“She’s Geeky” conference in Bay Area – and call for volunteers

From the “She’s Geeky” organizers:

Dear She’s Geeky Women,

We are really pleased to announce that Early Bird Registration is open for:

DC – November 13-14, 2009  Friday – Saturday
Announcement:
http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeeky.org/sg/2009/09/annoucing-shes-geeky-dc-nov-13-14/
Registration: http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeekydc.eventbrite.com/

Bay Area – January 29-31, 2010  Friday – Sunday
Announcement:
http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeeky.org/sg/2009/09/shes-geeky-bay-area-3/
Registration: http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeekybayarea3.eventbrite.com/

We are looking for Bay Area “Host/Organizing Team Members” – if you live in the Bay Area and would like to/are able to volunteer some time (up to several hours a week over the 12 weeks leading up to the event) to help us with outreach, marketing/PR, or event production please contact us at info@http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeeky.org and we’ll get back to you.

To make our vision of making it to at least 10 cities next year our goal is to raise $200,000 by the end of the year.  We have plans to meet with several dozen successful women in tech to ask them to contribute to this vision. If you know of any successful women you think might be interested in supporting the growth of She’s Geeky please let us know. We will also be launching a Grassroots Campaign and we are designing a special edition She’s Geeky T-Shirt that will be for this event.

Some things are new this year for our events:

• You can bring your daughters / young women you know. We have a special low price for young women so please take advantage of it and bring your daughters, nieces and young friends.   We currently don’t have the capacity to offer child care but are considering our options for providing this.

• We are now offering a Personal Brand Sponsorship Level at $50.  This rate is on top of the ticket you choose to purchase  and for this contribution your personal brand/blog name will be listed and linked to on our Event Announcement Pages for the event & your logo will be printed out and on display at the conference.

• Community Sponsorships of $250 and $500 are also available through registration.  The $250 level includes one full event ticket (all the days of the unConference) and the $500 level includes two full event tickets. These are for small companies and firms who want to support the event or for an individual if they choose.

Corporate Sponsorship is available for both events contact us to learn more – info@http://www.facebook.com/l/41b3a;shesgeeky.org

Thank you for your continued support and interest in She’s Geeky!

She’s Geeky convenes to inspire women technologists for the future and advance systemic change in tech culture, providing a space to create enduring communities that foster collaboration and innovation among women professional women working in Science Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.
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“She’s Geeky” conference coming up

The She’s Geeky conference will be in Mountain View January 30-31 with a no-host pre-conf dinner on the 29th.

Registration  lasts only until January 24th, so if you think you might want to go, time to do it.  Two days – $118 Saturday or Friday only $69.  

Their site says: “We are committed to making this event accessible — if you are unemployed or a student or have some other circumstance — e-mail us at info@shesgeeky.org to get a scholarship code.”

I’ve never gone and am  not  going this time, either, but I think it’s a terrific idea and want to be sure women who might be interested know about it.  

She’s Geeky events are neutral, face-to-face gathering spaces for women who like to geek out. Attendees include women involved in all aspects of technology, including those who like to use geeky tools, not just coders, programmers and engineers. You don’t even have to be from the computer industry. You just have to be a woman who identifies as a geek.

If you’re any of these things, you’re invited to come to She’s Geeky to:

1. Exchange skills and learn from women in different fields of technology.
2. Provide a forum for discussion of issues affecting women in technical fields.
3. Connect the generations of women working in or interested in technology, from those in middle school to the pioneers of the industry who may be elders in their 70’s.
4. Connect women in technology, computing, entrepreneurship, funding, hardware, open source, nonprofit and any other technical or “geeky” field.

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2009) Call for Papers

Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2009)
June 15-19, 2009

Austin, TX, USA
<www.jcdl2009.org>

Sponsored by ACM SIGIR, ACM SIGWEB, and IEEE-CS TCDL

Extended Call for Papers

The ACM/IEEE-CS Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL) is the major international research forum focused on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. JCDL encompasses the many meanings of the term “digital libraries”, including (but not limited to) new forms of information institutions; operational information systems with all manner of digital content; new means of selecting, collecting, organizing, distributing, and evaluating digital content; and theoretical models of information media, including document genres and electronic publishing. Digital libraries are distinguished from information retrieval systems because they include more types of media, provide additional functionality and services, and include other stages of the information life cycle, from creation through use. Digital libraries also can be viewed as a new form of information institution or as an extension of the services libraries currently provide.

Representatives from academe, government, industry, and others are invited to participate in this annual conference. The conference draws from a broad array of disciplines including computer science, information science, librarianship, archival science and practice, museum studies and practice, technology, medicine, social sciences, and humanities.

Topics of the sessions and workshops will cover such aspects of digital libraries as infrastructure; institutions; metadata; content; services; digital preservation; system design; implementation; interface design; human-computer interaction; evaluation of performance; evaluation of usability; collection development; intellectual property; privacy; electronic publishing; document genres; multimedia; social, institutional, and policy issues; user communities; and associated theoretical topics.

JCDL 2009 will be held in Austin, Texas on the campus of the University of Texas. The program is organized by an international committee of scholars and leaders in the Digital Libraries field.  Four hundred attendees are expected for the five days of events including a day of cutting edge tutorials; 2 1/2 days of papers, panels, and keynotes; and 1 1/2 days of research workshops.

JCDL 2009 invites submissions of papers and proposals for posters, demonstrations, tutorials, and workshops that will make the conference an exciting and creative event to attend. As always, the conference welcomes contributions from all the fields that intersect to enable Digital Libraries. Topics include, but are not limited to:

* Interfaces to information for novices and experts
* Information visualization
* Retrieval and browsing
* Data mining/extraction
* Enterprise-scale Information Architectures
* Distributed information systems
* Studies of information behavior and needs; user modeling
* Insightful analyses of existing systems
* Novel library content and use environments
* Deployment of digital collections in education
* Digital Library curriculum development
* Systems and algorithms for preservation

Important Dates
===============
All papers are due Friday, January 23, 2009 at 5 PM CST.
Poster and demonstration submissions are due Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 5 PM CST.
Tutorial and workshop proposals are due Saturday, January 31, 2009 at 5 PM CST.
Notification of acceptance to authors by March 10, 2009.
Doctoral consortium abstracts are due Monday, March 23, 2009.

Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture in Tokyo

I wish I could do this!

 

 

ANNOUNCING: Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture in Tokyo

For the sixth consecutive year, an exciting six-week Summer Program on Japanese Visual Culture will take place at the Tokyo Campus of Temple University Japan (TUJ), May 18 – June 29, 2009 (tentative dates).  This program consists of two coordinated courses: the first focuses on approaches to studying the richness and complexity of visual culture in Japan; the second allows students to develop modest visual projects (digital still, video or web) on selective topics immediately relevant to visual culture. Instruction is in English.  All course work will be supplemented with an active program of cultural events, trips and lectures in and around Tokyo.

Students live in Temple dormitories alongside Japanese students studying English at TUJ.  This program grants course credits to both undergraduate and graduate students.

For additional information, details, and application forms see:
http://www.temple.edu/studyabroad/programs/summer/japan/visual-anthro.html

Application deadline: February 16, 2009.

R. Chalfen (rchalfen@temple.edu) and L. Powell (lindseypowell@msn.com)

Open House for Prospective Students

Tuesday, October 21, 2008, 5:30pm-6:30pm
110 South Hall

UC Berkeley

The School of Information will be hosting an Open House for prospective students. Classes during the day will be open for visitation starting as early as 9:00 am and ending at 5:30 pm. Feel free to attend any that look interesting to you, or just come for the information session at 5:30 pm.

To RSVP for the event or for more information, please email admissions@ischool.berkeley.edu.

Workshops at IVSA 2009

From the IVSA list:

Workshops:  As with some earlier IVSA conferences, we are planning for the prospect of running postgraduate level workshops in practical Visual Sociology methodology linked to the 2009 conference.  These will be approx a week long, residential on the conference campus, with an introductory period on approaches led by notable exponents of visual information gathering practice, leading to a period documenting the conference itself in some visual manner, followed by time using the University of Cumbria’s excellent technical facilities to edit these pieces down to short pieces which can be published on the IVSA website.  Fuller details including costs etc. will be posted with the full listing of accepted panels early in 2009, but any indications of outline interest at this stage would be welcome.  If you are interested in being kept up to date with this planning, please contact Keren Basset on karen.bassett.ivsa2009@cumbria.ac.uk  putting ‘IVSA 2009 workshop enquiry’ in the header line.

I posted the call for papers earlier.

IVSA 2009 Conference Call

(I’ve excerpted from the longer call, which should appear shortly on the IVSA site.)

Clarification about the process: as I understand it (and as I recall from the 2007 conference), they try to organize panels and sessions by (1) asking people to propose panels and then (2) asking people to submit papers to/for specific panels; but papers that don’t fit can be submitted, too.

I organized a panel in 2007 on which Morgan Ames and I presented papers.  I directly invited some other people I knew to be doing relevant work who didn’t usually come to IVSA, and decided not to attend.  The conference organizers then sent the panel organizers the complete set of abstracts that had been submitted, for us to look for proposed papers that were (1) relevant and (2) of good quality, insofar as we could tell from the abstracts.  If I remember correctly, other people contacted me with directly later, with proposed papers.  So the panel ended up being a mix of people I knew and had invited, and people I didn’t know who submitted abstracts that I deemed appropriate.

I’m thinking about proposing a panel — haven’t decided what topic.

 

IVSA conference 2009, University of Cumbria, UK, July 22nd – 24th: 

‘Appreciating the views: how we’re looking at the social and visual landscape’

The 2009 International Visual Sociology Association conference will be held in the north-west UK region of Cumbria, probably better known as the English Lake District.  It’s being jointly hosted by the University of Cumbria and one of its Research Institutes, the Centre for Landscape and Environmental Arts Research (CLEAR).  The conference will address two interrelated main themes; of subject – Landscape and the Environment, and of approach – the varied methodologies of visual enquiry.

Deadlines:

Call for Panels: Closing Date: 24th November 2008 (24.00 GMT)
Possible start points for panels might include:

Ideas and representations of the wild
Definitions of the urban and the rural
Visual dimensions in environmental politics
Changes in landscape use
Land based lives and occupations
Land based sports and activities
Landscape representation
Landscape and identity
Landscape as a representation of nationalism
Environment defined above concepts of nation
‘Act local think global’ – the politicised environment
Intersections between local and global landscape
Contested claims to the land – challenges to developments etc.
Landscape aesthetics and their appreciation – the sublime etc.
Landscape intervention – national parks etc.
Colonial and post-colonial mapping of identity
Landscape ideologies in advertising, film etc.
Creative interpretations of landscape and the environment

(This is of course not by any means an exhaustive list – remembering that we are a visually based organisation, we do actively expect ideas and themes which expand and enhance this kind of indicative perspective)

Panel organisers are expected to provide: a panel title, a 250 to 300 word summary / abstract expanding the intentions that inform their intended panel theme, their contact details, and a very brief simple identifying sentence on themselves / the panel chair. (i.e. “Attila is a project leader at the Pan-Asiatic Institute of Land Conquest, and has long standing research interests in travel and social anthropology”.

The full list of accepted panels and their organisers will appear on the IVSA website soon after this, along with the more detailed call for individual papers.

Call for Papers: First ‘open’ closing date: 19th January 2009 (24.00 GMT)

This first early date is intended to take account of the often extended administrative processes many academics face in seeking funding and approval for participation in events such as this. All papers received by this first date will be peer-reviewed, and responded to quickly. For those whose applications require consideration of publication the IVSA does run its own academic journal ‘Visual Studies’, and though all acceptance decisions rest with the editorial board suitably written up conference paper submissions in the visual field are encouraged and always welcomed.

Paper authors should provide a title for their paper, a 250 to 300 word abstract, any specific technical requirements, their contact details, and a brief identifying sentence on themselves (as in the call for panels above).

Paper submissions should be sent in the first instance to one of the nominated panel organisers. However, we will also plan space for a few general panels considering methodological, ethical and practical issues of good research, so should you feel your work is so individual that it cannot possibly fit any of the offered titles, you may send your submission as a word attachment in one email directly to Gordon Simpson and Karen Bassett …

 

Call for papers: Second ‘extended’ closing date: 28th April 2009 (24:00 GMT)

This second date is to allow scope for participation for those whose work may not be planned quite as far ahead as the ‘career academic’, such as the many postgraduate students working on projects which won’t be completed until later in the academic year – or of course those who may only come across the call for papers late. Submissions here will be subject to a quicker process of approval than full peer-review, and acceptance at this point will be subject to remaining available space within the conference schedule.

Paper authors should provide a title for their paper, a 250 to 300 word abstract, any specific technical requirements, their contact details, and a brief identifying sentence on themselves (as in the first call for papers above).

Second deadline submissions should be sent directly as a word attachment in one email to both to Gordon Simpson and Karen Bassett …

Usability Professionals’ Association Conference & Design Competition

I’m posting this because I think both the conference and the competition may be of interest to our students and others.  However, I’m a little skeptical about the competition. What do usability professionals know about sustainable transportation?

Usability Professionals’ Association

2009 International Conference

Bringing Usability to Life:Making everyday things better

http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/

About the Conference

When: 8-12 June, 2009
Where: Hilton & Executive Tower Portland, Oregon, USA
Who: Over 700 user experience professionals from more than 20 countries
What: Tutorials, workshops, Experienced Practitioners program, then two and a half days packed with presentations, Idea Markets, and opportunities to network with other user experience professionals.

Student Design Competition:
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/students/

Important Dates

• 23 March, 2009 Paper Submissions Deadline 17:00 EST, Round 1 Closed
• 15 April, 2009 Notification of Round 1 winners
• 25 May, 2009 Submission by Round 1 winners of Posters for Judges to review before Poster session at the conference
• 9 June, 2009 Round 2, Poster session & judging at UPA in Portland, OR
• 10 June, 2009 Round 3, Oral Presentations of winning projects from the Poster session in Round 2 & announcement of competition winners.

The Design Problem

Sustainable Transportation is about “meeting the mobility needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs.” 

Sustainable Transportation is an attempt to remedy the current problems of excessive energy consumption, pollution, and inadequate service levels delivered by transportation systems worldwide. The problem can include efforts to reduce carbon emissions, improve public transit, and encourage car sharing, cycling, and walking. It is projected that by 2025 2/3 of the world’s populations will reside in urban areas, making Sustainable Transportation a critical component in economics, politics, and health concerns of massive urbanization.

This competition invites student teams to invent a system that addresses this design problem. The solutions should follow a user centered design process supported by background research and, if possible, ethnographic research of the solution space. We encourage students to reach into their nearby communities and include target user groups beyond students themselves – for example, families with children, urban professionals, the elderly, etc.. Solutions should be focused on real locations and be sensitive to real users’ needs and cultures.

To enter the competition, student teams may present either a concept (a clear, detailed design specification that can be taken to prototype), or a fully realized prototype. Either way, teams must clearly illustrate their design decisions and demonstrate the user centered design processes that have been followed. We strongly encourage consideration of:

• Previous work in this area and in adjacent design areas
• Ethnography and contextual research to ground the design decisions
• Evaluation of the designs with target users within iterative design framework

Multispecies Salon II

I was asked to post this:

CFO: Call for Organisms
Parliament of Biodiversity at the Multispecies Salon II
November 20-23, 2008
San Francisco, California
http://www.skyhighway.com/~multispecies_salon/

The Multispecies Salon is a special event and art exhibit in conjunction with the American Anthropological Association’s annual conference in San Francisco. We are conducting a biodiversity survey of sorts that will bring together organisms living in the greater San Francisco Bay Area. We seek to represent creatures that are thriving in our yards, greenhouses, skinner boxes, and aquariums as well as those that are failing in our built landscapes. We invite school children, biologists, and hobbyists to participate in the Parliament of Biodiversity by bringing organisms from the intimate spaces of labs and homes into the public space of the art gallery. This parliament of creatures will highlight the ways that plants, animals and fungi are brought into and excluded from human social worlds. Working to bring fragile organisms into a foreign space, we will attend to issues relating to care, contact and contagion.

If you would like to participate send an email with a description (250 words or less) and a photograph of the organism you would like to bring to the parliament: multispecies_salon@skyhighway.com

Submission deadline: September 1st, 2008

If your submission is accepted, the curators will work with you to ensure that the basic needs of your organism will be met for the duration of the show. While our aim is to showcase creatures that are already living in the San Francisco Bay area, we will accept submissions from people who are committed to safely transporting organisms from farther a field. We will also consider displaying non-living representations of multi-species assemblages in sculpture, painting, video, music, and other media. People who submit successful submissions will be invited to become “spokespeople” for nature—to deliver a 5 minute presentation about their non-human(s) at the biodiversity parliament on Saturday, November 22nd. We will consider submissions to the parliament after September 1st on a case-by-case basis.

Interesting Photographer: Joyce Tenneson at Book Passage Wed at 1 pm

Joyce Tenneson is talking about her life and her work (and, I hope, showing some of her work) at Book Passing in Corte Madera this Wed., July 30, at 1 pm. She has a new book out, Joyce Tenneson: A Life in Photography. I first learned about her when I saw some of her enormous flower photo prints exhibited. They were stunning.

From Wise Women, Joyce Tennson