Title: Seminars and GOA evaluation
Dag
Francis,
Ik zal
er op 16 en 23/12 bij zijn.
Groeten.
Julien.
-Oorspronkelijk bericht-Van:
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]Namens Francis
HeylighenVerzonden: vrijdag 3 december 2004 19:56Aan:
Evolution, Complexity and Cognition groupCC: Frank Van
OverwalleOnderwerp: [ECCO] Seminars and GOA
evaluation
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 groupFree University of
Brusselshttp://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html
