Professor Paul Box, Utah State University, and Glenn Ropella, Swarm Development Group, will present a six hour pre-conference tutorial on Swarm. Approximately 12 computers will be available for use, and there will be some room for people to bring their own laptops. The fee is $50 per computer: $50 for one person at a computer, or $25/person for two persons at a computer. Same fees apply if you bring your own laptop, but fee will include Swarm installation on Windows or RedHat Linux. Wireless (802.11b) connection to the Internet will be provided.

To register for the Pre-Conference Tutorial use the conference registration form. For questions about the tutorial, e-mail Paul Box, paulbox at cc.usu.edu

Swarm is a software package well-suited for creating simulations in which model components have independent and specific mechanisms. Swarm provides a description abstraction for describing model components (a.k.a. agents), and an engine for running them together with precise concurrency semantics. The toolkit includes features for presenting, measuring, and perturbing a simulation including the ability to directly load and save complete component state to the R statistical package. This tutorial will cover the basics of agent-based modeling, object-oriented programming in Objective-C, Java, and Swarm agent coding.

Seating is limited, register early!