RightNow Technologies Artificial Intelligence Colloquium

RightNow Labs Paper Session Overview

Description

The RightNow Labs Paper Session is intended to provide a medium for discussion of current research topics, specifically those topics relevant to RightNow Labs. The goal is not only to keep members of RightNow Labs current on AI and ML research, but also to provide a forum for considering implications of the current research on the direction of RightNow Technologies products.

The session will take the form of a graduate seminar where one academic paper is discussed in detail each week. The paper is distributed mid-week and the discussion is held each Thursday afternoon. The person who selected the paper will lead the discussion, and everyone is expected to participate. In addition to covering the content of the paper, the discussion will also touch on how this research would impact future features for anything in our product line.

Members of RightNow Labs may, on occasion, present papers they have written to prepare for presenting the paper at an upcoming conference.

Requirements

Members of RightNow Labs must attend these sessions, but others from the company or even outside researchers are encouraged to attend if their schedule permits. ALL attendees are expected to read the paper before the session begins. To ensure a productive session, everyone present is strongly encouraged to participate in the discussion.

Papers should be relevant to topics and approaches that RightNow Labs might pursue, loosely defined as the artificial intelligence and machine learning fields. It would be best if the papers were of a reasonable length to facilitate discussion, but not so long that they deter readers from completing the paper. In addition, while key papers in the field are always appropriate, it would be best to bias the papers towards more recent additions to the literature.

Academic papers written by members of RightNow Labs will always be presented in this forum before they are presented at an academic conference. These presentations will be done in a "dress rehearsal" mode for the conference. Thus, instead of an open round-table style discussion, the paper will be presented in a more formal style. These presentations will better prepare the presenter for the conference and thus make them appear more professional during the conference presentation. The audience for these presentations is expected not only to provide critique and commentary on the paper, but also on the presentation.