The organising committee wishes to thank Jean-Philippe Rennard, who has a passion for artificial life, as can be seen on his superb web site (http://www.rennard.org/alife), and who has donated time and experience to create the web pages of the conference, Chantal Labeille, the efficient secretary of the Centre Condorcet and Valérie Collet for her general help with setting up the conference.

On the academic side, we would like to thank the late Professor Louis Mieusset and Professor Gérard Pierre, Heads of the Centre Universitaire Condorcet and Mr André Lavoillotte, administrative manager of the Centre Condorcet who welcome us in their brand new conference venue.

Finally, we wish to thank the different partners whose logos appear below, namely the Conseil Régional de Bourgogne, the Université de Bourgogne, the Centre Universitaire Condorcet, the Communauté Urbaine Le Creusot Montceau, the Direction Générale de l'Armement, the Institut National de Recherche en Informatique et Automatique, the Equipe Evolution Artificielle et Apprentissage of the Centre de Mathématiques Appliquées of the Ecole Polytechnique for their logistic or financial help, which allowed us to have such low registration fees.