[Air-L] Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement, 13/14 July, QUT Brisbane

[Marcus Foth]

Final Call for Papers

 From Social Butterfly to Urban Citizen -
A HCSNet Workshop on Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic  
Engagement

Queensland University of Technology, Kelvin Grove Campus, Brisbane

June 19, 2009		Workshop position papers (300-500 words) due
June 26, 2009		Author notifications sent
July 13/14, 2009		Workshop

http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/node/2943


Keynote Speaker

Co-sponsored by HCSNet, QUT iCi and NICTA Queensland, we are pleased  
to announce Adam Greenfield, author of 'Everyware' and Head of Design  
Direction for User Interface and Services at Nokia in Helsinki, as the  
keynote speaker for this workshop. His talk "The city is here for you  
to use" will give us a preview of the ideas in his forthcoming new book.

The keynote is open to the public, but seats are limited. If you would  
like to attend the keynote only, please RSVP to Julie-Anne Edwards by  
Tue 30 June 2009 at julieanne.edwards at qut.edu.au. Workshop  
participants will be admitted to the keynote automatically.


Workshop Theme

This workshop brings together people from a diverse range of  
disciplines to discuss social and mobile technologies and how they can  
be studied, designed and developed further to support local  
participation and civic engagement in urban environments.

Web applications such as blogs, wikis, video and photo sharing sites,  
and social networking systems have been termed ‘Web 2.0’ to highlight  
an arguably more open, collaborative, personalisable, and therefore  
more participatory internet experience than what had previously been  
possible. Giving rise to a culture of participation, an increasing  
number of these social applications are now available on mobile phones  
where they take advantage of device-specific features such as sensors,  
location and context awareness. This workshop will make a contribution  
towards exploring and better understanding the opportunities and  
challenges provided by tools, interfaces, methods and practices of  
social and mobile technology that enable participation and engagement.  
It will bring together a group of academics and practitioners from a  
diverse range of disciplines such as computing and engineering, social  
sciences, digital media and human-computer interaction to critically  
examine a range of applications of social and mobile technology, such  
as social networking, mobile interaction, wikis (eg.,  
futuremelbourne.com.au), twitter, blogging, virtual worlds (eg,  
hub2.org), and their impact to foster community activism, civic  
engagement and cultural citizenship.

This workshop will be held back-to-back with an ARC Cultural Research  
Network (CRN) workshop on 11/12 July 2009 at QUT titled, “Unboxing the  
iPhone: The Circuits of Digital Culture,” organised by Larissa Hjorth,  
Jean Burgess and Ingrid Richardson, supported by the CRN’s Cultural  
Technologies Node. This will provide opportunities to exchange ideas  
and experiences. http://www.uq.edu.au/crn/activities/glamm-iphone.html

The workshop is also very timely in that it coincides with the six  
week residency of Prof. Carlo Ratti, Director of the SENSEable City  
Lab at MIT, and the 2009 inaugural Queensland Innovator in Residence: http://yearofcreativity.deta.qld.gov.au/innovator.html


Audience

We hope to attract a multidisciplinary range of HCSnet members and  
colleagues working in areas such as user experience design, human- 
computer interaction, digital media, social sciences and computing and  
engineering. The topic and themes to be explored are timely, relevant  
and significant to the research work of many academics in Australia  
and overseas who are looking at ways to help engender a culture of  
local and national participation and engagement. Many colleagues find  
that the underlying systems architecture and principles that have  
given rise to participatory culture in many social and lifestyle  
domains should be examined with a view to reappropriate them to foster  
civic engagement and a revival of citizenship.


Event Format

The workshop will be held over two days, on Mon 13 and Tue 14 July  
2009, at the Creative Industries Precinct of Queensland University of  
Technology, Kelvin Grove, Brisbane. Participants will be given the  
opportunity to present their work with a view to stimulate an informed  
debate. The workshop will allow plenty of time for both breakout and  
plenary discussions.


Submissions

We are calling for 300-500 word position statements expressing the  
interest in the workshop or abstracts of proposed presentations from  
prospective participants. Queries can be sent via email to Marcus Foth  
at m.foth [AT] qut.edu.au. Please submit your abstract online by Fri  
19 June 2009 at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/node/add/submission/2943 You  
must log in to submit an abstract. If you are not a HCSNet user yet,  
please create an account at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/user/register

This workshop is free for anyone who has been a HCSNet member for 2  
months prior to the workshop. Non-members need to pay $100  
registration fee for this workshop via the online facility. Please  
register online by Fri 3 July 2009 at http://www.hcsnet.edu.au/events/register/2943


Travel Bursaries

HCSNet will fund a number of travel bursaries of $300 each to help  
cover the costs of travel and accommodation for participants from  
outside the Brisbane and South East Queensland area. HCSNet has also  
approved a Student Support Grant to enable students to participate.  
The provision of a submission as described above is a prerequisite for  
funding. If not all participants can be covered, funding grants will  
be allocated based on the relevance of your abstract to the workshop  
theme; also, students and early career researchers will have priority.


Organisers

Dr Marcus Foth, Queensland University of Technology
Dr Martin Gibbs, University of Melbourne
Dr Christine Satchell, Queensland University of Technology



--
Dr Marcus Foth
Senior Research Fellow

Institute for Creative Industries and Innovation
Queensland University of Technology (CRICOS No. 00213J)
Victoria Park Rd, Brisbane QLD 4059, Australia
Phone +61 7 313 x88772 - Fax x88238 - Office K506, KG
m.foth at qut.edu.au - http://www.urbaninformatics.net/