First ERCIM Electronic Commerce Workshop
by Christine Vanoirbeek
The new ERCIM working group on Electronic Commerce held its kick-off workshop in Copenhagen, 4 November 1997. The meeting was hosted by the Department of Computer Science of the University of Copenhagen (DIKU) and attended by representatives of most ERCIM member institutes.
This first workshop was held to provide a framework for an exchange of ideas between potential partners. This would allow the identification of the major relevant topics which should be addressed in joint research activities and projects in the area of electronic commerce.
Many topics were covered in the programme, reflecting the current activities and interests of participants in the domain. The main subjects addressed during the workshop were related to:
- agent-based market infrastructure
- secure business transactions over the internet - distributed production systems and their relation to electronic commerce
- the use of distributed multimedia technologies
- the use of active documents in inter-organizational workflow management.
The benefits to be obtained from a multidisciplinary approach that integrates skills in many technical, social and legal domains has been noted. It was suggested that further actions of the working group should concentrate on defining an integrated working scheme, which will be a major topic of the forthcoming workshop to be held in Lausanne, 12-13 February 1997
Please contact:
Christine Vanoirbeek - Swiss Federal Institute of Technology
Tel: +41 21 693 2575
E-mail: christine.vanoirbeek@de.epfl.ch