All those topics that i wish i had time to pursue more earnestly.
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Category — Cultural Informatics

Information Policy: Evaluation Report on UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre Initiative

Information Policy: Evaluation Report on UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre Initiative:

UNESCO’s Community Multimedia Centre initiative is contributing “to improving quality of life through access to information” according to an independent evaluation report carried out by the International Institute for Sustainable Development (IISD).

UNESCO’s CMC initiative promotes sustainable local development through community-based facilities that combine traditional media like radio, television and print with new information communication technologies (ICTs) such as computers, the Internet, and mobile devices.

Since 2001, UNESCO has established more than 87 CMCs in over 22 developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America and the Caribbean with major funding provided by the Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation (SDC).

The evaluation describes the initiative’s main achievement: “The CMCs are accepted by and fully integrated into the communities and can in many cases be sustained beyond the pilot phase without core operating grants. The effort and funding that UNESCO has channeled into this transformative initiative have been exceeded by the hard work and commitment of the CMC staff and the communities where they are based.”

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this report has some significant findings. one of which i want to reaffirm…. people matter more than technics.

May 29, 2006   No Comments

Just published: “What UNESCO for the Future”, UNESCO, 2006: UNESCO SHS

Just published: “What UNESCO for the Future”, UNESCO, 2006: UNESCO SHS:

‘What UNESCO for the future?’ proceeds from a reflexion on current and future trends and potential gaps that must be filled, on future scenarios and on ‘What UNESCO?’ in terms of its role today as a participant that could influence the processes of global transformation.

‘What UNESCO for the future?’ reflects on UNESCO’s possible responses to the rising global challenges it faces today. In other words, what role could our Organization have within the United Nations system, and what contribution could it make towards resolving the main challenges and threats of the twenty-first century?

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i wonder what unesco we’ll have. i look forward to working with more people from unesco…. we’ll see.

May 29, 2006   No Comments

The Morning News – The All Girls School, by Mara Bodis-Wollner

The Morning News – The All Girls School, by Mara Bodis-Wollner:

In Bodis-Wollner’s artist’s statement for her “All Girls School” exhibit (up now at the Jen Bekman gallery), she writes:These photographs stem from my preoccupation with the experience of disappointment amidst celebration. In this series, I focus on issues of trust, intimacy and betrayal in the friendships of women and girls; specifically how deception, unspoken exclusions, and discomfort are manifested in women’s body language and gestures.

I create the critical moment of a semi-unconscious inhibition and I look for where and how the tension just below the surface rests. Sometimes the perfect moment occurs when the gaze has landed onto a place of unselfconscious mistrust and introversion. I explore how gesture and gaze function to create an outsider, and the ways in which these visual clues shift ostracism from one subject to another both inside and outside the photograph.Precisely. But what drew us to her pictures was the storytelling. Each shot has a dozen narratives that pop off the surface if you trace the subjects’ eyes. Admiration, frustration, loneliness, jealousy—it’s your 10-year high school reunion and big family dinner all rolled into a single uncomfortable moment.

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if you’ve been on the other side of these looks, you know the feeling….

May 21, 2006   No Comments

CFP CDDC

The Center for Digital Discourse and Culture(CDDC) is announcing an expanded call for proposal for our Research E-ditions, Hosting Services, and our new Digital Originals publishing series.

CDDC in the College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University is accepting new manuscripts for digital modes of publication in its Research E-ditions series. The CDDC ( http://www.cddc.vt.edu ) has been in operation for nearly two years, and it publishes hypertext journals, hosts digital research archives, and cooperates with many international cyberculture organizations.

As an entirely digital point-of-publication, the CDDC will review and then produce professional academic research works–either single-authored or edited collections–in a digital format. Proposals could take the form of an “e-book” that simply makes available a scholarly monograph in online format, or a collection of academic papers organized around a central theme, or a fully hypertextual experiment with new forms of digital discourse. Arrangements can be made for “print on demand” (POD) paper versions of these works, but the main focus of the CDDC is to explore the new communicative potentials of hypertext, hypermedia, and web-centered publication. The review processes will be as extensive and rigorous as those experienced in print academic communication, but it too will be conducted in a fully on-line format.

Research E-ditions

All topics are potentially of interest in the Research E-ditions series, however, we are particularly interested in manuscripts, digital archives, and hypertexts from the humanities and social sciences relating to the areas of cyberculture, social theory, literary studies, digital art, and cultural studies. In addition, the CDDC is committed to proposals from applied and natural sciences that relate directly to the fields of bioinformatics, energy and environmental studies, and information technology and communications.

Hosting@CDDC

All topics and projects of academic interest that require hosting are solicited for the Hosting@CDDC project. We host and mirror several major projects and have space for many more. We host projects serving a broad set of communities. We provide basic facilities of web hosting and listserv hosting. Any requirements beyond basic hosting should be outlined in the proposal. Hosting is frequently used in conjuction with various forms of community software, e-journal software, or related software to support artistic, academic, and related content.

Digital Originals

Digital Originals is open access publishing for book-like digital projects. We are soliciting submissions from people who have materials that originate in the digital arena, and want them to be released either under a Creative Commons license or under an Open Content License. The original documents will be peer-reviewed, edited, and published with an ISBN assigned and made freely downloadable on the CDDC Website.

Proposals:

Initial proposals should take the form of a 1 page description of the project, including a description of the services requested, a description of the project’s audience, and provide current examples of the work (URLS) that is to be hosted or published. All proposals will be peer reviewed with at least two reviewers and further information may be requested. The review process is as rigorous as any academic publisher.

Proposals should be sent to CDDC@vt.edu

May 4, 2005   No Comments

Thu, 25 Mar 2004 19:55:40 GMT

Social Informatics. Social Informatics
http://www.social-informatics.org/

Social Informatics includes comprehensive sections on relevant fields, infrastrctures, news, journals, associations, study programs and research centers. Social Informatics is an interdisciplinary perspective that uses both, the tools of the social science and the tools of the computer science to analyze the interaction between technology (usually information technology) and society. In other words we can say that SI takes into account social aspects of computerization. SI analyses consider an array of relevant factors, including social, cultural, organizational, and other contextual components. [Marcus P. Zillman, M.S., A.M.H.A. Author/Speaker/Consultant]

March 25, 2004   Comments Off

yet one more paper i have to finish.


CALL FOR PAPERS

Fourth International Conference on

CULTURAL ATTITUDES TOWARDS TECHNOLOGY AND COMMUNICATION

(CATaC'04)

27 June-1 July 2004

Karlstad University, Sweden

www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac/

Conference theme:

Off the shelf or from the ground up?

ICTs and cultural marginalization, homogenization or hybridization

The biennial CATaC conference series provides a continuously expanding

international forum for the presentation and discussion of current

research on how diverse cultural attitudes shape the implementation

and use of information and communication technologies (ICTs). The

conference series brings together scholars from around the globe who

provide diverse perspectives, both in terms of the specific culture(s)

they highlight in their presentations and discussions, and in terms of

the discipline(s) through which they approach the conference theme.

The first conference in the series was held in London in 1998, the

second in Perth in 2000, and the third in Montreal in 2002.

Beginning with our first conference in 1998, the CATaC conferences

have highlighted theoretical and praxis-oriented scholarship and

research from all parts of the globe, including Asia, Africa, and the

Middle-East. The conferences focus especially on people and

communities at the developing edges of ICT diffusion, including

indigenous peoples and those outside the English-speaking world.

Understanding the role of culture in how far minority and/or

indigenous cultural groups may succeed - or fail - in taking up ICTs

designed for a majority culture is obviously crucial to the moral and

political imperative of designing ICTs in ways that will not simply

reinforce such groups' marginalization. What is the role of culture in

the development of ICTs "from the ground up" - beginning with the

local culture and conditions - rather than assuming dominant "off the

shelf" technologies are appropriate? Are the empowering potentials of

ICTs successfully exploited among minority and indigenous groups,

and/or do they rather engender cultural marginalization, cultural

homogenization or cultural hybridization?

Original full papers (especially those which connect theoretical

frameworks with specific examples of cultural values, practices, etc.)

and short papers (e.g. describing current research projects and

preliminary results) are invited.

Topics of particular interest include but are not limited to:

- Culture: theory and praxis

- Culture and economy

- Alternative models for ICT diffusion

- Role of governments and activists in culture, technology and communication

- ICTs and cultural hybridity

- ICTs and intercultural communication

- Culture, communication and e-learning

Our conference themes provide a range of approaches to the questions raised.

KEYNOTE SPEAKER

Nina Wakeford, Foundation Fund Lecturer in Sociology and Social

Methodology. For her DPhil at Nuffield College, Oxford, Dr Wakeford

studied the experiences of mature students using a sociological

conception of risk. Before coming to the University of Surrey in

September of 1998, she spent three years studying "Women's Experiences

of Virtual Communities", funded by an ESRC Post-Doctoral grant. The

last two years of this Fellowship she conducted fieldwork in and

around Silicon Valley while based at the University of California,

Berkeley.

CATaC'04 will also feature two particular foci, each chaired by a

distinguished colleague who will oversee paper review and development

of the final panels.

PANEL 1: The Multilingual Internet

Panel Chairs: Susan Herring and Brenda Danet

Expanding on their collective work, including a special issue of the

Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication (Vol. 9 (1), November, 2003

- see http://www.ascusc.org/jcmc/), this thread invites papers with a

specific focus on how the Internet impacts language choice and

linguistic practices in traditionally non-English speaking cultural

contexts. Of particular interest are situations that respond in

various ways to the tension between global English dominance and local

linguistic diversity, e.g., through use of English as an online lingua

franca, the "localization" of global or regional linguistic

influences, translation or code-switching between different languages,

and strategic uses of the Internet to maintain and invigorate minority

languages.

Susan Herring is Professor of Information Science and Linguistics,

Indiana University Bloomington

Brenda Danet is Professor Emerita of Sociology and Communication at

the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

PANEL 2: Utopian Dreams vs. Real-World Conditions: Under what

conditions can ICTs really help worse off communities?

Panel Chair: Michel Menou.

CATaC'04 will likely feature some examples of "best practices" in

using ICTs to aid culturally-appropriate development, especially as

pursued through governmental or NGOs' projects, community informatics

endeavours, etc. At the same time, however, real-world politics and

realities - e.g., violent oppression, political corruption, gender and

ethnic discrimination, abuse of dominant economic position, structural

disasters, worst practices of all kinds and origins, etc. - can

shatter the best-laid plans for using ICTs to supposedly help

especially the poorest of the poor. How far can ICTs succeed in

supporting culturally-appropriate development - and what appropriate

answers to real-world conditions are required in order for our best

efforts to realize the liberatory potentials of these technologies not

be broken down?

Michel Menou, has worked on the development of national information

policies and systems in many countries of the Southern hemisphere

since 1966. Since 1992 his work focused on the impact of information

and ICT in development. He is a member of the Community Informatics

Research Network and of the network of Telecentres of Latin America

and Caribbean.

PAPER SUBMISSIONS

All submissions will be peer reviewed by an international panel of

scholars and researchers and accepted papers will appear in the

conference proceedings.

Initial submissions are to be uploaded to the CATaC website according

to the paper guidelines (available at the conference website).

Submission of a paper implies that it has not been submitted or

published elsewhere. At least one author of each accepted paper is

expected to present the paper at the conference.

There will be the opportunity for selected papers from this 2004

conference to appear in special issues of journals and a book. Papers

in previous conferences have appeared in journals (Journal of Computer

Mediated Communication, Electronic Journal of Communication/La Revue

Electronique de Communication, AI and Society, Javnost- The Public,

and New Media and Society) and a book (Culture, Technology,

Communication: towards an Intercultural Global Village, 2001, edited

by Charles Ess with Fay Sudweeks, SUNY Press, New York). You may

purchase the conference proceedings from the 2002 conference from

www.it.murdoch.edu.au/catac.

Important Dates

Full papers (10-20 pages): 12 January 2004

Short papers (3-5 pages): 26 January 2004

Notification of acceptance: end February 2004

Final formatted papers: 29 March 2004

CONFERENCE CO-CHAIRS

 Charles Ess, Drury University, USA, catac@it.murdoch.edu.au

 Fay Sudweeks, Murdoch University, Australia, catac@it.murdoch.edu.au

CONFERENCE CO-VICE-CHAIRS

 Malin Sveningsson, Karlstad University, Sweden, malin.sveningsson@kau.se

November 30, 2003   Comments Off

Fri, 14 Feb 2003 00:00:38 GMT

International Summer School on

HUMAN-CENTERED DESIGN

of

KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS

August 18-22, 2003, Boussens, France

Organized by

The European Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Engineering

eurisco International

http://www-eurisco.onecert.fr/summerschool/

PURPOSE

The aim of the International Summer School on Human-Centered Design of Knowledge Management Systems is to enable participants to learn about work practice and the behavior of people in organizations, usability and usefulness of knowledge management processes and tools, socio-cultural issues in virtual worlds, communication, cooperation and coordination. This will be achieved by teaching the basic concepts and methods of managing human-centered design projects by using knowledge management methods and tools through a five-day international summer school using a mixture of tutorials, lectures, group exercises and discussions.

BACKGROUND

The theme for this International Summer School is Human-Centered Design of Knowledge Management Systems (HCDKMS'03). It reflects the growing and universal influence of Information Technology (IT) on the development of systems in industry and the use of these systems in a wide variety of organizations. Among relevant industrial sectors are aerospace, telecommunications, medicine, nuclear energy, transport, chemical and food industries.

HCDKMS'03 will develop a system level view of Knowledge Management (KM) in various types of groups ranging from teams to organizations to communities of practice. Various viewpoints will be developed covering safety, security, reliability, comfort, usability, usefulness, and acceptability of KM tools and organizational setups. KM is not simply a property of an individual person, but a relation between a person and task demands set within an organizational context. Organizational context is dynamic since people's skills and knowledge are constantly evolving resulting in the emergence of new practices. The design of increasingly information-intensive systems requires knowledge about the decision-making process itself. Experience feedback permits organizations to learn from operational incidents and accidents. Key issues here include how to understand experience in terms that can be used to change practices, and how to design channels for the communication of representations of operational experience. Taking KM seriously requires understanding, co-designing, and testing integrated KM systems and organizational setups concurrently. The design of KM systems thus requires involvement and knowledge sharing among people with different sorts of expertise. HCDKMS'03 will provide a wide range of expertise including human-computer interaction (HCI), computer-supported cooperative work (CSCW), artificial intelligence (AI), knowledge-based systems (KBS), sociology and human factors.

HCDKMS'03 will explore the current solutions and on-going work on the way groups take and should take into account organizational issues of workplace automation, people and organizational models, and the effects of incrementally-intrusive virtual environments on work practices. HCDKMS'03 will leave plenty of time for participants to explore their own work practice using information technology and designing automation. Lecturers will provide state-of-the-art knowledge and know-how on the evolution of technology and the emergence of work practices.

WHO SHOULD PARTICIPATE

HCDKMS'03 is aimed at people from industry and academia who in their line of work are involved with or responsible for designing and implementing knowledge management solutions in their everyday environments. This includes system designers, system analysts, technical managers, design team leaders, human factors specialists, etc. Participants should have some experience with at least one of the following topics: human factors; engineering and/or design; information technology; documentation; resource management; organizational issues; database management and/or use; or project management.

LECTURERS

HCDKMS'03 will be taught by the following international team of lecturers:

Guy Boy, PhD, President of the European Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Engineering (EURISCO International), France.

Jonathan Grudin, PhD, Senior Researcher in the Adaptive Systems and Interaction Group at Microsoft Research and Affiliate Professor in the University of Washington Information School, USA.

Robert De Hoog, PhD, Professor of Information and Knowledge Management at the University of Twente and Associate Professor of Social Science Informatics (SWI) at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

Kari Kuutti, PhD, Professor in the Department of Information Processing Science at the University of Oulu, Finland.

Dan Shapiro, Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK.

COURSE CONTENT

Co-Adaptation of People and Technology

- Guy Boy

Socio-technical systems of our post-industrial era embed their own internal cognitive mechanisms and behavior. New information technology has induced new practices and human roles. The resulting co-adaptation of people and technology will be analyzed in the light of various theories of human cognition. We will analyze various aspects of human cognition embedded into artifacts. Even if they do not use the same kinds of tools and practices, all civilizations need to manage the knowledge that they produce and use. These tools can be physical or conceptual. For a very long period of time, the Art of Memory was used to manage knowledge. Knowledge transfer was essentially based on oral transmission within small groups. Printing started to extend knowledge transfer to larger groups. Descartes created a method that revolutionized knowledge management reducing most problems to mathematical equations that are possible to solve by definition. The fact that Descartes' method worked successfully in the material world tremendously influenced the twentieth century because it was almost totally technology-oriented. It is amazing to observe that the computer, the ultimate production of Descartes' method, suddenly rehabilitates the Art of Memory because the materialistic approach to the world is no longer sufficient. The Web recreates artificial villages (communities) where people can communicate almost exactly as their ancestors communicated in their small villages. We discuss a dual problem in cognitive science that opposes a classical scientific approach to an experiential one, and some of its potential impacts on life support systems such as human/organizational learning and human-centered design.

Human-Centered Design: Taking Seriously Human Factors in Engineering Requires New Organizational Setups

- Guy Boy

For the last decade, most organizations developing or using safety-critical systems needed to implement strategies to improve human reliability. Human factors teams were developed. Engineers were trained in human-centered design (HCD). However, without an appropriate organizational setup, HCD is very difficult to achieve properly. In this lecture, we will review the concepts of traceability, experience feedback, articulation work, organizational memory and change management. These concepts will be used to analyze information technology that is currently used in large organizations for knowledge and information exchange. In any organization, human factors are not only a target for improving the use of products, but also for development processes themselves and their too often complex articulations. In particular, engineers produce a large amount of documents and undocumented knowledge-this will be further analyzed for the sake of improving engineering processes.

The concept of active documents will be presented together with a methodology grounded in the cognitive function analysis of organizational setups and product requirements. In particular, the concurrent development of artifacts (products) and their documentation (operational support as well as evaluation and design rationales) will be presented as a support to participatory design and traceability. Design support tools will be presented. Guy Boy

Important Emerging Patterns of Technology Use in Organizations

- Jonathan Grudin

One important change in the use of software in many organizations is that it has spread vertically as well as horizontally. “Managers don't type” was once the rule, but increasingly they do use software. As a result, applications that are widely used in organizations have at least three different patterns of use: one for individual contributors, one for managers, and one for executives. Optimal use within each group is shaped by activity and incentive structures. Within each group, interaction leads to the adoption of the same features and conventions. Some choices are dictated by efficiency and others are arbitrary but better when everyone works the same (it doesn't matter which side of the road we drive on as long as we all drive on the same side).

Another consequence of this change is that in the past, managers were trailing adopters-individual contributors adopted hands-on use of email, word, and browsers first. Today managers may be early adopters of some technologies. This has subtle but significant consequences for design and deployment.

In general, when designing, acquiring, or supporting such an application, the best approach could be to treat it as three distinct applications. Failure to do so results in problems and lost opportunities. The applications discussed include email, shared calendars, browsers, document databases, application-sharing, desktop videoconferencing, and team workspaces.

Streaming Media Studies of MSR Prototype Systems

- Jonathan Grudin

The Microsoft Research Collaborative and Multimedia Systems Group focused on making audio and video as versatile as print. Areas of experimentation include low-cost capture of audio and video, multimedia browsing and skimming, tele-presentation, and collaborative annotation of multimedia content. In order to understand the behavioral and social factors that are critical to the success of such technologies, we have conducted numerous experiments with prototype systems. These include detailed analysis of ongoing use of multimedia within our company, experimental use of our technologies in internal training courses, laboratory studies, and trials conducted jointly with university partners. I will review this work, aspects of which have been published in over twenty papers in conferences on multimedia, human-computer interaction, computer supported cooperative work, and the world wide web. I will also describe some work on notification and awareness, technologies that we see interacting with multimedia in future office and mobile settings.

Knowledge Management and Learning

- Robert de Hoog

In order to understand the meaning and scope of knowledge management systems, there is a need for a firm grasp of conceptual underpinnings of knowledge management proper. This lecture will start with an interactive session in a game-like format where participants play the knowledge management role. Based on the experiences from this session a conceptual frame for knowledge management will be developed that can act as the basis for human-centered aspects in knowledge management. These aspects are visible in two distinct models: a knowledge management model that can be seen as a procedural model of how to perform knowledge management and a process model of a knowledge intensive organization.

Both models rely strongly on human actions, perspectives and values. The process model will show what knowledge processes are important in an organization, how these knowledge processes can influence key performance indicators and which interventions can improve knowledge processes. These interventions are to a large extent non-technical in the sense that they rarely rely on information systems alone. Effective interventions are mainly combinations of human, technological and organizational actions. As both models are incorporated in a simulation environment for learning knowledge management not only the structure but also the behavior of the models will be shown, explored and discussed. Through this discussion the session will refer back to the experiences from the initial activity.

Finally attention will be paid to learning knowledge management and the effectiveness of simulation micro-worlds. This will include the benefits and the dangers of exercising in a simplified simulated world. Human factors influencing the design and fielding of this kind of knowledge management learning systems will be presented.

Knowledge Modeling for Knowledge Management

- Robert de Hoog

As knowledge management is supposed to deal with knowledge, sooner or later it will face in theory as well in practice the question of how to describe knowledge. Before you can manage something you must have an idea what this “something” is. This question can be addressed from an epistemological perspective, but most of the time this will lead to un-decidable definition problems. A more pragmatic approach is to focus on modeling/describing a configuration of competences, information and data that one chooses to call knowledge. These descriptions/models can be built at different levels of generality, depending on the goals one wants to achieve. The range is from rather general knowledge description frames to detailed knowledge models. In this entire range the role of human factors is crucial, the more because most of the time knowledge is strongly tied to human agents. Nevertheless it is possible to “disembody” (parts of) knowledge from the human agent, as has been shown by several developments in Artificial Intelligence. For this a more in-depth modeling of knowledge is needed. This modeling approach will be demonstrated by using elements from the well known CommonKADS methodology. The strength of this methodology is that it not only focuses on the knowledge per se, but also on individual and organizational factors influencing the deployment of automated knowledge (as happens in expert or knowledge based systems).

In order to become a bit more acquainted with this methodology participants will have the opportunity to build a set of models for an example domain. These models will be presented and reviewed in order to promote the sharing of modeling experiences and insights

Community Knowledge and Information Technology

- Kari Kuutti

The notion of “community knowledge” has gained increasing interest during the last years in areas like community computing, knowledge management, organizational memory and various sub-domains of computer-supported cooperative work. What is actually meant by the term “community knowledge” is often not clear at all. The purpose of the talk is to give an overview on the variety of ongoing research and to suggest an orienting framework for the field. The talk will give some reasons why community knowledge may be becoming popular just now, present an overview how widely and under how different headings related issues are discussed (and give some pointers to the relevant literature), suggest a framework to orient in the field and explore what might be the useful relation between community knowledge and information technology. The focus of the talk is not in the technical systems, but in conceptual, psychological, social, and organizational issues related in generating, maintaining and sharing community knowledge.

Knowledge Management, Organizational Innovation and Organizational Inertia

- Kari Kuutti

The lecture discusses the role of knowledge management in organizational innovation and the problems and obstacles in the practical implementation of such innovations. It emphasizes the importance of knowledge tools in situations where a change of processes, ways of working, is not enough but where the whole object of the work is changing and a more radical reorientation of the work is needed. A knowledge tool does not itself automatically bring such a change, but to be efficient the change must be innovated by the participants themselves. A suitable knowledge tool may help participants to grasp better the changing new object of their work, and thus support efficiently the innovation process. An illustrative example case is reviewed where a new, locally developed knowledge management tool enabled an organizational innovation that solved a severe reorientation problem for one part of an organization. The attempts to spread the innovation further within the organization were, however, not so successful and were further actively resisted and blocked by the parent organization.

Ethnography, Participation and the Co-Realization of Systems

- Don Shapiro

Although it is still a minority and a specialized approach, ethnographic contributions to systems design have achieved increasing credibility. With them, we learn about the communities of practice through which work is accomplished in ways that are not available through other methods. Similarly, participatory design retains its claim to our attention, through emphasizing that immediate users are the best custodians of their own knowledge practices. Recently, teams of designers that incorporate ethnographic and participatory approaches have turned their attention to much more ambitious systems. In the past, they have focused on making appropriate uses of readily-available technology in particular settings. Now, they are attempting to forge large-scale collaborative environments using-and indeed creating-very advanced technologies. This places different demands on how such design teams work. All of the contributors, participatory designers, ethnographers and user-practitioners-need to embark on a continuing involvement in a journey whose destination is unclear. This may perhaps be better described as a process of 'co-realization' than as participatory or ethnographically-informed design. It may also involve new techniques such as 'future workshops' to cope with the advanced technologies and holistic environments that are involved. This lecture will explore some current examples of this process and its outcomes.

Spatial Computing and the Practice of Real Virtuality

- Dan Shapiro

Ethnographically informed approaches to knowledge and knowledge management, developed within Sociology and Anthropology, emphasize the generation and deployment of knowledge as a situated and collaborative achievement. They are suspicious of approaches to knowledge that regards it as a 'thing' that can be externalized, stored, assembled and applied independently of the circumstances and practices of its use. Hence they are cautious of attempts to categorize, invoke and manipulate knowledge in terms of its apparent logical or informational properties. This would seem to make systems design for knowledge management impossible, since what systems do is exactly to apply logical and specifiable processes to their objects. This lecture explores some of our recent attempts to finesse this problem. We draw inspiration from the ways in which people arrange and manipulate their working materials in their physical environment, so that the organization and 'flow' of their materials produces a context of 'knowledge' for the tasks to hand, both for themselves, and as a means of communication and collaboration with others. We are developing systems that use advanced technologies to create collaborative environments for digital materials and for mixing and interpenetrating digital and physical materials. The main emphasis is on how multiple environments of this kind are produced by users as a trace of their work itself, rather than on the basis of the properties of the materials. The 'sense-making' is done by users supported by the environment rather than by the system. These mixed spatial environments do not simply mirror physical ones, but have complex properties in use of their own.

LECTURERS

GUY BOY is President and Director of the European Institute of Cognitive Sciences and Engineering (EURISCO International). He was a Principal Investigator and Group Leader (Advanced Interaction Media) at NASA Ames Research Center for 5 years. He spent 10 years at the Office National d'Etudes et de Recherches AŽrospatiales (French NASA) as a research scientist and principal investigator. His research is in Human-Centered Design (HCD) of safety-critical dynamic systems. He is currently working on the development of methods and techniques that improve traceability of design decisions and participatory design. From 1994 to 1996, he was the Scientific Coordinator of the European Network RoHMI (Robust Human-Machine Interaction) gathering 11 European research laboratories, and sponsored by the CEC DG XII. Since 1995, he has directed a series of industrial summer schools on human-centered automation, human-centered design of organizational memory systems and design for safety. From 1995 to 1999, he served as Executive Vice Chair of the ACM (Association for Computing Machinery) SIGCHI Executive Committee. He is currently involved in the scientific coordination of the WISE IST European project (Web-enabled Information Services for Engineering).

JONATHAN GRUDIN has been a Senior Researcher at Microsoft Research since 1998, working in the Collaborative and Multimedia Systems and the Adaptive Systems and Interaction groups. Prior to that he was Professor of Information and Computer Science at University of California, Irvine. He has also taught in Computer Science and Engineering departments at Aarhus University, Keio University, and the University of Oslo, and is now Affiliate Professor in the University of Washington Information School. He previously worked at the MCC consortium in Austin, Texas, at Wang Laboratories, and at the UK Medical Research Council Applied Psychology Unit after receiving his Ph.D. in Cognitive Psychology at UC San Diego, working with Donald Norman.

He is Editor in Chief of ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction and on the editorial boards of several other journals and book series, including Human-Computer Interaction, Computer Supported Cooperative Work, and Information Systems Research, leading journals in their areas. He co-wrote and edited the widely used Readings in Human-Computer Interaction: Toward the New Millenium. Active in both human-computer interaction and computer supported cooperative work since these fields emerged, he has published over 100 papers on a range of topics. For the past ten years, his two primary research topics have been the adoption and use of technology in organizations, and the design and use of multimedia systems.

ROBERT DE HOOG is Professor of Information and Knowledge Management at Twente University, and Associate Professor of Social Science Informatics at the University of Amsterdam. Since the mid 1980's he has been involved in many projects in the area of artificial intelligence, expert systems, knowledge based information retrieval and knowledge management. His most recent projects are the EU funded KITS projects which has built a comprehensive knowledge management learning simulation game and the METIS project which focuses on knowledge mapping techniques and methods using different ontologies. He has published more than 100 papers on the topics mentioned above and is co-author of the book entitled Knowledge Engineering and Management: the CommonKADS Methodology, published by MIT Press in 2000.

KARI KUUTTI is Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and Group Technology in at the University of Oulu, Finland and leads the INTERACT research group. He was previously a Professor of Human-Computer Interaction and usability at the Helsinki University of Technology. He has published over 90 papers on HCI, Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, product concept development, and organizational learning. Professor Kuutti was the program co-chair of the NordiCHI02 conference and is general co-chair of theECSCW03 conference. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Cognitive Technology, the Journal of Computer-Supported Cooperative Work, and the forthcoming Journal of Communities and Technologies. He has given tutorials on community knowledge both in CSCW and ECSCW conferences. His central research area is computer support of individual and cooperative sense-making in design processes.

DAN SHAPIRO is Professor of Sociology and currently Head of Department at Lancaster University in the UK. He is co-author of several books on social and spatial restructuring and on the use and design of information systems. He has written and researched widely on ethnography and work practice, on participatory design, on computer-supported cooperative work, and on the politics and theory of interdisciplinary design. His research has been funded by the European Union under Frameworks 4 and 5, by the UK Economic and Social Research Council, and the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. His research projects have included information systems in Air Traffic Control, in the Police Service, in architecture and in landscape architecture. He is currently working on a project on spatial computing for the aesthetic design professions as part of the EU Fututre and Emerging Technologies 'Disappearing Computer' program.

COURSE LOCATION

HCDKMS'03 will take place at the Hotel Le Tolosan, Boussens, France, located at 30 minutes from Toulouse. The Hotel Le Tolosan, in the foothills of the PyrŽnŽes, offers a breath-taking setting for all kinds of open-air activities, including a three hole golf course and driving range, squash and tennis courts, gym and sauna.

COURSE FEES AND PAYMENT

The fee for Human-Centered Design of Knowledge Management '03 is 2200 Euros. This includes five days of lectures, course material, coffee breaks, full room and board in single accommodation at the Hotel Le Tolosan, from dinner on Sunday evening17/08 to Friday 22/08.

Payment may be made by cheque in Euros made out to EURISCO International or by bank transfer mentioning HCDKMS'03 and your name. Please inform your bank that transfer fees are to be paid by the issuer.

Due to the nature of this summer school, the number of participants will be limited to 50. Participants will be accepted on a first come, first served basis.

REGISTRATION DEADLINE

Application for registration must be received before May 1st, 2003. Full course fees must be paid to the HCDKMS'03 Office by June 30th, 2003.

ACCOMPANYING PERSONS

A limited number of accompanying persons can be housed at the course site. There is no charge for accompanying persons, but additional expenses (accommodation and food) must be paid directly to the hotel. Further details can be obtained from the summer school office; early notification is required.

FURTHER INFORMATION

For further information check the HCDKMS'03 web site at http://www-eurisco.onecert.fr/News/hcdkms03.htm or contact Helen Wilson at the summer school office:

HCDKMS'03 OFFICE

European Institute of Cognitive

Sciences and Engineering (EURISCO International)

4 Avenue Edouard Belin

31400 Toulouse, France

Tel: +33 (0)5 62 17 38 38Fax: +33 (0)5 62 17 38 39

E-mail: wilson@onecert.fr – http://www-eurisco.onecert.fr/News/hcdkms03.htm

REGISTRATION FORM

First Last

Name________________________Name____________________________________

Company

Institution _________________________________________________________

Address _____________________________________________________________

City_________________________State/Prov______________________________

Zip/Postal Code__________________________Country______________________

Tel ___________________________Fax___________________________________

Email ______________________________________________________________

EURISCO International Bank details:

SociŽtŽ GŽnŽrale

Banque: 30003

Guichet: 02110

N¡ Compte: 00025718150

R.I.B: 47

Domiciliation: Toulouse

Fax form to: +33 (0)5 62 17 38 39

Register on line: http://www-eurisco.onecert.fr/News/hcdkms03.htm

Eurisco International will not accept any bank charges linked to payment.

Refund policy

Full refunds will be provided upon receipt of written

notification before 31 July 2003.

NO REFUNDS WILL BE MADE AFTER THIS DATE.

February 13, 2003   Comments Off

Sat, 04 Jan 2003 18:29:03 GMT

SECOND CALL FOR PAPERS

Deadline is extended to 20 January 2003

International Conference

Building the Information Commonwealth:

Information Technologies and Building Prospects for the Development

of Civil Society Institutions in the CIS Countries

St. Petersburg, Russia, April 22-24, 2003

http://www.communities.org.ru/conference

The disintegration of the USSR is still resonating within the world

community.

The formation of an effective civil society sector will hopefully work to

overcome

the economical, social and cultural effects of a totalitarian government

which are

the common heritage of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS)

countries.

This remains one of the most immediate and significant tasks for all the

ex-USSR

states.

The decade since 1991 has shown that the path to stable democratic societies

in the

CIS region is a very difficult one. The negative factors common to all the

CIS countries,

unstable economic growth, traditions of state paternalism, low living

standards, a

hazardous investment climate, the “soviet mentality” are still even now

determining the

everyday lives of the majority of the population of our countries.

It is thus crucial to make effective use of available “global resources”

such as information

and communication technologies (ICTs) to support a radical improvement in

the quality of

life of ordinary people, of women, youth, the elderly, the disabled and

indigenous peoples.

Currently, information technologies in the countries of the CIS region it

would be generally

agreed are primarily used as tools for private gain and are accessible only

to the relatively

small numbers who can afford individual access. Developing strategies for

enabling

information technologies to serve the broader needs of society, to support

the development

of democratic institutions, and to strengthen the struggle against poverty

is a challenge that

presents itself to civil society and public authorities?

These questions are becoming more and more critical for the peoples in our

countries where

rapid technological development presents possibilities (and risks) of

radical change in economic

and social circumstances and for responding to growing social injustice.

Critical analysis of the

Information Society in the CIS region as it is evolving, the influence of

new technical (and following

these social and cultural) factors within our societies and their impacts on

the development of the

civil society institutions, the analysis of the applicability of modern

inter-disciplinary approaches

(e.g. Community Networking/Community Informatics) to support the realization

of community-based

IT projects will be the main goals of the conference. We'll focus on several

key problems of the civil

society development in CIS countries looked at through the prism of the use

of ICTs.

Participants in the Conference:

Leaders of the non-profit and civil society organizations performing

projects in the area of ICTs in

the CIS countries; deputies of national Parliaments; representatives of the

executive structures

of the countries of the region; specialists from governmental agencies and

programs; representatives

of international charitable organizations, NGO's and foundations; experts

from International

Organizations, academicians and practitioners from the different countries

who are interested in

discussing the Conference issues.

Among those who have to date indicated an interest in participating

are:

Eli Cohen, Wysza SzkoBa Przedsibiorczoci, Poland

Peter Day, University of Brighton, UK

Karin Delgadillo, Somos@Telecentres, Equador

Eugeny Drobkov, Information Society Foundation, Ukraine

Vassily Efrosinin, Development through Education Fund, Russia

Susana Finquelevich, Global Community Networking Partnership, Argentina

Bertram Gebauer , Buerger Nets Union , Germany

Michael Gurstein, New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA-Canada

Grant Hearn, University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Meelis Kaldalu, Tartu Science Park, Estonia

Ninelle Kobaliani, Project Harmony, Georgia

Peter Levesque, Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada

Anna Malina, e-Society Research, UK

Michel Menou, City University of London, UK-France

Abdumavlon Rashidov, Central Asia Development Agency, Tadjikistan

Scott Robinson, Mexico DF , Mexico

Lev Ryabchikov, Academy of Alternative Technologies, Russia

Basheerhamad Shadrach, Transparency International, Germany

Oleg Shapirkov, Svetoch Assotiation, Russia

Viktoria Sukovata, Kharkov National University, Ukraine

Wal Taylor, Rockhampston University, Australia

Maiya Tsyganenko, eRiders, Kazakhstan

Peter van den Besselaar, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands

Organizers of the Conference:

The Inter-Parliamentary Assembly of Member Nations of the Commonwealth of

Independent States (IPA)

Institute of Research on Problems of Nonprofits in the Newly Independent

States (IRPN)

Centre of Community Networking and Informational Policy Studies (CCNS)

The Conference Venue:

St. Petersburg, which is Russia's Northern capital, preparing for its 300

anniversary is a

very appropriate and natural place for this event.

The Conference will take place of the main building of the IPA – Tavrichesky

Palace, one

of the most magnificent palaces in St. Petersburg (XVIII century).

More information about the Palace and the Conference facilities at

http://www.iacis.ru/kongr_en.htm

Languages of the Conference

The working languages of the Conference will be Russian and English

Themes of the Conference

The Conference will be organized with an alternation of plenary sessions and

panels

following 12 main directions:

+ civil society and information society in the CIS countries:identifying the

problem area

+ e-governance and participation of local citizens in the decision-making at

the local,

regional and national levels

+ local communities in the CIS countries: typology, myths and realities

+ new information infrastructure at local level: creation and ownership of

Community

Information

+ participation of the countries of the region in international projects and

programs directed

towards ICT usage for the development of the civil sector

+ using ICTs for not-for-profit and civil society purposes in the CIS

countries

+ connectivity and software

+ civil society/communities and digital economies

+ Social, Psychological and Cultural Barriers to access.

+ model legislation concerning information policy for the CIS countries and

national programs.

+ formation of the information society in the CIS and problems of Global

Security

+ how do ICTs influence local, national, and regional development?

Submission of papers

Proposals for papers should be submitted as abstracts of no more than 500

words,

and should include details of the proposer's name, position, affiliation,

and contact details.

The abstracts will be reviewed by the Program Committee which consist of CIS

and

international members.

?riteria for selection for Proposals:

- relevance to the Themes of the Conference

- relevance to the development of Civil Society in the CIS

- papers can address either the theoretical or the practical aspects of the

issues

Proposals should be submitted electronically:

- in English to Michael Gurstein, Conference Co-Chair

- in Russian to Organizing Committee to

in RTF, Word or PDF format.

Deadline for abstracts: 20 January 20032

Authors of accepted papers notified by: 26th February 2003

For further information and submission details, please, contact Organizing

Committee:

27, Mayakovskogo str., St. Petersburg, Russia 191123

Fax: +7 812 2726547

e-mail: irpnnis@mail.ru

January 4, 2003   Comments Off