20 May 2014

Post date: May 29, 2014 3:38:19 PM

We discussed how to take the group forwards following Jason Noble's imminent departure. Notes as per the agenda format below.

1. Purpose of the group and intended audience

The purpose (as specified on the main page and Motivation page) is generally OK, but we'd like to more explicitly include some alternative modelling styles (i.e. non-ABM) and cross-cutting concerns (like model validation or topics related to modelling such as problem structuring).

To help encourage wider participation and a common frame of understanding, we also wanted to stress the focus on simulation methodology. To this end, we thought it would be useful to define a rough frame (tweaking ODD to cover other modelling paradigms) on what we'd expect to be covered---or given consideration---for a talk/discussion on a model:

• model purpose;
• entities and processes in the model;
• design concepts (e.g., core social theory);
• use of data (both for model inputs/structure and validation);
• model initialisation (how and with what data?);
• model validation (how and with what data?).

This doesn't mean having to structure talks like this (though that might be a good idea), but it is a guide for the kinds of questions that are likely to be asked and the aspects that people are likely to want to know to understand your model properly.

We should also try to reach as many interested parties in the uni for the start of the next academic year. Please email me (Stuart) with any groups/departments you think would be interested and I will do a blanket email at some point over the summer.

2. Mixture of topics

As above.

3. Group 'committee' and organisation

Agreed to have 3-5 members to spread the load, with a mix of PhD students and postdocs.

• At least one committee member to attend each meeting (coordinate via a basic Google Docs spreadsheet).
• Rotate sending of pre-meeting email and minutes write-up amongst members. (Coordinate via spreadsheet.)
• All committee members to have 1 fallback discussion topic ready to fill no-agenda meetings (description on spreadsheet so that others can include in pre-meeting emails).
• Committee members to be responsible for organising the alternative / cross-cutting talks (where these will only be a small fraction of the meetings; let's say 1 per year per committee member). Try to minimise effort here!; e.g., you may be organising a relevant speaker anyway for your project that can do double purpose as a MSS meeting.

Initial committee of me (Stuart), Lewis, Elisabeth, Iza and Babak.

4. Member involvement

Have a loose expectation on new members to present once a year on their work and try to organise/give 1 suggestion per year for another discussion topic (including external speakers). No-one is going to enforce this!

We can also put research profiles (or links to such) for any members on this Web site.

Since it's unrealistic to expect attendees to do prep. for meetings, we should have an explicit expectation that no prep. is required (e.g., if you're discussing a paper, you should give a summary of the paper in the first 5 mins; obviously it can still be sent out beforehand if people want to read it).

5. AOB

We are getting kicked out of the normal meeting room from 10th June (due to refurbishments) but have secured use of the ECS common room over the summer.

I'll set up the spreadsheet soon and make changes elsewhere on the site to reflect the above...