Sounds picky, but I think that something like “Model Components and Meta-Models” might cover this topic more broadly/accuratly, as IIRC one of the software charter items was to define common high-level representations (e.g. meta-models) for model description and deployment. Thoughts?
I wonder if some people are hesitant to post because we do it on the fly and then have to read our banal comments! 
Originally this began as a means to integrate human and biophysical systems. Then we realized how behind the social sciences were compared to the physical sciences. So the key thing was to bring the social scientists who are not programmers/modelers into these techniques so they become “normal” (no pun intended for our social scientist readers).
I see us going the path were it defaults back to the modeling community talking among themselves. And I see the name as part of this, definitely.
How about something that makes it sexy, accessible, appealing to the social scientists!
Let me churn a bit…
Lil
Ergh. My post apparently has disappeared so I’ll summarize it:
We originally intended for this to bring social scientists who are non modelers to come to use ABM as “normal” (sorry no pun intended). I feel as if we’re defaulting back to the modeler-speak/identity.
We need a name that is more sexy/accessible/social scientist friendly:
Open Community for ABM in the Social Sciences
I’ll have to think more on it…
Lil
Lil Na’ia Alessa
Resilience and Adaptive Management Group
Water and Environmental Research Center
University of Alaska
I have no opinion about a name change but do want to comment on modeler and non-modeler exchange. My ideal would be for social and natural scientists eventually to become leaders in complex system modeling, because they have to deal with real complex systems. However, for that to come about, there needs to be concerted, collaborative work from multiple players.
A part of this involves evolving modeling platforms in multiple and new ways. One of these is improving interoperability among modeling platforms–or rather creating interoperability, since it doesn’t really exist AFAIK. Another is making the inherent complexity of model and simulation development more widely accessible through creative interface design.
This kind of software development requires that modelers and developers talk to each other, and sometimes will involve modelspeak and computerese. However, by placing a forum where such exchange is encouraged next to other forums with discussion on education and metadata, my hope is that there will be increasing cross-fertilization of ideas between individuals with expertise in the many diverse domains needed to carry out successful social simulation. IMNSHO, non-programmers should offer ideas and can learn some programming concepts…as well as cool net acronyms ;-). And vice versa.
So chat away. Be as technical as we want. But we should all be ready to translate our dialects to others when needed. Above all, we need to make sure that whatever we discuss, no matter how specialized, that all feel welcome to contribute. We’ve made a great start in that direction already.
Michael
Those are, of course, excellent comments Michael. And this is a great start…
In the past couple of weeks I’ve been in planning meetings for the “integration” core of our EPSCoR grant. There are several misconceptions about ABMs, about modeling social systems but not about the utility of bring social and physical scientists together. It’s almost as if it’s obvious at a broad, general conceptual level and then becomes ??? what when it comes time for the “rubber to hit the road”.
Just typing out loud…
The question is the ??? above.
Absolutely. I think this is a perfect example of where we are currently in the social sciences with regard to modeling.
Michael
Thanks Michael et. al. I do agree with Lil’s point with the caveat that of all of the issues this (sub) forum is of course the most technical. OTOH, if we can’t communicate to non spftware experts what we mean by a meta-model or at least the underlying contrainsts and vision that inform such a model then we are going to miss out on what makes such a thing important in the first place!