Bill Walsh's December 2 lecture will touch on the following topics, in varying levels of detail:

1. Overview of CombineNet and real-world combinatorial auction applications
2. Generalization of combinatorial auctions to "expressive commerce"
   • Compact expression of real-world preferences using side constraints
3. Solving really large expressive auctions optimally
   • Branch-and-cut framework
4. Why the VCG auction is not practical in the real world
5. Handling preference uncertainty
6. Handling supply uncertainty
7. Handling attributes
   • Solving large NP-hard problems

The following papers provide good background reading; the first two are the most important.

1. A. T. Sandholm, "Expressive commerce and its application to sourcing: How we conducted $35 billion of generalized combinatorial auctions"
   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sandholm/Expressive%20commerce.aimag.scanned.pdf
   (covers topics 1 - 3 at a high level)
2. B. M. Rothkopf, "Thirteen reasons why the Vickrey-Clarke-Groves process is not practical"
   http://orforum.blog.informs.org/files/2007/04/rothkopf_article.pdf
   (covers topic 4)
3. C. T. Sandholm, "Optimal winner determination algorithms"
   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sandholm/windetalgs.pdf
   (covers topic 3 in a lot of detail)
4. D. C. Boutilier, T. Sandholm, and R. Shields, "Eliciting bid taker non-price preferences in (combinatorial) auctions"
   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sandholm/eliciting_bidtaker_prefs.aaai04.pdf
   (covers topic 5)
5. E. C. Boutilier, D.C. Parkes, T. Sandholm, W.E. Walsh, "Expressive banner ad auctions and model-based online optimization for clearing"
   http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~sandholm/expressiveBannerAdAuctions.AAAI08.pdf
   (covers topic 6)