Dear Logic Programmers,
Welcome to the November 2006 issue of the ALP Newsletter.
First of all, my apologies for the delays in the publications of this issue - it is almost one month late! As you can see, we experimented with a new design and things initially did not go as smooth as expected. But I hope you like the result. We have a new Web developer on board - Andrew Gonzalez - who will be helping us with the addition of new features to the newsletter. You will see many additions in the coming issues! Please, do not hesitate to send me any suggestions/comments/critics/praises/... you may have, including things you would like to see (or things you don't want to see...). Remember, this is your newsletter. Some of the projects we are currently implementing is the development of a "LP Map".And since we are talking about this, please let me re-iterate my invitation for submissions. If you have any piece of information that you would like to share with the LP community (call for papers, software announcements, some startling discoveries, a graduating student...) please send them to me. The newsletter can only grow with the input of all the members of the community (and there are many of you out there). In particular, I have always been a strong advocate of students and student participation, so please help me in improving visibility of the good work our students are performing; it will help them, it will help attracting more students to our community, and it will demonstrate to the world that LP is alive and kicking. In particular, I am still desperately looking for submissions to the Doctoral Dissertations column - if you have even MS students finishing some interesting MS Project/Theses in the field of LP, I would be welcome to include those as well. And we will have another Doctoral Consortium in 2007 in Porto, please encourage your students to apply, it is a fantastic experience (whoever attended the Consortium in 2006 can confirm this...) and it provides students with some funds to attend ICLP (we assembled a pretty good financial packet in 2006).
We had a fantastic time at ICLP 2006. Seattle welcomed us with an unusually sunny and warm weather, and the organization of FLoC provided us with a very good event. ICLP was very pleasant, the talks were good (I particularly enjoyed the invited talks) and the range of workshops was outstanding - it was actually hard to choose which workshop to attend, as many of them provided very interesting material. I found particularly interesting the Open Session provided in the Semantic Web workshop (you can read about it in the Workshop Report in this issue of the newsletter), a very interesting approach which was enthusiastically welcomed by the audience. Overall, ICLP 2006 was a success, so please join me in thanking Sandro, Mirek, Manuel, and all the organizers for their hard work and commitment!
And as one ICLP passes by, another one moves our way... ICLP 2007 will be in Porto, and Fernando Silva is planning great things for us - if you are familiar with the traditional Portuguese hospitality, you know that it can only mean an event to really look forward to. Please keep an eye on the various announcements and call for papers that have already started circulating (you can find the preliminary CFP in this issue as well).
ALP is also soliciting formal proposals for ICLP 2008, so if you feel up to the challenge please contact Gopal Gupta.
I need to close this with a very sad news. It is always terrible to announce that a member of our community has departed; Marco Cadoli, a well-established researcher in LP (and other areas) has lost his battle against an incurable disease. In this issue you will find some words in his memory by Marco Schaerf and Jack Minker. The ALP Newsletter team would like to extend condolences to Marco's family and friends.
To bring this one to closure, I would like once again to welcome your comments/critics/suggestions/... on how you would like to see the ALP Newsletter evolve in the near and not-so-near future.
Happy Holidays! 
Enrico