Recognizing and using goals in event management

ABSTRACT

Personal event management involves planning when, where and how events should occur, making sure the event's prerequisites are satisfied, and developing contingencies for when things go wrong. Conventional calendar and project management tools, however, only record and visualize explicit human decisions regarding event specifics.

We present Event Minder, a calendar program that takes into account the goals for which the events are scheduled. Users can input descriptions of events in natural language, mixing high-level objectives, concrete time and place decisions, and omit "obvious" common sense details. A commonsense knowledge base provides sensible defaults, and machine learning refines these defaults with experience. We can make recommendations for alternative plans, including alternatives that satisfy higher-level goals in different ways as well as those that meet immediate constraints. Our current system covers dining-related events, integrating commonsense with domain knowledge about specific restaurants, bars and hotels.

REFERENCES

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INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.4 INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPLICATIONS
      H.4.1 Office Automation
          Subjects: Time management (e.g., calendars, schedules)

Additional Classification:
  H. Information Systems
  H.5 INFORMATION INTERFACES AND PRESENTATION (I.7)
      H.5.2 User Interfaces (D.2.2, H.1.2, I.3.6)
          Subjects: Natural language

General Terms:
Design

Keywords:
PIM, calendaring, common sense, event management, user modeling