CFP Special Issues, Workshops and Conferences

Straight from my inbox, a few academic events to keep an eye on:

Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies in Everyday Life.
Theme Issue of Personal and Ubiquitous Computing – Planned publication June 2009

This theme issue is responding to the proliferation and developing constellations of ‘social’ and ‘mundane’ technologies in people’s everyday lives. We define ‘mundane technologies’ (Graham and Rouncefield, 2007) as those quite unremarkable technologies that, given the context in which they operate, have been ‘made at home’, have become ‘ordinary’ and, indeed, part of the organisation already in place (Sacks, 1992). These technologies are often simple, minimalist and ‘loose’ and yet support richly layered social interactions which are sustained and develop across time, place, and culture in particular ‘social worlds’ (Strauss, 1978). Our assumption is that these ‘mundane technologies’ are at a mature level of adoption, with seemingly well worked-out affordances so that their use has become so tightly entwined with activity and social interaction as to be almost invisible (Weiser, 1991) and thus, difficult to study and to be surprised by.

Automated Journeys
Workshop at UbiComp 2008

Computing technology now pervades those moments of our day when we move through our cities. Mobile phones, music players, vending machines, contact-less payment systems and RFID-enabled turnstiles are de rigueur on our daily journeys. This workshop aims to examine these augmented journeys, to reflect on the public, semi-public and private technologies available to us in them, and to speculate on what innovations might be to come. Taking as our starting point cities such as Seoul, we aim to take seriously the developments in mobile technology as well as the advancements in autonomous machinery and how these mesh with our urban journeys.

Collocated social practices surrounding photos
Special Issue of International Journal of Human-Computer Studies – Targeted publication November 2009

Following the uptake of digital cameras there has been considerable interest from the HCI field in contemporary photographic practices. Recent studies on people’s interactions with printed and digital photos have drawn attention to the novel social practices that continue to emerge in light of technical advances. The ways in which people approach the capture, sharing, storing and display of photos are rapidly changing, and the scope of these changes, along with their social and cultural implications, raises interesting challenges and possibilities for the design of supportive technologies. This special issue aims to build on what has become an established corpus of HCI studies on photography, reflecting past research and bringing together recent technical developments, empirical studies and thoughts on method and theory.

ENTER 2009 – 16th International Conference on IT and Travel & Tourism
IFITT’s Global Travel & Tourism Technology and eBusiness Forum
January 28th – 30th, 2009, Amsterdam, Netherlands

Telecommunications and Travel Behavior Committee of the US Transportation Research Board

The TRB Committee on Telecommunication and Travel Behavior invites papers on a wide range of topics related to the understanding, modeling, and analysis of the interrelation between telecommunications and traveler behavior. We are interested in a broad range of issues relating to the role of emerging technologies and travel, but particularly for the 2009 conference, we are seeking papers addressing the following issues.
-Role of Network Attributes on Telecommuting
-Role of ICT in influencing social networks and the travel implications.
-Role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT) on Value of Travel Time
-Role of Information and Communications Technology (ICT)on Leisure Activities
-Geographical and Occupational Clustering of Telecommuters
-The evolving nature of use of Internet and travel implications

International Workshop on Urban, Community, and Social Applications of Networked Sensing Systems
November 4, 2008, Raleigh, North Carolina, USA – Held in conjunction with ACM SenSys 2008

At the same time we are seeing sensors installed in urban environments in support of more classic environmental sensing applications, such as, real-time feeds for air-quality, pollutants, weather conditions, and congestion conditions around the city. Collaborative data gathering of sensed data for people by people, facilitated by sensing systems comprised of everyday mobile devices and their interaction with static sensor webs, present a new frontier at the intersection between pervasive computing and sensor networking. This workshop promotes exchange among sensing system researchers involved in areas, such as, mobile sensing, people-centric and participatory sensing, urban sensing, public health, community development, and cultural expression. It focuses on how mobile phones and other everyday devices can be employed as network- connected, location-aware, human-in-the-loop sensors that enable data collection, geo-tagged documentation, mapping, modeling, and other case-making capabilities.

International Workshop Sensing a Changing World
November 19-21, 2008 – Wageningen University, The Netherlands

Current developments in sensor technology provide increasing opportunities to analyze human behavior and monitor environmental processes in a changing world. However, the challenge will be to develop concepts and applications that can provide timely and on demand knowledge to end-users in different domains and at a range of scale-levels. This workshop has the objective to elucidate common concepts for sensor network applications on aspects like data communication, processing, standardization, knowledge discovery, representation, and visualization.

See previous list of Events, Seminars, Workshops on the City, Space and Socio-Technical Systems