Ideas that were discussed at this year's business meeting at Agents '98 included the following. Autonomous agents, i.e., computer programs able to autonomously pursue goals and accomplish tasks in complex environments, has proven to be one such area. The Doctoral Consortium is now in its third year. Students completing doctoral dissertations present their work to a panel of experts to receive feedback and advice. In addition, students have the opportunity to meet practitioners and other students in the field.
Students receive travel stipends as members of the consortium.
The Magazine Group, headed by Executive Editor Jay Blickstein, provides professional editorial and design skills. For instance, the proceedings of the Autonomous Agents conferences have been made available online and are part of ACM's Digital Library. We want to provide services to our membership around the world and the Internet now makes it possible to do that. Lewis notes that people often begin participation in conference activities and then proceed to be involved in oversight and advisory roles for conferences or other areas.