Internet Research Group of Otago Logs

end of the unConference

Tue, 24 Nov 2009 15:51:12 +1300

In the last five minutes of the unConference, I want to make some public thankyous.

the organizing committee: Erica Baffelli, Stuart Barson and Andrew Long. Best Committee Ever.
our bloggers/podders/filmers: Adele, Sam, Prajesh and Andrew, plus all those who blogged off their own bat
our desk volunteers: Jo, Sam, Teri, Christine, Chris and Ester
the Centre for Innovation staff, particularly Claire and Steve
everyone who submitted a panel suggestion
everyone who sat or chaired on a panel
everyone who came and made this event what is was.

THANKYOU

Now, onto practicalities. If you have any record of the unConference (blogs, pics, pods, whatever) please let us know so we can link your record into the hub.

We are in the process of setting up a mailing list and a wiki — if you don’t get invited to join in the next few days, check the website at http://irgo.otago.ac.nz or email us at irgo@otago.ac.nz and we’ll set you up.

There is a lot of energy and an obvious need for us to carry on our discussions, so if you have any ideas don’t be afraid to speak up!

it's the final countdown (to the unConference)

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 09:32:27 +1300

The final deadline for both registration and unConference panel topic submissions is this Thursday, 5th November. The panel topic submission site is hotting up, with a panel of fandom and the internet taking the surprise lead in the voting - not what you’re into? Then go vote up other topics, such as “Copy rights, copyleft, and CreativeCommons”, “Online community building” or “Computers, young children, and literacy” just to name a few. This is a unConference where you get what you ask for, so make sure your voice is heard.

For those who have already registered, thankyou. The diversity of people attending this event is staggering. In the next couple of days, we will be posting on our website a stack of practical information about the unConference — from how to acccess the wifi network, to what we’re offering for lunch! (yes, we feed you. We’re nice that way). But if you have a specific burning question, by all means tweet or email the unConference committee. We’re here to help.

Stay tuned for more updates!

Website news: Echo test page

Tue, 06 Oct 2009 12:10:10 +1300

The IRGO website has a new test page comprising JS-Kit’s new realtime community and sharing services called “Echo”. It is touted as the “next generation commenting system” providing tools to manage conversations and integrate these into Twitter, Facebook, etc.

There are a number of modules for navigation, commenting, sharing, etc. so try them all out and let us know what you think. Perhaps answering questions such as:

Does it work?
Should we use it?
Would you contribute if this service it was made available?
What would you like instead if this service is no good?

To try, go to the IRGO Echo test page.

unConference update: second guest of honour announced

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 17:16:34 +1300

The Internet Research Group of Otago is pleased to announce that our second guest speaker at the inaugural IRGO unConference 2009: NZ’s Digital Futures is Rod Snodgrass, Telecom NZ’s Group Strategy Director.

As Group Strategy Director, Rod Snodgrass drives the development of Telecom’s Group Strategy with the aim of optimising Telecom’s portfolio of businesses and initiatives, including Group corporate development, and coordinating Telecom’s transformation and growth agendas. Prior to becoming Group Strategy Director, Rod held a number of positions in Telecom, including GM Group Strategy and Development, GM of the Wired Division, including Telecom’s retail fixed-line, voice, data and internet businesses, and GM of Xtra. Rod has also held various financial, commercial and business development roles in the division. Rod joined Telecom in 1998 after seven years in various strategy, business development and commercial roles in the oil and gas exploration and production industry. Hailing from Nelson in the South Island, Rod spent his youth in Nelson and New Plymouth before graduating from Wellington’s Victoria University with a Bachelor of Commerce and Administration.

Drawing on his diverse experience in NZ telecommunications, Rod will be addressing the conference’s closing remarks, and joins our opening guest speaker, Professor Greg Hearn, from the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).

The inaugural IRGO unConference will be held at the Centre for Innovation, the University of Otago, Dunedin New Zealand, from the 23-24th November, 2009. Information about the unConference is available online at http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/glance.html

If you would like to join us at this event, there are still limited places available to register for the unConference, but places are filling fast. Registration is free, and the registration form is available online at: http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/registration.html

The unConference submission site is also still open for submissions and voting. To nominate a topic you would like to see discussed at the unConference, or to vote on topics already suggested, please head to: http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/submissions.html You do not need to be registered to submit a topic for the unConference, or to vote topics up or down. The topics with the most votes will make it onto the unConference schedule, so check back often to vote on the new submissions!

We look forward to seeing you at what is shaping up to be a fascinating event. In the meantime, if you have any questions or queries, please do not hesitate to contact the organizing committee at irgo@otago.ac.nz

Conference CfP: IFIP9.5: Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping

Thu, 24 Sep 2009 08:50:50 +1200

fyi

CALL FOR PAPERS (Please direct all inquires to the website/email links below)

IFIP 9.5 WG Virtuality & Society http://www.ifip95wg.org are pleased to announce our next gathering as a part of IFIP’s 50th Anniversary conference:

WORLD COMPUTER CONGRESS 2010
20-23 September 2010
Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre Brisbane, Australia
http://www.wcc2010.org/

CALL FOR PAPERS
===============
9th Human Choice and Computers (IFIP-TC9-HCC9) Track 2:

Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping
———————————————————-

Following on the recent (April 2009) International Working Conference of IFIP 9.5 Working Group on Virtuality and Society, “Images of Virtuality,” at Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece, this conference will be a track of the IFIP Technical Committee 9th Human Choice and Computers (HCC9) stream of the IFIP World Computer Congress, in Brisbane, Australia, September 2010 http://www.wcc2010.org/ .

This track will focus on the feedback loops between virtual technologies and the social groups who use them, how each shape the other and are in turn shaped by them. Social shaping, the sociology of technology, science studies and other approaches of cultural studies to the phenomenon of the information society, driven by such classics as those of Bijker and Law and Mackenzie and Wajcman from the 1990s, are arguably now ready for a fresh look, in the context of virtual environments and global social networking and gaming communities.

The intervening years have additionally seen an explosion of digital and media arts interpretations, and explorations of the impact of virtual technologies upon society, and the social use of such technologies upon their design, and the entrepreneurial trajectories of their appearance in the global market.

Virtual technologies, crucially, have moved very decisively from the workplace - whether corporate or home office - and into the domestic sphere, into our living rooms, playrooms, our kitchens, and our bedrooms. Here the relationship between virtual technologies and society, and the mutual shaping processes each undergo, are ripe for fresh study, insight, and exploration. The Virtuality and Society Working Group sub-stream of the Human Choice and Computers stream of the World Computer Congress therefore invites research and work-in-progress papers that address the choices faced by an information society permeated by ubiquitous virtual technologies.
Relevant topics and themes include, but are not limited to:

Discussing issues of responsive and iterative user-centred design, usability, accessibility, and the ‘permanent beta’ of virtual systems
Discussing the impact of virtual technologies within the domestic sphere and
the changes to such technologies developed out of use-cases .
Exploring new (e-, or v-) research methodologies and techniques on inquiring into social action in the context of virtuality .
Identifying challenging social, ethical, and political issues of socialization in virtuality .
Discussing the role of electronic and digital arts and media in the shaping of virtual technologies and their uses .
Discussing the role of digital gaming and massive multiplayer role-playing games in the shaping of virtual technologies and their uses .
Discussing virtual spaces and the role of place in virtual technologies, and how the domestic as well as the work and civic spaces of the information society are shaped by, and in turn shape such technologies .
Identifying opportunities and challenges for education, governance, and entrepreneurship in virtual worlds .
Discussing emerging issues of e-policy and e-quality of life specifically implicated by virtual technologies .
Exploring social histories and philosophies that deepen our understanding of term virtuality, and of the relationship between virtual technologies and society and the mutual shaping processes between them

Additional information on the work of IFIP 9.5 WG is available at
http://www.ifip95wg.org

Program Committee
==================

Programme Chair:
David Kreps, Salford Business School, Salford University, UK.

Programme Co-chairs:
Martin Warnke, Computer Science & Culture, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Deutschland, and Claus Pias, University of Vienna,
Austria Chrisanthi Avgerou, Management Information Systems and Innovation,
London School of Economics and Political Science, UK.
Oliver Burmeister, University of Wollongong, Australia
Simran Grewal, University of Bath, UK
Niki Panteli, School of Management, University of Bath, UK.
Erika Pearson, Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand
Angeliki Poulymenakou, Management Science & Technology, Athens University of Economics and Business, Greece
Steve Sawyer, College of Information Sciences and Technology, Penn State University, USA
Lin Yan, Greenwich University, UK

Instructions for paper submission
=================================
Papers must not substantially overlap with papers that have been published
or are simultaneously submitted to a journal or another conference with
proceedings. Papers must be written in English; they should be at most 1O-12
pages in total, including bibliography and well-marked appendices. Papers
should be intelligible without appendices, if any.

Accepted papers will be presented at the conference and published in the
IFIP Series by Springer. Submitted and accepted papers must follow the
publisher’s guidelines for the IFIP Series (www.springer.com/series/6102),
Author templates, Manuscript preparation in Word). At least one author of
each accepted paper must register to the conference and present the paper.
All papers must be submitted in electronic form through the web via
http://www.wcc2010.org by the deadline indicated below, indicating for which
HCC9-track they apply. Papers submitted after this deadline will be
discarded without review.

Important dates
===============
Intention to submit: Immediately
Submission of papers: January 31, 2010
Notification to authors: April 20, 2010
Camera-ready copies: May 15, 2010

Intention to submit and submission must be sent also to the two HCC9 IPC
Chairs, and according to your track choice to the tracks chairs:
Jacques Berleur, Namur University, Belgium: jberleur@info.fundp.ac.be
Magda Hercheui, Westminster Business School and London School of Economics, United Kingdom m.hercheui@googlemail.com

Track 2: Virtual Technologies and Social Shaping David Kreps, Salford Business School, Salford University, UK, d.g.kreps@salford.ac.uk
Martin Warnke, Computer Science & Culture, Leuphana University, Lueneburg, Deutschland., warnke@leuphana.de,
Claus Pias, University of Vienna, Austria

panel discussion format - clarification

Wed, 12 Aug 2009 16:20:47 +1200

There have been some queries made about the format of the panel discussions at the unConference, and how the submission system works.

In point form:

1) People post ideas for possible topics at the submission system
2) These ideas are voted up or down depending on whether people are interested in the topic
3) After submissions close, the unConference committee takes the highest-ranked topics and makes them available for people to volunteer to sit on the panels.
4) At the unConference, the panel lead the discussion, invite questions and comments from the audience, and follow the idea wherever it may lead. It is a free-form and free-flowing discussion, rather than extended prepared remarks, and with plenty of audience participation!

Hope that clarifies things! If you have questions, please do not hesitate to contact the conference team.

IRGO unConference registration and submission system is OPEN

Mon, 03 Aug 2009 14:54:40 +1200

IRGO is pleased to be hosting the inaugural IRGO unConference on the 23 and 24th of November 2009 at the Centre for Innovation, University of Otago, Dunedin.

The topic of the unConference is “New Zealand’s Digital Futures.” Our opening address will be by Professor Greg Hearn, Director of the Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation at QUT. Our closing speaker will be announced shortly.

The unConference aims to bring together scholars and practitioners from around the region to discuss the future of the internet from multiple perspectives. In particular, the conference will focus around three key questions. Firstly, what might be possible for the future internet of the region? Secondly, what will citizens want from the internet in the future (two, five, ten years ahead)? And thirdly, what potential internet problems or issues will we have to navigate in the immediate future?

As this is an unConference, the direction of the discussion is up to you. We are using a submission system where people can suggest topics for panels, nominate panelists, and even vote topics up or down. The final list of topics will be decided by popular vote — and you do not need to be a registered attendee to vote! We will be making conference artifacts available online, so anyone interested can nominate and vote on topics.

Finally, thanks to University of Otago, registration is FREE. However, places are limited, so please register ASAP to confirm your place.

For general information on the conference: http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/glance.html
To connect to the submissions system: http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/submissions.html
For registration: http://irgo.otago.ac.nz/registration.html

Please feel free to forward to any interested colleagues. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us through the website or via email: irgo@otago.ac.nz

We look forward to seeing you in November

Invitation to GNI Project Symposium '09

Thu, 23 Jul 2009 15:38:45 +1200

Our friends on the GNI project are organising the following symposium. If these topics interest you, please feel free to submit something.

WHEN: Friday 4th September 2009, 8.30 am - 5 pm

WHERE: School of Business, University of Otago, Dunedin

REGISTRATION: Online Registration - registration is due 5pm Friday 14th August

Telecommunications technologies and Internet services are experiencing unprecedented growth. Technological advances together with the growing scale of deployments are driving rapid change in the telecommunications arena. All these factors contribute to the push towards convergence on the network core. Next generation networks, programmable networks, and the converged core opens up and provides new network architectures and new converged service opportunities.

The Global Network Interconnectivity (GNI) Project was established at the University of Otago in 2006 to develop expertise, provide knowledge sharing and conduct activities supporting new ICT technologies that contribute to telecommunications, multimedia, and information systems convergence.

The GNI Project is proud to bring together academic and industry leaders for a one day symposium to discuss current and future issues relating to convergence in the ICT and Telecommunications arena.

Topics of interest include:

Next generation networks and LTE convergence

Evolved Packet Core

IP Multimedia Subsystem (IMS)

Applications and services

WiMAX-LTE

Architectures and standards for service development and operation, such as JAIN SLEE

Multimedia telephony and service convergence

Integration of real-world services and applications within virtual worlds and augmented reality systems

Convergence of the network core vs. convergence on the application layer

Next generation web and telecommunications services

Registration is free, but to secure your place at the symposium please register online by 5pm Friday 14th August.

For further information, please contact Dr. Melanie Middlemiss, mmiddlemiss@infoscience.otago.ac.nz

unConference news: Academic Guest of Honour

Thu, 25 Jun 2009 09:00:59 +1200

The IRGO unConference committee is pleased to announce that our opening speaker and academic GoH will be Professor Greg Hearn (QUT). Professor Hearn has an extensive and diverse history in both academia and industry. In 2005, Professor Hearn was an invited member of a working party examining the role of creativity in the innovation economy for the Australian Prime Minister’s Science Engineering and Innovation Council. His books and papers span disciplines as diverse as psychology, economics, media and communication studies, cultural studies, management, and forecasting. We are pleased and excited that Professor Hearn will be joining us at the inaugural IRGO unConference.

More information about the unConference, including details about the submission site, will be posted in the next few weeks, so stay tuned!

ECSCW'09 Workshop CFP - Academia 2.0 and beyond – How Social Software changes research and education in academia

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 10:05:43 +1200

ECSCW'09 Workshop CFP - Academia 2.0 and beyond – How Social Software changes research and education in academia:

CALL FOR POSITION PAPERS “Academia 2.0 and beyond – How Social Software changes research and education in academia” — WORKSHOP at E-CSCW, http://www.ecscw09.org, Vienna, September 7-11, 2009

NEW: Extended Deadline for submissions: June 28th, 2009.

Organizers:
Michael Koch, Bundeswehr University Munich, michael.koch@unibw.de and
Isa Jahnke, University of Technology Dortmund, isa.jahnke@tu-dortmund.de

The Web 2.0 and Social Software is often attributed with a high potential for addressing today’s challenges in knowledge management and distributed collaboration. This development has already reached industry. Using the term Enterprise 2.0, different possibilities to use Social Software in enterprises are researched. But also in academia, cooperation to generate new knowledge, and to add it to the scientific discourse may radically change under open Web 2.0 conditions. In addition, teaching and learning scenarios might be moved towards technology enhanced lifelong learning communities. The aim of this workshop is to discuss the application of Social Software in academia (research as well as teaching and learning) – and how these new kinds of software might change the whole setting – make new ways of doing research or teaching and learning possible or at least easier to do.

Health IT event on 9 June

Fri, 29 May 2009 11:33:05 +1200

What: Technology Business in Action Current Healthcare R&D and Healthcare IT initiatives.

When: Tuesday June 9, 3-6.30pm

Where: Fullwood Room, Dunedin Centre, Octagon (enter off Harrop St)

Who: Michael Woodhouse (Dunedin MP – National) is our MC. Attendees include, health professionals, ICT Cluster members businesses, business support agencies, local politicians.

Cost: Free – supported by the Dunedin ICT Business Cluster, NZBio and the Dunedin Economic Development Unit,

Technology Business in Action

Theme: Can Dunedin grow from having leading health researchers and clinicians into a place where health IT, devices, research, services and other innovation lead the world?

Start

2.30pm - 3.00pm

Attendees seated

3.00pm - 3.15pm

Graham Strong (Economic Development Unit). Introduction – How important is Healthcare and ICT to Dunedin’s Economy?

Ken Aitchesen (New Zealand Trade and Enterprise) – Health NZ Innovation Challenge

Bronwyn Dilley (CEO NZBio) – Regional Support

3.15pm - 3.30pm

Michael Woodhouse (National - MP Dunedin) – MC; Govt perspective on healthcare; How can Dunedin benefit?

Mini Session I – Healthcare R&D

3.30pm - 3.45pm

Margie Murray - Otago Clinical Audit - What is it?

3.45pm - 4.00pm

Brendan McCane (UoO) - Automatic interpretation of medical images

4.00pm - 4.15pm

Tim Gluyas (CEO Canard Design) - Who needs designers anyway? (Healthcare Product Development)

4.15pm - 4.25pm

Alec Holt – (Health Informatics UoO) - Health informatics the intersection between disciplines and R&D

Break

4.25pm - 5.00pm

Refreshments

Mini Session II - Making Money in Healthcare IT

5.00pm - 5.15pm

Gavin Wright – Deputy Chairman of the National Health IT Business Cluster

5.15pm - 5.30pm

Stacy Hunt (CEO Orasphere) - How To Build a Fire in 10 Easy Steps

5.30pm - 5.45pm

Paul Hansen (CEO 1000Minds) - Making money in Healthcare: If it were easy, everyone would be doing it, right?

5.45pm - 6.00pm

Murray Tilyard – Best Practice Advisory Centre - Expert advice and artificial intelligence for general practice.

Conclusion

6.00pm - 6.20pm

Q&A

6.20pm – 6.30pm

Wrap-Up

State of the IRGO

Fri, 08 May 2009 14:55:43 +1200

This June, IRGO celebrates its second birthday. To honour our achievements, and to look forward to the future, we invite you (and any interested and interesting colleagues) to a ‘State of the IRGO’ meeting. This is a chance for you to tell us what you as a member would like to see IRGO do and be in the future. It will also be a chance for the steering committee to fill you in on some of the exciting developments we have been working on in 2009.

What: State of the IRGO
When: Friday, June 5th, at 2pm
Where: Centre for Innovation Seminar Room
Who: All current and future IRGO members

We look forward to seeing you there!

New edition of First Monday (Volume 14, number 5 - 4 May 2009)

Tue, 05 May 2009 10:42:03 +1200

New edition of First Monday (Volume 14, number 5 - 4 May 2009):

Contents

Facebook and academic performance: Reconciling a media sensation with data by Josh Pasek, eian more, and Eszter Hargittai

A response to reconciling a media sensation with data by Aryn C. Karpinski

Where is the cloud? Geography, economics, environment, and jurisdiction in cloud computing by Paul T. Jaeger, Jimmy Lin, Justin M. Grimes, and Shannon N. Simmons

Survival of the fittest tag: Folksonomies, findability, and the evolution of information organization by Alexis Wichowski

Comparing featured article groups and revision patterns correlations in Wikipedia by Giacomo Poderi

Navigating the blogosphere: Towards a genre-based typology of weblogs by Stine Lomborg

IRGO Seminar Series 2009 - updated

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 09:05:00 +1200

Reblogged from our Events Page.

Monday, May 25th, 12-1pm: John Kaiser, Manager, ICT Strategy and Services, Division of Health Science, will be facilitating a discussion on fostering innovation in ICT in the health sciences. School of Business Boardroom CO4.20.

Friday, June 12th, 12-1pm: Andrew Long, Information Science, will be speaking to the topic “Life is Tweet: Emergent Micro-narratives on Twitter”. School of Business CO2.07.

Wednesday, July 22nd, 12-1pm: Prajesh Chhannabai, PhD candidate at Information Science, will be speaking on his research into online/mobile social networking and dissemination of health information. School of Business Boardroom CO4.20.

Friday, August 14th, 12-1pm: John Egenes, Department of Music, speaking on Remix Culture: The Folk Process in the 21st Century. School of Business CO2.07.

Wednesday, September 2nd, 12-1pm: Alan Toy, Department of Accountancy and Business Law, speaking on current research on consent to online privacy policies . School of Business Boardroom CO4.20.

All seminars are also listed on the Facebook page if you use that site to manage your RSVPs.

Please distribute this information among your colleagues.

AoIR special issue of Information, Communication & Society

Thu, 23 Apr 2009 10:21:00 +1200

AoIR special issue of Information, Communication & Society:

The Journal Information, Communication & Society have just released their second AoIR special issue. Contents include an introduction by Caroline Haythornthwaite and papers on LastFM friendships, music archives, racial identity online, identity and geography, moderation on Digg and more.

semester one seminar series

Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:19:00 +1200

The shortened semester one seminar schedule:

Monday, May 25th, 12-1pm: John Kaiser, Manager, ICT Strategy and Services, Division of Health Science, facilitating a discussion on fostering innovation in ICT in the health sciences

Friday, June 12th, 12-1pm: Andrew Long, Information Science, with a talk provisionally titled: “Life is Tweet: Emergent Micro-narratives on Twitter”.

Locations to be confirmed, so please check back (here or at the Facebook page) closer to the date.

We are still working on the seminar schedule for semester two - if you (or your grad students) have a draft paper, an upcoming conference, or even just a new idea you’d like to share with and receive feedback from a informed multidisciplinary audience, please email us (irgo@otago.ac.nz) asap.

Digital Arts and Culture (DAC'09) Conference [12-15 Dec 2009, Irvine, California]

Tue, 07 Apr 2009 13:30:29 +1200

Digital Arts and Culture (DAC'09) Conference [12-15 Dec 2009, Irvine, California]:

This interdisciplinary conference is regarded relatively highly for the quality of the papers and participants. This year (the 8th iteration) will look at “specificities of embodiment and cultural, social and physical location with respect to digital technologies and networked communications.”

This sits easily in the IRGO family of interests so consider submitting an abstract before May 1st. You may also want to volunteer as a reviewer.

See submission and theme details here.

Lunchtime Seminar Series 2009

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:40:01 +1300

We polled, you replied, we make it happen. The lunchtime seminar series will resume for a shortened season this year. In a change from last year, we’ll be hosting the seminar on a different day each month, so as to minimize repeated scheduling clashes.

The steering committee will be working to bring in external speakers to some seminar months, but we are also interested in hearing from you! If you have a proto-paper, an upcoming conference, or just an idea you want to try out in front of an informed multi-disciplinary audience, please email the committee with a title and a suggestion of which month you’d like to present. We will aim to have at least one seminar per month over the teaching terms. Presentations generally run around 20 minutes, followed by a Q+A session.

Speakers in the 2008 series all agreed that the feedback they received from their presentations was very useful in refining their work, so if that sounds like something you’d like to have, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Promote Your Publications!

Wed, 25 Mar 2009 15:44:53 +1300

Just a reminder to all IRGO members to let us know if you get a paper published, interviewed in the media, a guest column, or anything else out there that relates to IRGOs broad interests. Think of it as us finding you readers for your brilliance :)

UnHub

Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:40:32 +1300

UnHub:

IRGOnauts: Aggregate your online social identities to a narrow iFrame at the top of your browser. This service is free and supports most major sites (e.g., Twitter, Facebook, …) and less well known sites (e.g., Disqus, Diigo, …).