The Eighth International Conference on Computational Creativity (ICCC’17)1 was hosted at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, USA from June 19th - June 23rd, 2017. The ICCC’17 organising committee consisted of Ashok Goel (General Chair), Kazjon Grace (Workshop Co-chair), Matthew Guzdial (Media Chair), Mikhail Jacob (Local Chair), Anna Jordanous (Program Co-chair), Ruli Manurung (Workshop Co-chair) and Alison Pease (Program Co-chair). This report summarises the main topics addressed.

I would like to add my support to Lawrence Hunter's proposal to modify the review process for the National Conference on Artificial Intelligence (NCAI). For some time now, I, too, have been disappointed with the majority of papers presented at NCAI-not with the quality of the papers but with the conservative style. I would leave a paper session thinking that AI is progressing but at a painstakingly slow pace! Someone, somewhere must be doing some really innovative research, but why isn't he or she presenting this work at the premier AI conference? Allowing controversial papers but maintaining the quality criteria is a needed improvement for NCAI and AI in general.

This summer's AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-08) and its sister Conference on Innovative Applications of AI (IAAI-08) continued their long tradition of being a focal point of AI. This year's conferences were held in Chicago at the Hyatt Regency McCormick Place, July 13-17, 2008. The multidimensional conference offerings included nine invited talks, 251 technical papers, 22 innovative applications of AI papers, three competitions (poker, AI video, and general game playing), three special tracks (AI and the web, integrated intelligence, and physically grounded AI), 15 tutorials, 15 workshops, and 11 intelligent system demonstrations, as well as a number of awards, a doctoral consortium, student poster session and programs, and a vendor exhibit. This translated into a plethora of choices for the 921 conference attendees. An additional 175 people exclusively attended the tutorials, workshops, or exhibit.

AAAI announced its new class of AAAI Senior Members at the recent AAAI-12 Conference in Toronto. Senior Member status is designed to recognize AAAI members who have achieved significant accomplishments within the field of artificial intelligence. To be eligible for nomination for Senior Member, candidates must be consecutive members of AAAI for at least five years and have been active in the professional arena for at least ten years. Manuela Veloso, incoming AAAI President, and Eric Horvitz, AAAI Past President and Awards Committee Chair, presented the AAAI Awards in August at AAAI-12 in Toronto. The 2012 AAAI Distinguished Service Award recognizes one individual for extraordinary service to the AI community.

We hope you are planning to join us for AAAI-06 and IAAI-06 in Boston Massachusetts, July 16-20, 2006. The response has been overwhelming, as AAAI celebrates 50 years of AI in the United States. A host of new programs will be showcased at the conference, including special tracks on AI and the Web and Integrated Intelligent Capabilities, Senior Member Papers, Nectar Papers, Member Abstracts and Posters, and a Poker Competition. A record 361 papers and abstracts will be presented at AAAI-06 and IAAI-06, and eight outstanding invited talks will be presented by Tim Berners-Lee, Bruce Buchanan, Sebastian Thrun, Pedro Domingos, Neil Jacobstein, Ken Koedinger, Karen Myers, and Dan Roth. For more details about the conference, please see Sara Hedberg's article elsewhere in this issue.

Every year four new councilors are elected to serve three-year terms on the AAAI Executive Council. The Nominating Committee encourages all regular members in good standing to place an individual's name before them for consideration. The Nominating Committee, in turn, will nominate eight candidates for councilor in the spring. In addition to members' recommendations, the committee will actively recruit individuals in order to provide a balanced slate of candidates. AAAI members will vote in the late spring of 2006.

The 2000 Fellows Selection Committee is currently accepting nominations for AAAI Fellow. The AAAI Fellows program is designed to recognize people who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of artificial intelligence over at least a ten-year period. All regular members in good standing are encouraged to consider nominating a candidate. Two references (at least one from a current AAAI Fellow) must accompany nominations. For further information about the Fellows Program or to receive nomination and reference forms, please contact AAAI at 650-328-3123; by fax at 650-321-4457; or by email at fellows@aaai.org.

AAAI Has a New Area Code! The area code for the American Association for Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) office has changed from 415 to 650, effective immediately. After February 1, 1998, use of the new 650 code will be mandatory; so, please update your records now. The 1998 Fellows Selection Committee is currently accepting nominations for AAAI fellow. The AAAI Fellows Program is designed to recognize people who have made significant, sustained contributions to the field of AI, usually over at least a 10-year period.

The Workshop Program of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence’s Thirtieth AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence (AAAI-16) was held at the beginning of the conference, February 12-13, 2016. Workshop participants met and discussed issues with a selected focus — providing an informal setting for active exchange among researchers, developers and users on topics of current interest. To foster interaction and exchange of ideas, the workshops were kept small, with 25-65 participants. Attendance was sometimes limited to active participants only, but most workshops also allowed general registration by other interested individuals. The AAAI-16 Workshops were an excellent forum for exploring emerging approaches and task areas, for bridging the gaps between AI and other fields or between subfields of AI, for elucidating the results of exploratory research, or for critiquing existing approaches. The fifteen workshops held at AAAI-16 were Artificial Intelligence Applied to Assistive Technologies and Smart Environments (WS-16-01), AI, Ethics, and Society (WS-16-02), Artificial Intelligence for Cyber Security (WS-16-03), Artificial Intelligence for Smart Grids and Smart Buildings (WS-16-04), Beyond NP (WS-16-05), Computer Poker and Imperfect Information Games (WS-16-06), Declarative Learning Based Programming (WS-16-07), Expanding the Boundaries of Health Informatics Using AI (WS-16-08), Incentives and Trust in Electronic Communities (WS-16-09), Knowledge Extraction from Text (WS-16-10), Multiagent Interaction without Prior Coordination (WS-16-11), Planning for Hybrid Systems (WS-16-12), Scholarly Big Data: AI Perspectives, Challenges, and Ideas (WS-16-13), Symbiotic Cognitive Systems (WS-16-14), and World Wide Web and Population Health Intelligence (WS-16-15).