Scope of the Workshop/Call for Papers
The goal of this inter-disciplinary workshop is to address two contrasting pairs of inter-related research questions:
Firstly, on the one hand, the sustainability of self-organisation, given the features of path dependency (where prior decisions significantly constrain present choices); the iron law of oligarchy, which identifies the tendency of self-organisation to slide into oligarchy; and the avoidance of tyranny at the core of Ober's Basic Democracy. And conversely, on the other hand, self-organisation for sustainability, building on the pioneering work of Ostrom's self-governing institutions for common-pool resource management, but also considering self-sustainability, e.g.\ in the form of cooperative survival dilemmas.
Secondly, on the one hand, the scalability of self-organisation, especially in dynamic environments, for example as the number of components in a system changes over time, how are structures and processes for decision-making, dispute resolution and monitoring affected by such changes, even with new `generations'. And conversely, on the other hand, the self-organisation for scalability, both for pro-active management of anticipated growth or contraction, but also how the values or incentives implied by self-organised rules change over time (the rule-based equivalent of concept drift).
Authors are invited to submit full workshop papers up to 6 pages of original work, as well as extended abstracts up to 2 pages (exploring work in progress, explaining relevant work published elsewhere, or just weird, wonderful or quarter-baked ideas) according the ACSOS paper formatting guidelines. Submissions to the workshop are free of change and are required to be formatted according to the standard IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide. Papers should be submitted electronically in PDF format through the SASSO 2024 conference management system via EasyChair following this link (to be activated).
Information for Authors
All submissions are required to be formatted according to the standard IEEE Computer Society Press proceedings style guide.
Papers can be submitted in PDF format via EasyChair, making sure to select the track “International Workshop on Sustainability and Scalability of Self-Organisation”. Submitted manuscripts must be no longer than 6 pages (including figures, tables, and references).
Accepted papers will be published in the ACSOS Companion volume and will appear in IEEE Xplore.
As per the standard IEEE policies, all submissions should be original, i.e., they should not have been previously published in any conference proceedings, book, or journal and should not currently be under review for another archival conference. We would like to also highlight IEEE’s policies regarding plagiarism and self-plagiarism, available here.
Invited Speakers
Details to be provided
Workshop Schedule
To be determined
Megabike: SaSSO Benchmarker
Inspired by "real-world'" multi-bikes with more than the traditional one or two riders (as illustrated), in the first iteration of this workshop, we ran a Working session that informally considered sustainability and scalability issues relative to a specific problem scenario, called Megabike. To promote community building and cohesion, and to establish a testbed/benchmark for comparative evaluation, optionally, authors can use the Megabike scenario to frame issues of scalability and sustainability of self-organisation, and vice versa, in a way that will promote and provoke discussion.
The Megabike scenario imagines a virtual world in which ``intelligent'' agents have to first, agree with n (n potentially unrestricted) other agents to join together on a megabike, then negotiate a set of social arrangements for the megabike, then navigate the megabike around the virtual world attempting to satisfy individual and collective goals (e.g. maximising utility and lonegevity).
Each agent can perform actions which contribute to the collective effort of pedalling, breaking and steering the megabike. Each agent also has a certain amount of energy, and so must individually decide how much energy to expend on pedalling, braking and steering. Since pedalling costs energy, each agent has an incentive to (literally) free-ride. However, if everyone free-rides, the megabike will be stationary. Since just 'being' also costs some energy, agents will 'die' anyway, even if they are not overtaken by an existential threat that pursues megabikes in the virtual world. The only way to replenish energy is by moving towards lootboxes, which appear randomly, persist for a certain duration, and then are gone forever.
Organisers
Ada Diaconescu
Telecom ParisTech
Peter R. Lewis
Ontario Tech University
Jeremy Pitt
Imperial College London
Programme Committee
Aishwaryprajna, University of Exeter, UK
Roba Abbas, University of Wollongong, AU
Michael Gückert, Technische Hochschule Mittelhessen, DE
Maite Lopez Sanchez, University of Barcelona, ES
Stephen Marsh, Ontario Tech University, CA
Asimina Mertzani, Imperial College London, UK
Simon T. Powers, Edinburgh Napier University, UK
Magda Roszczynska, University of Warsaw, PL
Stefan Sarkadi, King's College London, UK
Sven Tomforde, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, DE
Local Organisation
Matthew Scott, Imperial College London, UK