Call for active participation in the 5th EPTS event processing symposium - Trento, September 21-23, 2009

As we are now in the high gear on planning the 5th event processing symposium, here is a call for active participation. It will be phrased in Q&A format:


Question: What is the Event Processing Symposium ?

This is an annual meeting, intended primarily for EPTS members, but open to other invitees up to the capacity limitation. It features some presentations and a lot of panels and discussions in the areas that are geared towards the understanding and advancing the state of the art and state of the practice in event processing. The previous symposium's program can be found on the ep-ts site.

Question: Where will the symposium take place?

The symposium will take place in Trento, Italy. The four previous meetings have been held in the USA, and since there is a big event processing community outside the USA, we thought of having the next one in Europe and call the large EP community in Europe to participate.
Trento university offered to host the meeting, they also host the symposium's website which currently includes information on the venue, and a registration form, and will also contain the program in the future.

Question: Who can participate ?

As said, the meeting is intended for EPTS members, however, other interested persons can apply and ask to participate. Based on the past experience, there will be some slots for non EPTS members. Participation is by invitation only, and requests for invitations can be done using the symposium's website.

Question: Are there participation fees ?

All EPTS activities are free of charge. Besides the symposium, there will be a banquet, to be held in Castel Toblino, a 12th century castle situated in the Toblino lake, in the evening of September 22. The banquet requires pre-registration and payment for the event and transportation. Details can be found in the registration form.
This is the Castle Toblino where the banquet is planned to be held.


Question: What is the notion of "active participation" ?

Unlike conferences where people come to hear presentations and maybe ask the presenters some questions, the notion of symposium is having the participants actively participate, this is done through the various panels that exist, which provide the possibility to present position statement, and discussions held with the audience. There are also some presentation opportunities. Below I am bringing an annotated plan of the symposium's session, annotating the opportunities for active participation, and then summarize the active participation opportunities.

Question: What sessions will be included in this year's program this year?

Here is an annotated list of the sessions. The meetings will last from 8:30AM to 6:45PM in the first and second day, and until 1PM in the third day.

The first day -- September 21 Monday.


Session I: EPTS - current state and further missions

We shall start (and end) the symposium by discussing the role of EPTS, what was achieved so far, and its missions for the future. This is an opportunity for active participation.

Session II: EPTS Use Case Working Group

This session will report the progress of the EPTS use case working group and will discuss the results and further activities.

Session III: Event Processing customers feedback

In this session we'll have a keynote address by a customer (TBD) and a panel made by customers providing feedback about the state of the practice and further directions from customers' point of view. This is an opportunity for active participation.


Session IV: Event Processing Research Contributions

In this session we'll hear several contributions from the research community about interesting research projects that are being held, there are already some requests for presentations, but there is a room for a couple of more presentations. This is an opportunity for active participation

The Second Day - September 22 - Tuesday

Session V: Reaching out – Event Processing and Business Process Management

During this symposium we shall have two sessions dedicating to "reaching out", dealing with the relationships between "event processing" as a discipline to other disciplines. The first of them is for relationships with the BPM area, following recent and planned discussions and meetings about even-driven BPM, the session will feature a keynote address by professor John Mylopoulos, a prominent researcher on the topic of Business Level Monitoring, followed by a panel that consists of people from both communities, and discussion with the audience. This is an opportunity for active participation

Session VI: EPTS Event Processing Languages Analysis workgroup

This session will report the progress of the EPTS languages analysis working group and will discuss the results and further activities.


Session VII: Reaching out – Event Processing and Network/Systems Management

This will be the second reaching out session for the area of network and system management which is a kind of event processing area that have been restricted to the boundaries of an application so far (see David Luckham's interview with Tom Bishop, the CTO of BMC).
The session will start with a keynote address of Dr. Kristian Stwart, the network availability architect in IBM Tivoli, formerly engineering director of Micromuse Netcool/Omnibus. This will be followed by a panel that consists of people from the two communities. This is an opportunity for active participation
Session VIII : Glossary and Interoperability session (tentative)

This session will deal with EPTS work groups about glossary and interoperability analysis, its format has not been determined yet. This is an opportunity for active participation


The Third Day - September 23 – Wednesday

Session IX: Architecture

This session will report the progress of the EPTS reference architecture working group and will discuss the results and further activities.


Session X: Grand Challenges

This is the closing session, it will feature a panel and open brainstorming about the grand challenges that are ahead of the event processing community, and discuss the preparation for the event processing Dagstuhl seminar planned for May 2010. This is an opportunity for active participation

An EPTS Business Meeting will follow on Thursday afternoon in the same place, but it is not an official part of the symposium.




Question: Can you summarize all the active participation opportunities ?


Here is the list:

1. Participation in the panel about EPTS missions.
2. Participation in the panel about customers feedback about the state of the practice.
3. Providing presentation in the event processing research projects presentation.
4. Participating in the panel about the relations between event processing and business process management
5. Participating in the panel about the relations between event processing and network/system management.
6. Participating in the panel about event processing grand challenges.

In addition, there will be opportunities for participating in open discussions.


Question: What do I need to do in order to participate in any of these activities?

If you are interested to participate in any of the panels or provide a research presentation, please let me know and I'll forward to the appropriate session chair; A session chair will be assigned soon and will be responsible for posing questions to the panel and participants, prior to the symposium, and moderate the session.

Question: What should I do now ?

If you want to participate, then use the symposium's website in order to register.

If you want to actively participate in any of the panel, then use Email to notify me about it.

If you know of anybody who might be interested to participate, and is not included in any of the notification forums and mailing list, then please forward him/her the link to this call for participation.