[Air-l] Special Session at Euro mGov 2006. Call for papers

[A.C.Roibas at bton.ac.uk]

ENHANCING SOCIAL PARTICIPATION FOR THE NEW MOBILE COMMUNITIES ACROSS PERVASIVE INTERACTIVE MULTIMEDIA SYSTEMS: M-ITV & PRODUCTION OF SELF-AUTHORED CONTENT 

a Special Session at the
Euro mGov 2006, 30-31 August & 1 September 2006, Sussex University, Brighton, UK
http://www.icmg.mgovernment.org

Session Chair: Dr. Anxo Cereijo Roibás
School of Computing, Mathematical and Information Sciences, University of Brighton

CONTENT
m-TV will go beyond the mere broadcast of TV or download of music, video clips. It will need to pay special attention to the contextual usage of this media and solve new issues for handhelds such as the low usability, sociability, creativity, contextual sensitivity and interaction that so far they enable. According to socio-cultural and technological trends in this area, it is possible to prospect a use of mobile interactive multimedia systems in future communication scenarios where the user can create and share self-authored & contextual digital content, giving a new dimension to the TV experience and extending and enhancing it outside the home boundaries and, at the same time, opening opportunities in new subjects such as m-Gov by encouraging social participation and democracy.
The aim of this special session is to give a glance to the future of m-Gov and pervasive-Gov and stimulate discussion around prospected scenarios of pervasive interactive multimedia in which nomadic users can create, edit and share self-authored content with their mobile phones facilitating in this way government and social activities and, at the same time, enhancing democracy. Such systems can to improve users’ access to social services, to facilitate government activities as well as access to context-based infotainment and to encourage social participation. Two users groups will particularly benefit from these systems that enable social participation: the youth will have access to appealing and user friendly applications. Moreover, accessible GOV systems across handhelds and new ambient interfaces can contribute to reduce the digital divide in a dramatically growing ageing society.
Moreover, new challenges for pervasive communications systems (interoperability between handhelds, i-TV, PCs, in-car-navigators, smart office and the smarthouse), tangible computing and intelligent environments are currently will definitely affect the user experience in mobile and pervasive Gov-systems.
The session will create a provocative framework for future interactive mobile and pervasive Government applications and will generate a debate with the audience around the emerging and contentious topic of using mobile devices as main interfaces in a pervasive-Government experience. It is expected that the presenters will promote inter-disciplinary and multidisciplinary discussion about a range of HCI issues including: enabling mobile users to create and share self authored multimedia content, using handhelds to share moods, information and co-creating, management of multiple user interactions, interaction between mobile phones and other devices, the development of usable design models for interactive Government services in convergent media, special HCI considerations around media sharing, new applications and new forms of interactive content more suitable in pervasive-Gov contexts. Other ethical, legal, business and social implications of ubiquitous communications may also be raised. The session will conclude with a summarization of the most relevant outcomes of the discussion.

Possible topics include (but are not limited to) the following:
•	Intersection between m-Government, e-Gov and iTV-Government
•	New forms of self-authored content for m-Government and pervasive-Government
•	Context awareness in m-Government
•	Usability evaluation methodologies for m-Government applications
•	Accessibility in pervasive-Government: AAA compliance.
•	Multi-modal interaction in m-Gov and pervasive-Gov
•	Privacy and security control in m-Gov and pervasive-Gov applications
•	Ethical and sociological issues about the democracy implications of pervasive-Gov
•	Technological, cultural, political, and economic dimensions of pervasive Government systems;
•	New challenges in pervasive Government systems: interoperability between interfaces, tangible computing, intelligent environments, etc;
•	Innovative research approaches and the creation of feasible and relevant future scenarios;
•	Advanced interaction models (immersive environments, humanising interfaces, haptics, etc);
understanding and supporting sociability in social electronic media

OBJECTIVES
This Special session addresses the following issues:
•	analysing suitable methodologies and techniques to design pervasive GOV scenarios which are characterized by the intersections between mobile devices and iTV
•	understanding how nomadic cultures affect (and will affect) GOV activities.
•	unfolding experimental research methodologies to understand user-experience in future pervasive GOV scenarios
•	sharing a roadmap of feasible scenarios and representative applications for pervasive GOV
•	investigating possible interactive models in pervasive GOV;
•	exploring the potential of novel interfaces design within advanced and pervasive communication scenarios for government accounts of the particular challenges of studying and designing for sociability in social electronic media
•	evaluating social participation with user based evaluation (e.g. user testing) or expert based evaluation (e.g. heuristic evaluation)

The aim of this Special Session is to build a multidisciplinary research community around the topic.

AUDIENCE
The Special Session is intended for managers of HCI projects working in mGOV related projects with iTV, web and mobile (telecom companies, device manufacturers, broadcasters, government institutions, service and content providers, etc.); industrial designers; human factors practitioners; interface evaluators and testers; HF academics, researchers and students with interests in human computer interaction and CSCW systems; designers in general and new trends consultants . Although no particular skills are required, basic knowledge of HCI design issues is recommended.

SUBMISSION
You can submit either a full paper or extended abstract. However only full papers will be published in the Conference proceedings.

Long papers:
All interested authors should send a 10 pages-long paper to the session chair at
a.c.roibas at brighton.ac.uk to see the suitability of their paper for the session.
All full paper submissions are subject to EURO mGOV submission and double-blind review procedures as outlined at: http://www.icmg.mgovernment.org/Submissions.htm. Please send your full paper submissions to submissions at mgovernment.org *and* copy (Cc) ing to the session chair at a.c.roibas at brighton.ac.uk by the full paper submission deadline indicating “special session” on the subject line *and* the title at the top of the first page of the paper.

Extended abstracts and late break-in papers:
Extended abstracts and late break-in papers (although these won’t be double-blind reviewed) will be also considered for publication in the proceedings.

DEADLINE FOR PAPER SUBMISSIONS
7th July 2006