In August/September 1995 the first international conference on the Practice and Theory of Automated Timetabling ( PATAT'95 ) was held in Edinburgh at Napier University. The conference was very sucessful and became the first in a series of conferences. A Steering Committee was set up to oversee this series. In the very first Steering Committee meeting a suggestion to set up a new EURO working group in Automated Timetabling was put forward. The idea was that this working group would complement the PATAT Conferences. A proposal went to EURO in November 1995 and in early 1996, EURO approved the idea. The EURO Working Group on Automated TimeTabling (WATT) was formed.

Since those early days the working group has flourished. The PATAT conference is now held every two years and a WATT Workshop is held in alternate years as a special session of the EURO or IFORS conferences. In addition to these web pages, there is a moderated mailing list for all members (watt@cs.nott.ac.uk).

A chronology of the main events in WATT's history.