The main mission of our association is to promote the field of agent based simulation and modeling in diverse areas of the social sciences, and at the same time to contribute to the development of the latter disciplines thanks to a significant investment in ABM and ABSS on the side of social scientists.

We believe that this objective requires a certain amount of preparatory work, in order to ascertain, for example,

• whether and to what extent potential fields and topics are likely to promote scientific innovation and possibly, improve applications
• whether and to what extent they are likely to be perceived as good challenge within given sectors of the scientific community
• whether and to what extent they are likely to be perceived as a good investment by the funding agencies.

For these reasons, the ESSA management committee devised the instrument of Special Interest Groups to be focused on special research topics or approaches. The initiative is meant to be inclusive: proposals are encouraged, provided they refer to issues highly related with Agent Based Social Simulation. For the time being, four SIGs? have been proposed and accepted:

• Market Dynamics, led by Wander Jager (see Market Dynamics SIG Wiki)
• Policy (see Policy SIG Wiki, in preparation)
• Reputation, led by Mario Paolucci (see Reputation SIG Wiki)

For further proposals, please send rosaria.conte@istc.cnr.it a maximum 1-page description of the SIG proposed, indicating:

• main objective(s)
• types of actions aimed at
• indicators of interest in the SIG from within ABSS or adjacent fields, or society at large
• expected results

After a minimal screening (SIGs? too similar will be encouraged to merge), proposals will be loaded on the ESSA site. Once published on the website,

• short-term task of a SIG is to establish a network for exchanging ideas on a Wikipage.
• the mid-term task might consist in taking more substantial courses of action, such as organize meetings, plan editorial and dissemination activities of any sort
• a long-term task might consist of drafting proposals for research projects.