[Swarm-Support] I'm going to Swarmfest in Italy. You should too!

[Paul Johnson]

The deadline for registration for 2005 Swarmfest in Torino, Italy, is 
rapidly approaching.  I've just spoken with conference Organizer 
Professor Pietro Terna and there are some openings available.

If you are new to Swarm, you might want to sign up for the tutorial 
session that I will be offering on June 5.  That evening, there will be 
a reception and papers & speeches will be held the 6th & 7th.  You can 
read all about it here: http://www.swarm.org/wiki/SwarmFest2005.  I'll 
be in the Ukraine during the 2 weeks before the Swarmfest, and I expect 
to be in Torino by June 3 (barring transportation difficulty, of 
course).  A rough list of what I plan for the Swarm tutorial is pasted 
at the bottom of this message.

The tentative list of the Swarmfest 2005 submissions is:

P.E. Johnson, E S. Herron, University of Kansas, Assessing Variation in 
Mixed Electoral Rules Using Agent-Based Models

G.A. Britton, S.B. Tor, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, 
Expert Systems for Design: The Challenge for SWARM

E. Cadario, University of Torino, Italy, R & D for innovation

F. Coulon, Lund Institute of Technology, Sweden, Schumpeterian 
competition with SWARM, an agent-based framework for computational modelling

G. Ferraris, R. Marras, University of Torino, Italy, The value of the 
security

G. Fioretti and A. Lomi, University of Bologna, Italy, An Agent-Based 
Version of the “Garbage Can” Model of Organizational Decision-Making

T. Freeman, University of Saskatchewan, Canada, Agent-based modeling of 
farming and rural change in Western Canada

M. L'Episcopo, A. Sgroi, Proteo Inc., Italy, Citrus Tristeza Virus 
desease modelling

M. Richiardi, F. Paladi, LABORatorio R. Revelli Center for Employment 
Studies, Italy, Jesus, Hillel and the Man of the Street. Moral and 
Social Norms in Heterogeneous Populations

P. Terna, University of Torino, Italy, The co-evolution of enterprise 
systems and employment structures

A. Cappellini, A. Raimondi, University of Torino, Italy, An hybrid 
simulation of banks lending process

M. Lamieri, M. Remondino, University of Torino, Italy, Theory of Social 
Networks Applied to an Evolutionary Minority Game: an AgentBased Model 
in Swarm

D.Ietri, M.Lamieri, University of Torino, Italy, Networks between 
markets and hierarchical structures: an agent based simulation framework

R.Boero, University of Surrey, UK, Public Goods Provision in the Field: 
ABMs of a Local Production System Considering Empirical Behaviour and 
Communication

        Abstract or papers are at 
http://eco83.econ.unito.it/terna/swarmfest2005papers/


Now, about the tutorial.  Here's the outline, such as it is right now. 
I have more work to do on the last 3 sections, but I have already done 
most of the heavy lifting.

I.Power Tour of Swarm Applications (1 hour)
  A. Consider an agent-based simulation.  What are the defining 
characteristics?
   i.What do the agents do?
    ii. How do they interact (sense & effect each other)?
     a) Do they “find each other” as individuals?
     b) Do they respond to “environmental traces”?
    iii. What is the Scheduling framework?
     a) Do all agents act simultaneously?
     b) Do they take “steps” in turn?
     c) Dynamic, event-driven scheduling
     d) Synchronous vs Asynchronous is a conceptual, not a Swarm, 
distinction
  B.Survey and graphical demonstration:
    i.Conway's Game of Life
    ii. Schelling's Neighborhood Segregation Model
    iii. Savage's Arborgames
    iv. Santa Fe Artificial Stock Market
    v. Latane & Nowak's Social Impact Model
    vi. Heatbugs
    vii. Mousetrap
    viii. Huckfeldt & Johnson Opinion Formation Model
II. How to get started (45 minutes)
  A. Installing Swarm
  B. What Programming background is required
  C. What every Swarm programmer needs these things
    i.The Apple Obj-C book
    ii. Swarm docs & user guide & Swarm FAQ
    iii. swarmapps & the tutorial

III.Swarm Idioms
  A. Memory “zones”
  B. createBegin/createEnd
  C. Protocols (id <Activity>) versus (id) and (Activity *)
  D. This will continue along with basic concepts I think are important.

IV.Anatomy of a Swarm Program: Swarm Sugar Scape (sss)
  A. This will not be massively different from the outline I have 
online already at 
http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Presentations/ESA-Portland-2004/Presentations/SSS_Swarm_Tutorial1.pdf

V.Adding a New Class in a Swarm Model: A Predator on the Sugar Scape
  A. The Handouts that go with this are online here:
http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/Presentations/ESA-Portland-2004/Handouts/sss-2.2-Handouts.tar.gz

Message to Swarm Tutorial Students:

It is not possible for you to learn all nuances and details of Swarm in 
a single afternoon.  You can, however, gain a solid understanding of the 
kinds of problems for which Swarm programs have proven useful and some 
ideas about how you might apply these models in your own research.

I think the best way to prepare for the tutorial is to find a computer 
that has Swarm-2.2 installed, or install it for yourself, and then try 
to download the swarmapps-objc package of demonstration programs.  In 
particular, inside that package, there is a step-by-step tutorial for 
Swarm.  If you read through the README files in those directories, and 
perhaps try to compile and run some of the examples, I think it will 
give you a good frame of mind for the tutorial.

If you can't get access to a computer that has a working copy of Swarm, 
I'd urge you to take a couple of steps in preparation.  First, get a 
good book on the C programming language.  If you can find a book that 
has the coverage of Objective-C as well, such as Steven Kochan's recent 
book, "Programming with Objective-C" then that will be fine.  But the 
Objective-C part is not really necessary.  After you understand C, you 
can download a free book from the Apple website.  That's the one we 
colloquially call “the objective-C book” because, for a long time, it 
was the only book to be found on the subject.  I keep a copy of that 
book stashed here: http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn/ps905/ObjC.pdf

If you've only used programs before, but never written one, you will 
have to travel up a steep learning curve.  I've made that transition 
myself, and would urge you to be patient and to keep trying.  I think 
the best thing you could do for yourself is to avoid using MS Windows. 
Get a Unix or Linux Operating system of some sort, or get a Macintosh OS 
X, because that is a BSD Unix system underneath.  I've seen it with my 
own eyes—you can open up a terminal and interact with it as if it were 
really a Unix system.  MS Windows is still too frustrating for me.  I 
understand, lots of people use it, but that doesn't mean its right.

When I come to the Swarm tutorial, I'll bring some installation disks 
for the Fedora Core Linux distribution. If you want to erase a laptop, 
or if you have some free space, I'll walk you through an installation. 
Contact me ahead of time, we can schedule that. I'll be in Torino by June 4.

--
Paul E. Johnson                       email: address@hidden
Dept. of Political Science            http://lark.cc.ku.edu/~pauljohn
1541 Lilac Lane, Rm 504
University of Kansas                  Office: (785) 864-9086
Lawrence, Kansas 66044-3177           FAX: (785) 864-5700