ECCO Seminar series
For our seminars, I have reserved a room in the psychology
faculty (3C204) on Thursdays, starting from 5 pm, for the rest of the
year. This is a large room with an inbuilt projector for computer
presentations. Since we will normally be with a relatively small
group, we may move the tables and chairs to create a more close
setting.
I chose the room in the PE faculty, because the LW faculty, to
which I am administratively connected, does not have any rooms
available for seminars, and normal lecture rooms have to be paid for
if they are not used for teaching. But if anybody knows a pleasant
room somewhere else that we could use, I can still change the
reservation...
Since all those who reacted noted that Thursday was OK, while no
other days were unproblematic for everybody, it seems that Thursday
will be our weekly activity day. Moreover, since some ECCO members
are normally working off-campus until 5 pm, I suggest to start the
seminars a little later, at 5.30, until about 7.30.
The preliminary program for the next few weeks is the following
(this will be confirmed in the coming days):
Dec. 9: Francis Heylighen: The origins of organization. A
general introduction to the ECCO theme
Dec. 16: Carlos Gershenson: Self-organizing traffic lights: a
simple simulation of the mediated emergence of cooperation
Dec. 23: Marko Rodriguez: Towards a computer-support
system for societal decision-making
Evaluation of our GOA project
Most of you will know that Frank Van Overwalle and I proposed an
ambitious "GOA" project on the emergence and evolution of
distributed cognition, which unfortunately was not funded. Today we
got the referee reports, which are generally quite positive.
Two referees thought we definitely deserved funding (one
enthusiastically so), the third one was a little doubtful. A strong
point of the proposal was the quality of the research team, which was
basically a combination of the embryonic ECCO as it existed in April,
and Frank's Social Cognition group. All referees agreed on the
excellent scientific reputation and high activity level of the main
promotors, and the broad complementarity of backgrounds and
experience of the other members. The only criticism for the ECCO
group was that we needed more publications in high-impact journals,
which is indeed a weak point. The referees also mostly agreed on the
importance, originality and cohesion of the project, but two were
more doubtful about the practical feasibility, noting that while we
were likely to produce very interesting results, the overall aim of
creating an integrated theory of distributed cognition seemed
overambitious given the 5 year time-frame of the project. The
referees further made some more detailed suggestions for improvement
of the proposal.
In conclusion, it definitely seems worth resubmitting an
improved version of this proposal next time a call is opened.
--
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
Francis Heylighen
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition group
Free University of Brussels
http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
