ANN: FEMA Encourages Public Participation

FEMA Encourages Public Participation

By Ed O'Keefe

Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, June 4, 2009

FEMA Administrator Craig Fugate said this week that he will devote considerable efforts to boosting citizen participation in disaster preparedness, a shift from previous emergency management perceptions of the general public as a liability.

Part of those efforts, he said, should include a concerted effort by the federal government to better promote preparedness as a basic American responsibility.

"As we prepare for disasters, we have to look at the public as a resource, not as a liability," Fugate said during a conference call with homeland security bloggers on Tuesday -- one of the first times a DHS official has hosted a forum exclusively for online journalists.

"With all the other stuff we do at FEMA, that's one area that you'll probably hear and see me talk about more consistently than probably any other subject," he said, without providing any specific details for how he planned to recruit average Americans for the task.

Fugate touted the agency's YouTube and Twitter efforts and DisasterHelp.gov as examples of the agency's efforts to spread the word in new ways. During a visit to FEMA headquarters late last week, President Obama urged residents of hurricane-prone areas to plan ahead for this year's tropical weather, suggesting that preparedness is a responsibility of citizenship.

Fugate agreed but cautioned that changing the perception of preparedness will take a long-term concerted effort. It took broad public campaigns to alter the nation's views on smoking and seat belt use, he said, suggesting similar efforts will be necessary to sell the importance of disaster preparedness.

"I'm not sure what's going to work," Fugate admitted. When asked, he said it will take much more than statements similar to the one Obama made last week.

"You're not going to get there with a sound bite or a short campaign," he said.

Source:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/06/03/AR2009060303404.html

ANN: Nordic Design conference, Nordes 2009

We invite you to participate in the third Nordic Design Research

Conference, NORDES?09: Engaging Artefacts taking place in Oslo,
Norway, from 30 August to 1 September 2009. The conference is hosted
by The Oslo School of Architecture and Design in collaboration with
The University of Oslo.

We offer an interesting program over two and a half days. The keynote
speakers are Lizbeth Goodman (SMARTlab, London), Mark Cameron Burry
(SIAL at RMIT, Australia) and Lavrans Løvlie (LiveWork, Oslo/London).
The programme includes paper presentations of 20 research papers and
13 exploratory papers, six workshops and one tutorial, five design
cases and an exhibition of 13 artefacts and one performance, in
addition to a doctoral consortium. We expect lively social gatherings
and promise a reception at Oslo's New Opera and a conference dinner at
Ekebergrestauranten, both very beautiful buildings with a spectacular
view of The Oslo Fjord.

Design research aims to provide new insights to the ways in which we
understand ? and do ? design. The scope of the conference reaches
beyond traditional design disciplines and includes other research
areas with mutual interest in design research and engaging artefacts.

Some of these themes are:
? Consumption: we invite critical perspectives on the increasing number
and diversity of artefacts and their creative design
but also use and abuse
in a global economy
? Production: diverse views on the complexity, interrelations and
consequences of production
? Technology: new forms given by new materials ? and new materials
developed to enable new forms
? Interactivity: performance and system oriented thinking regarding the
interaction between artefacts, material systems, environments and users
? Politics: the role of artefacts in shaping alternative futures
especially addressing accessibility, sustainability, poverty
and democracy

The bi-annual Nordes Conferences provide a meeting point for the
Nordic Design Research network. The network also arranges the Nordes
Summer schools and other Nordes activities. Nordes promotes the
dissemination of design research through the Nordes Digital Archive.
The Nordes board includes design researchers from all Nordic
countries, elected at each Nordes conference.

Early bird registration ends 1. August.
Please visit www.nordes.org to register for the conference today.

Conference co-chairs
Tone Bratteteig, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Birger Sevaldson, Inst. of Industrial Design, Oslo School of Architecture
and Design,N

Papers co-chairs
Andrew Morrison, InterMedia, Univ. of Oslo/ Oslo School of Architecture
and Design, N
Tuuli Mattelmäki, University of Art and Design, Helsinki, Finland
Håkan Edeholt, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway

Artefacts for exhibition, design cases co-chairs
Ole Smørdal, InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway
Maziar Raein, Oslo National Academy of the Arts, Norway
Michael Ulrich Hensel, Oslo School of Architecture and Design, Norway

Tutorials and workshops co-chairs
Christina Mörtberg, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo, Norway
Judith Gregory, Insitute of Design, IIT, United States

Doctoral Consortium co-chairs
Dag Svanæs, Dept. of Computer and Information Science, NTNU, Trondheim,
Norway
Ben Matthews, Mads Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark
Dagny Stuedahl, InterMedia, University of Oslo, Norway
Trond Are Øritsland, Interaction Design. NTNU, Trondheim, Norway
Turkka Keinonen, University of Art and Design Helsinki, Finland

CFP: "Collaborative Infrastructuring" workshop at ECSCW 2009

Call for Position Papers for the "Collaborative Infrastructuring"

workshop
organized at ECSCW'09 conference (http://www.ecscw09.org/)
Vienna, September 7, 2009
Sumission deadline: July 3, 2009 (extended)

Collaborative Infrastructuring – Conceptualizing Emergence and Design
of Information Infrastructures
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Description

The workshop aims to help develop a richer understanding of issues
related to the analysis and design of infrastructures:
1) the concepts, issues and theories that can inform our analysis both
of the infrastructures themselves, and of the processes of
collaborative infrastructure design
2) the concepts, issues, theories and methods that can improve the
processes of doing collaborative infrastructure design.
The workshop will examine issues around the collaborative design and
use of information infrastructures through a collective sharing and
analysis of case studies. We welcome as position papers analyses on
empirical studies or descriptions of cases that the authors are
familiar with. The workshop approach will be a collaborative activity
involving a 'live metareview' over participants' case studies. That
is, the group will consider in turn a number of issues emerging from
the cases. For each issue we will discuss whether and how it manifests
in the particular infrastructure settings that each participant is
familiar with or has studied. This will enable the participants to
gain a richer understanding of the research space around
infrastructure design and use. Goals of the one-day workshop are: case
studies explored, key issues and special problematics identified, a
poster prepared for the conference poster session, a journal special
issue planned – and networking.

Organizers
Karen Baker, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of
California San Diego, USA
Pelle Ehn, School of Arts and Communication, Malmö University, Sweden
Sara Eriksén, School of Computing, Blekinge Institute of Technology,
Sweden
Helena Karasti, Department of Information Processing Science,
University of Oulu, and Department of Information Technology,
University of Turku, Finland
Volkmar Pipek, Institute for Information Systems, University of
Siegen, Germany
Michael Twidale, Graduate School of Library and Information Science,
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA

Workshop web site and workspace
A more detailed workshop description and other workshop information is
posted at http://infrastructuring.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/
A BSCW workspace is available at
https://bscw.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/bscw/bscw.cgi (for accepted
participants by invitation after July 3)

Position paper submission
Position papers are invited that include one or more case studies,
empirical research or at least some description of an infrastructure
setting that the authors are familiar with and can discuss at the
workshop. The position paper should also include some analysis of that
setting, including but not limited to how infrastructure work is
defined and how it is carried out.
Position papers will be published in a Special Issue of the
'International Reports on Socio-Informatics' (http://irsi.iisi.de/). A
further book publication is planned.

Length 4-8 pages. Formatting instructions for submissions are
available at http://infrastructuring.wineme.fb5.uni-siegen.de/

Submission of position papers: Position papers are to be submitted via
email (sara.eriksen@bth.se) by July 3, 2009.

Maximum number of participants: Approximately 15

On behalf of the organizing group,
Volkmar Pipek

--
Prof. Dr. Volkmar Pipek
Juniorprofessur für Computerunterstützte Gruppenarbeit in
Organisationen/FB 5
Universität Siegen
Hölderlinstr. 3
57068 Siegen
http://www.cscw.uni-siegen.de/
Tel.: +49 271 740 4068
Fax.: +49 271 740 3384
volkmar.pipek@uni-siegen.de

CFP: 4th European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context

> CALL FOR POSTERS AND DEMOS
>
> ***** EuroSSC 2009 *****
>
> ***** 4th IEEE European Conference on Smart Sensing and Context *****
>
> The deadline for your 4 page submission is on
> 20 July 2009
>
> 16-18 September 2009
> Guildford, UK
>
> http://www.eurossc.org/
>
> **********************************************************************
>
> We would like to invite you to present your recent and on-going work
> on smart sensing and context as a poster or demo at EuroSSC 2009.
>
> The annual conference explores new techniques, algorithms,
> architectures, protocols, services, and user aspects utilising context
> and context-aware services and applications. Topics coverage include
> smart sensing, context recognition, and context processing in the
> framework of a Real World Internet. Of growing interest are methods
> and principles for context abstraction and processing, quality of
> context, machine-interpretable representation of context, context-
> aware service platforms, and horizontalisation of context information
> access to leverage smart surroundings for a wide range of applications
> rather than single closed systems.
>
> Past editions were held at ETH Switzerland (2008), University of
> Lancaster in UK (2007), and University of Twente, Netherlands (2006).
>
> Topics of interest:
> ==================
>
> * Distributed smart sensing and context recognition
> o Smart sensing: sensors inferring context and context-aware sensing
> o Context-aware surroundings and infrastructures
> o Distributed objects and wearables inferring context
> o Algorithms and architectures for scalable context recognition
> o Quality of Context (context uncertainty, unreliable sensing)
> o Distributed software architectures for context awareness
>
> * Context processing and categorisation
> o Context reasoning, fusion, transformation, inference
> o Context processing given Quality of Context
> o Scalable context management and processing architectures
> o Information aspects of context-aware sensor and actuator systems
> o Context categorisation and classification
>
> * Context-altering actuators, interaction methods, and human aspects
> o Principles and methods for context-aware actuation and feedback
> o Distributed context-aware actuators
> o Interaction with context-aware objects, wearables and proactive
> interfaces
> o Quality of Actuation
> o Symbiosis between autonomic context-aware sensor and actuator
> systems and users
> o Social implications, user-controlled privacy, securing context
>
> * Service environment, applications, deployment, test beds and case
> studies
> o Real-world experiences with deployed systems
> o Applications and case studies related to smart surroundings &
> intelligent objects
> o Integration with the Internet of the Future – the Real World
> Internet
> o Development tools, deployment principles, and life-cycle support
> o Wearable computing and pervasive computing applications
> o Sensor networks and information processing for new generations
> of context enabled devices
> o Intelligent sensors and sensor network systems
> o Context-aware service platforms
>
>
> Keynotes:
> =========
>
> * Professor Amit Sheth from the Wright State University will talk
> about "Computing for Human Experience: Semantics empowered Sensors,
> Services, and Social Computing on ubiquitous Web".
> His homepage is at http://knoesis.wright.edu/amit/
>
> * Dr. Marimuthu Palaniswami from ARC Research Network on Intelligent
> Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP), the
> University of Melbourne will hold a talk on "Large Scale Sensor
> Networks Deployment: Research Challenges and Opportunities"
> His homepage is at http://www.ee.unimelb.edu.au/staff/swami/
>
>
> Submission:
> ===========
> Posters should present recent and on-going research in smart sensing
> and context area. The poster submissions should include a 4-page (LNCS
> format) description of the current research. The demonstrations also
> require a 4-page (LNCS format) submission to describe the presented
> work. Accepted submissions for posters and demonstrations will be
> printed in the adjunct conference proceedings with an own ISBN number.
> The submitted work is expected to be presented at the conference.
> Submission open at: http://senldogo0039.springer-sbm.com/EuroSSC2009/
>
> For more information about the conference, please visit:
> http://www.eurossc.org
>
> --
> EuroSSC Poster & Demo Chair
> Clemens Lombriser, ETH Zürich
>
> lombriser@ife.ee.ethz.ch
> www.ife.ee.ethz.ch/people/lclemens/
>

CFP: international student essay

CRSCAD is sponsoring an international student essay competition on the topic of their upcoming conference, Rebuilding Sustainable Communities with the Elderly and Disabled People after Disasters. The aim of the contest is to persuade college and university students to examine the challenges that the elderly and the disabled face during and after disasters in their own cultural and local contexts.

The 50 winning essays will be published as a CRSCAD monograph and the top 20 winners will be invited to participate in the conference and publicly honored. For further information please contact me or Rachael Wilcox at crscad@umb.edu

Deadline:  November 1, 2009

 

Angela Devlen

Managing Partner

Wakefield Brunswick

617.710.4439

adevlen@wakefieldbrunswick.com

www.wakefieldbrunswick.com