Summary Report of ICWS’03

June 23 - 26, 2003,   Monte Carlo Resort

Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

http://tab.computer.org/tfec/icws03

The 2003 First International Conference on Web Services (ICWS'03) was held at the Monte Carlo Resort in Las Vegas, Nevada, June 23 - 26, 2003. Attracting almost 120 participants from 25 countries (USA, India, France, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Australia, Canada, UK, Sweden, Switzerland, The Netherlands, Germany, Japan, Italy, Korea, Thailand, Finland, Austria, New Zealand, Poland, and Turkey), and all participants were given a proceedings and a CD-ROM with the full papers. Other 100 ad-hoc participants also enjoyed the high quality presentations at ICWS’03. The media sponsor, xmlinsider.com, promised to host on-line presentations and papers presented at ICWS’03.

As usual, the conference offered sessions in different Web services-related research areas for participants at different levels. In fact, the conference had a packed schedule, with 78 regular papers in 9 different technical sessions (Web Services and Dynamic Business Process Composition, Web Services and Process Management, Web Services Discovery, Web Services Security, Web Services Based Applications for e-Commerce, Grid Computing for Distant Services, Web Services Standards and Technologies, Web Services Solutions, and Web Services Industrial) and 12 short papers in a discussion session over the course of four days. The large number of papers presented a logistical challenge to the conferences, as it left each paper presenter with only twenty minutes to present.

In addition to these spectacular sessions, the conference also held three keynote speakers and two Web services security demonstrations. A particular strength of the conference was the result that it brought an international community of researchers and engineers from academic institutions and industry companies, opening up a valuable set of interdisciplinary conversations.

The long-term goal of ICWS is to build up a reputable and respectable conference for the international community. It is very clear that the ICWS is belonging to everyone. Therefore, the organizing committee specially invited all participants to attend the ICWS'04 planning meeting in the evening of June 23. The planning meeting was treated as an open forum for all the participants to express their comments, suggestions or even criticizes for improving the ICWS in the future. Without the contribution and support from the international community, the ICWS could never be classified as a significant and successful conference as what the ICWS'03 has achieved!

Given the high quality of the presentations and papers, some selected papers will be invited for coming journal publications as follows:

· The special issue "Web Services for e-Business Solutions" in the International Journal of Electronic Business (ISSN 1470-6067), Vol. 2, No. 5, to be published in Sept-Oct, 2004. Ref: http://www.inderscience.com/catalogue/e/ijeb/indexijeb.html

·  A new journal is being planned for the ICWS. Further details will be announced soon.

In addition, due to the significant success of the ICWS’03, the multi-conference organizer has presented one outstanding achievement award to Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang, and 8 achievement awards to Jen-Yao Chung, Ephraim Feig, David Flaxer, J. Leon Zhao, Haifei Li, Patrick C. K. Hung, Atul Sajjanhar, and Xinlian Liu, respectively, for their contributions to the ICWS’03. Congratulation again!

Lastly, the organizing committee would like to thank all the participants, paper presenters and session chairs for their valuable co-operation with the demands placed on them. Special thanks to Patrick Hung for creating this smarmy report. Once again, the organizing committee are looking forward to meeting you in ICWS-Europe’03 (http://www.jeckle.de/ICWS03-Europe) and ICWS'04.

Zhang Liang-Jie

Liang-Jie (LJ) Zhang, IBM Watson Research
General Chair and Program Chair of ICWS’03
On Behalf of The ICWS’03 Organizing Committee
July 15, 2003.