outside the EU who you feel may benefit from involvement in ESSA.
ESSA now needs to elect officers and a management committee. Our objective is to fully launch ESSA by the start of next year. We propose the following timetable:
Nominations and elections will be mediated via e-mail - full details will be posted to you in due course. Membership dues will be collected in January when the official treasurer and officers have been elected.
In order to facilitate easy communication between members we have set-up a e-mail discussion list. If you have registered already then you should automatically be assigned to the list. To send an e-mail to the list e-mail your message to: essa-list@cfpm.org. If you wish to unsubscribe from the list e-mail fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk with a message body containing "UNSUBSCRIBE essa" (no quotes or signature). If you wish to resubscribe to the list then the body should contain "SUBSCRIBE essa". Archives of all posts can be found at http://cfpm.org/~majordom/essa/ We hope the list will be used sparingly for relevant announcements and ESSA focused discussion only. More general social simulation discussion should be directed to the SimSoc list (see http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/SIMSOC.html)).
We aim to register the domain "essa.eu" as soon as the "eu" domain is fully released. Our current aim is to move to a more extensive site in January 2003 which will be designed by a team of volunteers at Kloblez-Landau University headed by Klaus Troitzch (thanks Klaus!). Currently we will be sticking with this, our temporary website and domain. We also aim to create a social simulation paper repository allowing for the posting of unreviewed papers which can then be accessed free over the web.
If you feel you have something to contribute to future newsletters then do not hesitate to e-mail essa@cfpm.org with ideas or contributions.
If you know of colleagues who have yet to register for ESSA then do encourage them to do so. Registering now allows them to participate in the formation of ESSA. Direct them to the ESSA webpage at: http://essa.cfpm.org. Additionally, if you are attending a relevant workshop or conference then please feel free to print out some copies of the following "flyer" available in pdf and ps and ms-word formats.
This newsletter was put together by David Hales dave@cfpm.org. A big thanks to Bruce Edmonds for setting-up and maintaining the discussion list.
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