Social and Mobile Technology to Support Civic Engagement, 13/14 July, QUT Brisbane

inal 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@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



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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@qut.edu.au - http://www.urbaninformatics.net/