Adaptive Collective Systems

FoCAS Book Sprint

The second Book Sprint in the Book Sprints for ICT Research series started in Malta. The participants are 5 scholars brought together by the FoCAS project (Fundamentals of Collective Adaptive Systems), one of them participating remotely.

On the first day, the group decided to write an inspirational book on collective adaptive systems for students that captures the diverse and interdisciplinary perspectives present, ranging from computational science, artificial intelligence, robotics, large systems design, and evolutionary computing to biology and philosophy. After going through a comprehensive conceptual session they paired up to outline the structure of the introduction on collectivity and adaptation. The content of the introduction was fleshed out by the evening of day one.

Writing process

After breakfast of day two, the group then mapped out the contents of the first book section. They chose the title “Why bother?” and four provocative examples to answer why collective adaptive systems matter. The content of this chapter was finished by dinner. After dinner, we went into another conceptual session defining the next chapter they would like to write and settled on goal-oriented versus goalless systems.

Conceptual mapping

On day three, writing on the second section began after breakfast and finished by lunchtime. In the meantime, the written chapters entered the reviewing process with an editor Sandra Sarala proofreading and the remote participant checking the content.

Day four went late into the night, and the book was finished by the afternoon of day five.

This Book Sprint is part of a series testing Book Sprints in the production of academic publications. It is facilitated by Adam Hyde and accompanied by researcher Rachel Baker.

Researching

More photos of the Book Sprint can be found here : http://www.flickr.com/photos/101584348@N06/sets/72157637303027375/