London 21-25 April 1997

The Practical Application Company is pleased to announce the success of PA EXPO97.

The week, attended by nearly 300 delegates from 32 countries, provided a unique insight into leading-edge applications, systems, development tools, and techniques, for solving real-world problems in business, industry, and commerce.

Once again the PA EXPO series of conferences proved to be a world leading event and this year featured:

PAAM97 - The Practical Application of Intelligent Agents and Multi-Agents

PADD97 - The Practical Application of Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining

PACT97 - The Practical Application of Constraint Technology

PAP97 - The Practical Application of Prolog

Each event provided a forum for information exchange and included a rich blend of tutorials, invited talks, refereed papers, panel discussions, a poster session, social agenda and a full industrial exhibition. The result was an ideal forum for the exchange of ideas and knowledge, between experts from a broad spectrum of industries and technologies.

A joint Exhibition was shared by all the exhibitors at PA EXPO, and provided displays of fielded applications and developments tools from BMC Software, CompulogNet, Compuware, Cosytec, IF Computer, ILOG, ISL, LPA and Rank Xerox.

PAAM, the flagship event of PA EXPO, attracted 135 participants and over 60 submitted papers. Tutorials came from Pattie Maes (MIT), Jeffrey Bradshaw (Boeing), Barney Pell (NASA) and Tim Finin (the University of Maryland). Keynote addresses were provided by Benjamin Grosof (IBM), Toru Ishida, (Kyoto University) and Donald Steiner (Siemens AG). There were also two panel discussions: Agents in Commerce chaired by Christine Guilfoyle of The Trefoyle Partnership and Multi Agent Systems:The Successor to Autonomous Agents?, chaired by Nick Jennings of Queen Mary and Westfield College.

PADD was the new event for 1997 initiated in recognition of the emerging level of interest in knowledge discovery and data mining. PADD demonstrated how a wealth of opportunities are available through the use of this technology.

Tutorials came from Usama Fayyad (Microsoft) and Evangelos Simoudis (IBM) Blaise Egan, Huw Roberts (BT Laboratories) and Luc De Raedt (Catholic University of Leuven). Keynote addresses by Stephen Muggleton (Oxford University), Usama Fayyad (Microsoft), Xindong Wu (Monash University), Guy Rafferty (Red Brick Systems) and Neil Mackin (White Cross Systems).

PACT continues to be the premier forum for constraint applications and systems and provided tutorials from Helmut Simonis (Cosytec), and Henri Beringer (ILOG) and Mike Pegman (Vine Solutions Ltd). Keynote addresses from Peter Van Beek (University of Alberta) and Mark Wallace (Imperial College/ICL)

PAP is the leading showcase of Prolog applications and systems. Now in its fifth year, PAP continued to demonstrate the benefits in productivity, reduced maintenance and flexible solutions that Prolog can provide. Tutorials from Phil Vasey (LPA) , Andrew Davison (Prince of Songkla University) Keynote Addresses from John Fox (I C R F), Peter Reintjes (NetSpeak), Oskar Bartenstein (IF Computer) and Larry Lucardie (Andersen Consulting).

PA EXPO97 also included a special guest CompulogNet Tutorial from Manuel Hermenegildo (Polytechnic University of Madrid) on Building Internet Applications using Computational Logic Systems, designed to be of special interest to the Agent and Prolog communities.

Proceedings for all the events are now available from the Practical Application Company.

Next year PA EXPO98 will take place in London, 23rd-27th March and will also include a new event, PAKeM - The Practical Application of Knowledge Management. For further information please visit http://www.demon.co.uk/ar/Expo98/