Monday, July 13, 2009

CFP: ACM RecSys'09 Workshop on Recommender Systems and the Social Web

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CALL FOR PAPERS
ACM RecSys'09 Workshop on Recommender Systems & the Social Web

New York, October 25, 2009
http://ls13-www.cs.uni-dortmund.de/homepage/RSWEB/
Submission Deadline: July 13, 2009

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The Social Web has been enjoying huge popularity in recent years,
attracting millions of visitors on sites such as Facebook, Delicious,
YouTube. We are no longer mere consumers of information, but we also
actively participate in social networks, upload our personal images,
share our bookmarks, write web logs and annotate and comment on the
information provided by others.

This Social Web provides huge opportunities for recommender technology
and in turn recommender technologies can play a part in fuelling the
success of the Social Web phenomenon as new application areas for RS
technology emerge, new sources of knowledge for RS become available,
and richer user Web interfaces are possible.

The goal of this workshop is to explore, discuss, and understand new
opportunities for recommender systems and the social Web. We solicit
original contributions in the following areas:

* Economy of community-based systems:
* Encouraging users to contribute and sustain participation.
* Social network and folksonomy development:
* Recommending friends, tags, bookmarks, blogs, music, communities etc.
* Recommender systems mash-ups, Web 2.0 user interfaces, rich media
recommender systems
* Collaborative knowledge authoring, collective intelligence
* Recommender applications involving users or groups directly in the
recommendation process
* Exploiting folksonomies, social network information, interaction,
user context and communities or groups for recommendations
* Trust and reputation aware social recommendations
* Semantic Web recommender systems, use of ontologies or microformats
* Empirical evaluation of social recommender techniques, success and
failure measures
* Case studies and fielded applications
* Barriers of acceptance for social recommendations and the role of
social dynamics and online identities in acceptance of recommendations

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IMPORTANT DATES
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* July 13, 2009: Paper/position statement submission due
* August 10, 2009: Notification of workshop submitters
* August 17, 2009: Camera-ready workshop abstract due
* October 25, 2009: Workshop held

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PAPER SUBMISSION
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Papers should be submitted PDF format by email to
rsweb09@ls13.cs.uni-dortmund.de.

The formatting guidelines of the ACM'09 Recommender Systems apply
(see http://recsys.acm.org/submission.html). Paper selection will be
based on a peer review process; there will be no blind review process
- author names and affiliations should be included in the paper.

Paper categories:
* Long papers (up to 8 pages) describing original research results
or case studies.
* Short papers (up to 4 pages) describing preliminary results or
work-in-progress.

Demos:
* Workshop participants can also show demos. Demos should be submitted
as a short paper describing the research and the demo itself.

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Organizers
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Dietmar Jannach, TU Dortmund, Germany
Werner Geyer, IBM Research, Cambridge, MA, USA
Jill Freyne, CSIRO, TasICT Centre, Australia
Sarabjot Singh Anand, University of Warwick, UK
Casey Dugan, IBM Research, Cambridge, MA, USA
Bamshad Mobasher, DePaul University, USA
Alfred Kobsa, University of California, Irvine, USA

CFP: CoVis Workshop at Visweek

*************** CALL FOR PAPERS ******************

Workshop on Collaborative Visualization on Interactive Surfaces - CoVIS'09:
http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/covis09

Approx. October 11, 2009, Atlantic City, New Jersey

In conjunction with VisWeek 2009 (Vis, InfoVis, VAST):
http://vis.computer.org/VisWeek2009/


IMPORTANT DATES

Submission deadline: August 1st, 2009
Notification of acceptance: August 26th, 2009
Final camera ready submissions: September 14th, 2009
Workshop: TBD - approx. October 11th, 2009


TOPICS

It is common for small groups of people to gather around visual displays
of information to discuss or interpret the information to form
decisions. Groups
can share the task load of exploring large and complex datasets and can
share
various interpretations of a dataset when working together. However,
tools to
support synchronous collaboration between several people in their data
analysis
are still relatively scarce. Traditionally, visualization and visual
analytics
tools have been designed from a single-user perspective and for desktop
computers. While hardware such as multi-touch displays and network
capabilities
have emerged that lend themselves especially well to collaboration,
software
support for collaboration around visualizations is still relatively
scarce. One
of the reasons is that single-user systems do not necessarily translate
well to
collaborative scenarios or interactive surfaces and require specific
re-design.

The design of digital systems for collaboration around visualization and
visual analytics systems, therefore, poses additional challenges: we
need to
understand (a) how people collaboratively work with visual
representations of
data and which methods they use to solve information analysis tasks as a
team,
and (b) what the exact design requirements are for collaborative visual
analysis
scenarios.

In this workshop we would like to discuss these challenges and discuss
the role of interactive surfaces as an emerging technology for supporting
collaborative visualization and visual analytics settings.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* the design of information visualization, scientific visualization, or
visual
analytics interfaces and environments for co-located collaborative work,
* design of interactive visual representations for collaborative work on
interactive surfaces,
* the use of interactive surfaces to visualize and interact with
information and
data,
* social components in collaborative visual analysis environments,
* aspects of cognition in multi-user visualization and visual analysis
environments,
* evaluation of collaborative information visualization, scientific
visualization, and visual analytics systems,
* multiple and coordinated views for collaborative visualization and
dataanalysis systems,
* design of multi-display environments for information analysis work,
* collaborative visualization and visual analytics applications,
* collaborative sensemaking, and
* experience with traditional collaboration in information and data
intensive
fields.


OBJECTIVES

The main objective of the workshop is to bring people from academia and
industry with relevant backgrounds together (a) to discuss ongoing
research work
in the field of multi-user collaborative visualization and visual
analytics and
(b) to jointly investigate how interactive surfaces can contribute to
this area.
This includes the analysis of problems encountered in the field, the
presentation of specific solutions, and the discussion of special
characteristics compared to the core research areas. The workshop is
intended to
be a platform to exchange information and experiences, to stimulate
discussion,
and to identify novel aspects and ideas to the topics above. During this
workshop, we would like to identify a number of open problems that need
further
investigation and identify priorities to target research in this direction.

We would like to put an emphasis on the following two (interrelated)
questions:

* What are the existing challenges inherent in designing interfaces
for visualizing, exploring, and analyzing data in a collaborative
fashion?
* What unique challenges exist in building visualization systems for
collaborative environments?

SUBMISSIONS

Prospective participants are invited to submit position papers of up
to four pages in length which outline one or more potential
topics/solutions to discuss during the workshop. Accepted Papers will
be published in the technical report series of LMU Media
Informatics. This means that they will receive an ISSN number.

Papers should be formatted according to the IEEE Vis/InfoVis 2009 format:
http://www.cs.sfu.ca/~vis/Tasks/camera_tvcg.html

Submissions should be sent to Dominikus Baur:
dominikus.baur(at)ifi.lmu.de

ORGANIZERS
Petra Isenberg, University of Calgary (Primary Contact)
Michael Sedlmair, BMW Group - Research and Technology
Dominikus Baur, University of Munich
Tobias Isenberg, University of Groningen
Andreas Butz, University of Munich


PROGRAM COMMITTEE
Anastasia Bezerianos, Ecole Centrale Paris
Nathalie Henry, Microsoft Research
Stacey Scott, University of Waterloo
Michael Haller, Upper Austria University of Applied Sciences
Johannes Schöning, DFKI Saarbrücken
Shahram Izadi, Microsoft Research
Raimund Dachselt, Otto-von-Guericke University Magdeburg
Daniel Keim, University of Konstanz
David S. Ebert, Purdue University
Melanie Tory, University of Victoria


CONTACT US
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us at:
petra.isenberg(at)ucalgary.ca

For more information, please see the workshop web site:
http://www.medien.ifi.lmu.de/covis09

--
Prof. Dr. Andreas Butz
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet
Institut fuer Informatik
LFE Medieninformatik
Amalienstrasse 17
80333 Muenchen
Germany
Tel.: +49-89-2180-4665
Sekr.: +49-89-2180-4650
Fax: +49-89-2180-4652
butz@ifi.lmu.de
http://www.butz.org/
http://www.fluidum.org/
http://www.smartgraphics.org/

CFP: SWUI Workshop at ISWC 2009 -- Semantic Web User Interaction

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CALL FOR PAPERS
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Sharing Ideas for Complex Problems in User Interaction
SWUI Workshop at the International Semantic Web Conference 2009.
Washington, D.C. USA. 25th October 2009.
Papers due: 17th August 2009.
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This workshop seeks to gather researchers and problem owners from a range of

disciplines - both inside and outside the semantic web space - to explore
key
aspects of the user experience in complex, very heterogeneous data
environments.
It is the sixth in the Semantic Web User Interaction (SWUI) series, and
takes
its theme this year in part from the location of ISWC2009: Washington, D.C.
The
workshop web site, with full details, is at:
http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009.

Workshop Theme:

Use of semantic web protocols and technologies are increasing rapidly in
government and business, so they are affecting an ever-widening user
population on the web. Increasingly, web and data/archival management tools
are embedding RDF and linked data capabilities into their architectures, and

projects are overlaying standards-based ontologies to supplement older
proprietary vocabularies. However, the key question remains:
* What are the most effective ways to harness these capabilities to support
high quality user interaction by researchers and the public?

A case study provides a focal point for our day-long collaborative
discussion - it centers around the rapidly growing area of large-scale
electronic archives and library collections online
(http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009/archival-casestudy). This domain is
particularly rich to explore, as it offers highly heterogeneous data
sources, a wide mix of structured and unstructured data, diverse user
populations and goals, requirements for a range of query/search/retrieval
strategies, and unique needs for visualizing/rendering both results and
individual objects.

There is a lot of good, relevant research and new interaction techniques
inside and outside the linked data/semantic web community that can
contribute to this domain, and ultimately to many large, heterogeneous data
interaction domains.

Who should participate?

This workshop will be of interest to researchers and designers from a
range of disciplines, including:
* Semantic Web
* Linked Data
* Machine Learning
* NLP, concept and entity extraction, and linguistic analysis
* Search and indexing of structured and unstructured data,
images and multimedia
* Visualization
* Text entry, tagging and annotation
* Ontology and taxonomy modeling and integration
* Social and community interaction
* Multimedia
* Grid and cloud computing
* Agents

Participating in the Workshop:

A written research/position paper must be submitted and accepted to
participate in the workshop. The deadline for papers is August 17, 2009
(see key dates, below). Because of the short review time for our PC, we
would really appreciate your submitting an abstract and your intention
to submit by Friday, August 7th. Papers do not need to be full length
research papers to be accepted - high quality ideas, contributions, and
imagination are most important.

For acceptance into the workshop, participant papers must contain:
* A summary of your related research/practice work, with examples
that describe unique aspects of your research and any tools or
models you

are developing.
* Links to existing papers that describe your work in more
detail; for researchers doing newer or more exploratory work, a longer
paper describing new and unpublished work can also be accepted by
the PC.

* Specific ideas on how your research is a "piece in the larger puzzle" that

contributes to improving the situation for users in the case study
problem
domain.

Position papers can be as short as 4 pages, and the maximum length for
research papers is 12 pages. Accepted papers are expected to be published to

the CEUR-WS website.

Workshop Format:

The workshop will feature collaborative activities to
understand the relationships between participants' work, in order to find
points for cross-fertilizing and extending future research. This will be a
highly interactive workshop! Some of the specific activities for the
workshop will be determined based on the participants and the research work
they are bringing to the event.

The workshop aims to produce a strong and detailed outline/extended abstract

on the UI challenges presented by the case study domain and the types of
approaches that apply - and hopefully by extension can benefit other large,
heterogeneous data domains. We will ask participants to continue
contributing to the outline, with the aim of publishing the workshop
outcomes as a paper or journal special edition.

Key Dates:

Abstract/intent due: 7 August 2009
Submissions due: 17 August 2009
Notification by: 6 September 2009
Final papers due: 9 October 2009
Workshop date: 25 October 2009

Questions to: swui@webscience.org.
Submissions to: http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swui2009
All papers submitted will be reviewed by the workshop program committee.

Organizers:
Duane Degler, Design for Context, USA
Jennifer Golbeck, University of Maryland, USA
m.c. schraefel, University of Southampton, UK
Lloyd Rutledge, Open Universiteit Nederland, NL

For More Information:

Workshop website: http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009
E-mail
: swui@webscience.org
Submissions:
http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=swui2009
Case study: http://swui.webscience.org/SWUI2009/archival-casestudy

ISWC2009 (Washington, D.C. USA, 25-29 October 2009):
http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/
Westfields Conference Center:
http://iswc2009.semanticweb.org/wiki/index.php/Westfields_Conference_Center

Previous workshops in Semantic Web User Interaction:
http://swui.webscience.org/

[Fwd: IPCITY SUMMER SCHOOL 2009 VIENNA]

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======== IPCITY SUMMER SCHOOL 2009 - 22-25/09/2009 VIENNA =========
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IPCity Summer School 2009
September 22-25, 2009 in Vienna, Austria.

The IPCity project invites international graduate students to join us
for the 2009 summer school. Students will be given the opportunity to
work alongside experts in the field of urban mixed realities. The summer
school will bring together students from a range of backgrounds
including: architecture, urban planning, computer games design and
information technology with the aim of creating an atmosphere similar
to those found in leading research labs.

The Summer School 2009 will introduce students to the IPCity project,
in particular the core theories, key concepts and underlying
technologies. In workshop groups students will get hands-on
experience on novel application areas including: urban life and
social gathering, environmental awareness, urban renewal scenarios,
mixed-reality gaming and community story-telling in urban
environments.

Together with workshop supervisors students will create their own
content for existing mixed reality systems using provided building
blocks, conduct tests and field trials, and on the last day present
their groups' work to the other workshop participants!

The Summer School 2009 is part of the IPCity Integrated Project on
Interaction and Presence in Urban Environments which is an EU funded
Sixth Framework programme (FP-2004-IST-4-27571). The aim of
the IPCity project is to investigate analytical and technological
approaches to presence in real life settings. This includes extending
the presence by taking into account the participative and social
constitution of presence as well as the multiplicity and distribution of
events in time and space.

The Application deadline for graduate (Msc., PhD.) students is August 1,
2009! Notification of acceptance will be made on August 15, 2009. The
working language of the Summer School is English, 3 ECTS credits can be
awarded. There are a limited number of travel grants available to
help pay for some or all of the costs involved in attending the
summer school!

For further information on the IPCity Summer School 2009 please visit
the website.


---===>>>>>> http://ipcity.eu/summerschool/ <<<<<<===---


The IPCity Summer School 2009 Organizing Team.

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======== IPCITY SUMMER SCHOOL 2009 - 22-25/09/2009 VIENNA =========
====================================================================

--
Dr Rod McCall
Collaborative, Virtual and Augmented Environments
Fraunhofer FIT, Sankt Augustin, Germany
www.fit.fraunhofer.de

CFP: Innovations'09

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CALL FOR PAPERS
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Innovations'09
6th International Conference on Innovations in Information Technology
December 15-17, 2009
Al Ain, United Arab Emirates
*IEEE pending upon Approval
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Conference web site: http://www.it-innovations.ae/
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BACKGROUND
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Innovations in Information Technology (Innovations'09), is a premier Forum
for the presentation and discussion of technology advances and research
results in the field of Information Technology (IT). Held in the oasis city
of Al Ain, the fourth largest city in the United Arab Emirates (UAE),
Innovations'09 is the sixth in the series that has been held in Dubai since
2004.
Innovations?09 will be hosted by the College of Information Technology
(CIT). The CIT is the newest addition to the United Arab Emirates University
(UAEU), the oldest and largest university in the UAE.
The latest research advances in fields ranging from Communication Networks
and Security to evolving Computing Systems, Software Engineering,
Information Systems, Web Technologies, Bioinformatics and Healthcare
Informatics are explored in Innovations' technical sessions.

AUTHOR'S SCHEDULE (Deadlines):
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Tutorial proposals due: August 24, 2009
Workshop proposals due: August 24, 2009
Paper and poster submissions due: August 31, 2009
Notification of acceptance: October 5, 2009
Final camera ready paper due: November 2, 2009

TOPICS OF INTEREST
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Topics within the following Tracks:
* COMMUNICATION NETWORKS
* COMPUTER AND INFORMATION SECURITY
* COMPUTING AND EMBEDDED SYSTEMS
* INFORMATION SYSTEMS & Web SERVICES
* BIOINFORMATICS AND HEALTHCARE INFORMATICS
* SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

CONTACT/PPROGRAM CHAIRS: DR. ISSA KHALIL AND DR. FALAH AWWAD
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Contact: Innovations@uaeu.ac.ae