Abstract
This is an excerpt from the contentThe European Social Simulation Association was founded in 2002 by a scientific coalition, the SimSoc consortium, active ever since the first years of social simulation . Ten years before, the first of a series of SimSoc symposia held in Surrey in 1992, marked the birth of a new scientific field, the computer simulation of social life. The volume from the 2nd SimSoc symposium, published in 1995, was titled Artificial Societies . The next year, in 1996, came out the best-seller by Epstein and Axtell Growing Artificial Societies.The planetary dimension of social simulation became apparent through the number of scientific events spreading throughout the world, favoured by increasing synergies both within the social scientific disciplines and across major scientific areas. To computer simulation turned anthropologists, ethologists, geographers, but also computer scientists and ICT designers, ecologists