Fade to Play

I am feeling pretty happy today. My paper got accepted for GESTS. Now I didn’t actually submit a paper so I should feel pretty fortunate that they found my name on the internet. Now they do want money for accepting my paper but the letter comes from the general chairman so it must be legit.

[update] I have no plans to submit to this “conference”.

—–
Dear Author

As a general chairman of GESTS, I am happy to invite you as one of the accepted paper

of the GESTS International Transaction on Computer Science and Engineering.

The members of international editorial board of GESTS society have reviewed the paper

that had been published to the major conference proceedings. This e-mail has sent only

to the authors who chose high quality paper that had been accepted as the part of

GESTS international transaction on computer science and engineering.

Paper Number : 177-108

Paper Field : Computer and It’s Application

Journal Name : GESTS International Transaction on Computer Science and Engineering

Volume Number: Vol.9 and No.1

ISSN Number : 1738-6438

Issued date : June 30, 2005.

To make the right judgment while we selected the high quality papers, we used the title,

authors, abstract, contents, and e-mail address from proceedings of the major conferences.

After the reviewing, we chose upper 30% of the high quality papers from the editorial

board of GESTS, and notified our decision to authors. The proceedings from the

conference are not regularly published journals, but your paper from Gests will be

published to the international transaction as a regular journal.

If you have a new paper modified with the format of GESTS international transaction,

please, send us the final camera-ready version by June 15, 2005. At least one author

of each paper must be accomplished with the paper registration. If the paper will be

submitted through web page, we will e-mail back with the details of how to proceed

the submission of registration fees and copyright format.

Important dates for publication of the GESTS international transaction are :

- for an improved paper and copyright format: until June 15, 2005

( http://www.gests.org/gests-full.rtf )

( http://www.gests.org/Copyright_form.doc)

- for the registration format with fees: until June 20, 2005

( http://www.gests.org/Registration_form.doc)

- for publication of the GESTS International journal: June 30, 2005

- for starting delivery from GESTS to authors: until July 02, 2005.

We are looking forward to see your contributions at GESTS.

Sincerely yours,

Moon Seog Jun, a general chair of GESTS,

http://www.gests.org/

From Thursday to Saturday I was the local poster organizer and student volunteer at NIME05 which our lab hosted. Although it was alot of fun and responsibility making sure that everything went smoothly with the posters, it was also alot of work. I can’t imagine how training it must have been for the organizers.

[update I removed the Echology picture]

Stewart

Originally uploaded by tyfn.

Last Thursday I attended the flickr farewell party. It was an amazing event and I met alot of cool people including Stewart who started Flickr. It is sort of sad that they are moving to the states but that seems to be more and more common as companies and people head south in search of financial opportunities. Today they moved to San Francisco. We are going to miss you guys. All of you were amazing hosts. Thanks a bunch.

While there I ran into someone that was there to learn about flickr rather than already being a part of the community. They asked me “Why I stay?”. The question sort of threw me because I felt that they were missing out on the essence of what flickr is about. I don’t see it as a club or clique that I am a part of until I get bored. It is something I use out of selfishness to paraphrase David Sifry. I like being able to tag my photos so that I can easily find them. The fact others can also do that is an added bonus.

Dinner from One More Sushi

Originally uploaded by tyfn.

I bought my camera when I attended the CHI 2005 conference in Portland where there is no sales tax. That made it alot cheaper than purchasing in Canada. At the store where I bought it the guy said I should also consider the Nixon Coolpix S1 because it takes slightly better pictures and has better battery life. I had researched this camera which I view as a 9 while the Nixon may be a 9.5. I love its size (I can put it in my pocket) and how I can upload with only a USB cord.

The NY Times offers a review of a number of slim cameras. Although the Nixon comes out on top, the Canon is a very close second. I am totally happy with my purchase.
http://tech2.nytimes.com/2005/05/26/technology/circuits/26pogue.html?8dpc

CALL FOR WORKSHOP PAPERS
ECSCW 2005 - 9th European Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work

Workshop: Computer Games and CSCW
“What Can We Learn About Collaboration, Cooperation, and Community?”
—————————————————————————-
Date of the Workshop: 18./19. September 2005
Location: Paris, France
Submission Deadline: 20. June 2005
—————————————————————————-

AIMS AND SCOPE OF THE WORKSHOP
——————————
Computer Games and Collaborative Working Environments – at first glance
this appears to be a surprising combination. However, there are several
overlaps between these two research areas. The aim of the workshop is to
study commonalities and particularities in the design of Computer Games
and CSCW systems in their structure and as a learning environment.

Nowadays Computer Games are not only used for entertainment purposes but
become a serious issue in research and business. Games have long provided
a structured environment for quickly learning complex collaborative or
cooperative behaviours through play. Computer Games find application in
today’s working environments as so called ‘Serious Games’ for training and
simulation purposes, and share as a collaborative activity several
features and requirements with collaborative working environments. Games
may combine successfully traditional aspects of gaming with the anytime,
anywhere approach of modern information technology as in
pervasive games. The aim of the workshop is to create a mutual
understanding of how CSCW systems and Computer Games can benefit from each
other in technology-mediated settings such as computer or video games,
augmented reality, virtual reality, cross-media, mobile devices, live
action role plays, or massively multi-player online role playing games
(MMORPG). We are interested in examining structures which both research
areas, Computer Games and CSCW systems have in common, and which can be
shared in future applications.

Join us for a single-day workshop on Computer Games and CSCW and
contribute with your position paper. A panel discussion will study in
general how CSCW Systems and Computer Games can benefit from each other.
It will cover new uses for games, ways of incorporating new methods into
traditional CSCW usability testing, and ways of pursuing new goals such as
peer or collaborative learning with games. Breakout groups will elaborate
on panel topics, and also devise next steps for this interest community.
The workshop will be highly interactive, allowing time for interpersonal,
small group communication, questions, and discussion.

The workshop will bring together researchers, practitioners and designers
from several disciplines, including game design and development,
communication, psychology, computer science, graphics, visual art, etc.
Participants are selected based on submitted position papers. A workshop
report will be generated for SIGCHI Bulletin, and workshop participants
are invited to submit extended versions of their position papers for
publication in the journal Interactive Technology and Smart Education.

SUBMISSIONS
———–
Participants will be asked to electronically submit the following:

1. A position paper of no more than six pages (in the ECSCW paper format),
which should include either/or:
(a) A discussion of interest on collaborative learning in Computer Games.
(b) A description of a practical approach in development of Computer Games
in a Collaborative Working Environment.
(c) Examples or some discussion on lessons learned for CSCW systems by
having taken certain approaches to design or evaluation.

2. A profile of the author, as an appendix, consisting of:
(a) A short biography (no more than 250 words)
(b) The discipline(s) you are situated in
(c) A brief description of your relevant work, with references (e.g. URLs)

Please submit your position papers to:
Ecscw-games-workshop@fit.fraunhofer.de

IMPORTANT DATES
—————
* 20. June 2005 - Position Paper Submission Deadline
* 4. July.2005 - Notification of Acceptance
* 3. September - Camera Ready Version
* 18./19. September 2005 - Date of the Workshop

WORKSHOP ORGANIZERS
——————-
Elaine Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories
Leonie Schäfer, EU Commission, DG Information Society
Uta Pankoke-Babatz, Fraunhofer FIT
Amanda Oldroyd, BT Broadband Applications Lab

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION
———————–
ECSCW’05 conference: http://insitu.lri.fr/ecscw/index.html
Workshop “Computer Games & CSCW”:
http://fit-bscw.fit.fraunhofer.de/pub/bscw.cgi/d36422094-1/*/CfP.htm

CONTACTS in the US / EUROPE
—————————
Elaine Raybourn
Sandia National Laboratories
P.O. Box 5800 MS 1188
Albuquerque, NM 87185, USA
Tel: +1 505 844 7975 Tel
emraybo@sandia.gov

Uta Pankoke-Babatz
Fraunhofer FIT
Schloß Birlinghoven
53754 Sankt Augustin
Germany
uta.pankoke@fit.fraunhofer.de

Flickr’s heading south. The goodbye party is this Thursday. Feeling good I’m studying in Vancouver. I will drop by after my NIME responsibilities. See you there.

Eight workshops have been selected for ECSCW’05. Workshops are one-day events and will take place on Sunday, September 18 and Monday, September 19, 2005. They can be found at http://www.ecscw.org/workshops.html

To participate in a workshop, send a position paper to one of the organizers by Monday, June 20. See the description of each workshop for details. You will be notified of the acceptance/rejection of your position paper by early July, in time to register for the conference at the early rate.

Workshop 1 - Healthcare

Reconfiguring Healthcare: Issues in Computer Supported Cooperative Work in Healthcare Environments

Ellen Balka, Simon Fraser University and Vancouver Coastal Health Ina Wagner, Technical University of Vienna

Workshop 2 - Games

Computer Games and CSCW

Elaine M. Raybourn, Sandia National Laboratories
Léonie Schäfer, European Commission - DG INFSO
Uta Pankoke-Babatz, Fraunhofer FIT
Amanda Oldroyd, BT - Broadband Applications Research Centre

Workshop 3 - Activity

Activity - From a Theoretical to a Computational Construct

Jakob E. Bardram, University of Aarhus
Thomas P. Moran, IBM Research

Workshop 4 - Place

Settings for Collaboration: The role of place

Luigina Ciolfi, University of Limerick
Geraldine Fitzpatrick, University of Sussex
Liam Bannon, University of Limerick

Workshop 5 - Location-Awareness

Location-Awareness and Community

Natalia Marmasse, IBM
Vova Soroka, IBM
Quentin Jones, New Jersey Institute of Technology
Christine A. Halverson, IBM

Workshop 6 - Tangible

Tangible Interfaces for Collaboration

Eva Hornecker, University of Sussex
Mark Stringer, University of Sussex
Albrecht Schmidt, University of Munich
Brygg Ullmer, Louisiana State University

Workshop 7 - Appropriation

Supporting Appropriation Work: Approaches for the ‘reflective’ user

Yvonne Dittrich, IT University Copenhagen
Paul Dourish, University of California at Irvine
Anders Mørch, University of Oslo
Volkmar Pipek, IISI
Gunnar Stevens, University of Siegen
Bettina Törpel, Technical University of Denmark

Workshop 8 - e-Science

e-Science in Practice: Studying and Supporting Distributed Scientific Work for Transparent Interaction

mc schraefel, University of Southampton
Mike Fraser, University of Bristol
Marina Jirotka, University of Oxford
Susanne Bødker
professor, dr. scient.
Department of Computer Science
University of Aarhus
Aabogade 34, DK-8200 Aarhus N
+4589425630, fax +4589425601

Some people wonder whether anyone will read their dissertation or Master’s thesis or if they will just be filed away on some library shelf. I remember reading Goffman’s The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life and thinking how cool it was that his dissertation was turned into a book.

Since dodgeball is not yet available in Canada, I haven’t been able to play it. However I am intrigued that it was a master’s project as it motivates me to think that I could also create something this is useful for connecting people serendipitously.

Today I learnt about !Cellphedia, another Master’s project by Limor Garcia out of the same New York University’s Interactive Telecommunications Program that Alex and Dennis developed dodgeball at. It combines wikipedia and dodgeball. I have read about it in Smart Mobs which provided links to E-Commerce News and Roland’s post from May 21st.

Both of these project extensively use SMS. I remember the first time I used my mobile phone to receive information via SMS. I was spending the summer in England in 1999 and I received free SMS on Wimbledon scores specific to the players I desired to track. It was useful because I am a huge tennis fan and I was wondering how the William sisters were doing.

I am feeling more confident about the changes I made to my thesis. Social software and tagging are really interesting & hot areas right now and my thesis will be fun to work on while creating a cool concept.

Robin Hamman of Cybersoc posted his talk that he gave a year ago at a conference in Warsaw. He talks about how although the Internet is perceived as a global tool, most people use it for local connections. I agree with this. I enjoying using postcards and letters to connect with my friends abroad and like to use email and IM to interact with friends here at my university. The mailing lists used by my research lab and student residence are being used to maintain and build on our sense of community, to enhance our physical relationships.

When I look at my IM list, I don’t just see coloured balls with names beside them. Each ball represents a friend or acquaintance and we have both made a conscious effort to maintain an awareness of one another and build on an existing real world relationship. I have also received IM addresses of strangers that I would like to get to know better but I have found that my online connections just are used to supplement my physical relationships.

As Robin states:

Forget the wires, it’s the nodes that are important, each one a real live person connected not just to the network but, more intimately, to a geographical place.

This is an exciting day. The first .eu domain is now live as noted on the association of internet researchers mailing list thanks to Wainer.

You may have missed the first .eu domain ever going live!

http://www.eurid.eu/about

Need to update our Internet timelines…

The geography of allocation seems to me taken straight from 1984 though

* Central Regional Office and Head quarters: Brussels, Belgium
(supporting registrars in Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxembourg,
Germany & Austria with German, French, Dutch languages)

* Northern Regional office: Stockholm, Sweden
(supporting registrars in Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Estonia, Latvia,
Lithuania UK and Ireland with English, Swedish, Danish, Finnish,
Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian languages)

* Southern Regional Office: Pisa, Italy
(Supporting Registrars in Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, Malta, Cyprus
and Slovenia with Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, Maltese and
Slovenian languages)

* Eastern Regional Office: Prague, Czech Republic
(Supporting registrars in Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland
with Czech, Slovak, Hungarian and Polish languages)

Cheers

Wainer

———————–
Wainer Lusoli
http://www.lusoli.info
w.lusoli@salford.ac.uk