IADIS International Conference 2009
Algarve, Portugal.
25 – 27 February 2009

IADIS – International Association for Development of the Information Society is a non-profit association.
See http://www.iadis.org/

A new paradigm is sweeping the society, organisations and the business environment. In fact, society and business world alike are moving from its tangible bases to intangible ones based on knowledge and information systems (IS) to support its management, use and sharing. In this emerging paradigm, terms like information, communication, knowledge, and learning have acquired a critical relevance to the understanding of the nature of contemporary business. This led authors such as Drucker (1993) to state that “we are entering the knowledge society in which the basic economic resource… is knowledge”.

In fact, since the mid-1980s, there has been a sudden avalanche of a new kind of vocabulary. Corporations, which so far had been economic entities, are being described as ‘information-based organizations’, ‘learning organizations’, ‘knowledge-creating companies’ or knowledge intensive organizations. Instead of product-market strategies, the fashionable business discourse invokes core competencies, intangible assets, knowledge-based capabilities, intellectual capital, knowledge management etc. Consequently, in this 21st century of ours, terms such as intellectual capital, knowledge management, and knowledge mapping have increasingly become part of the corporate landscape.

However, none of this apparent revolution would be possible without the underlying technological support provided by IS. The IADIS Information Systems Conference (IS 2009) aims to provide a forum for the discussion of IS taking a socio-technological perspective. It aims to address the issues related to design, development and use of IS in organisations from a socio-technological perspective, as well as to discuss IS professional practice, research and teaching. A set of key issues has been identified (see below). However, these do not aim at being prescriptive, or set in stone, and any innovative contributions that do not fit into these areas will also be considered.

Key issues in this conference will focus on:

IS in Practice, Technology Infrastructures and Organizational Processes

- Power, Cultural, Behavioural and Political issues

- New Organisational Forms

- Dilution of Organisational Boundaries

- The centrality of IS and IT in Organisational
Processes

- IS Management

- Information Management

- Knowledge Management

- IS and SMEs

- Innovation and IS

- Innovation and Knowledge Management

- IS and Change Management

- IS and Organisation Development

- Enterprise Application Integration

- Enterprise Resource Planning

- Business Process Change

IS Design, Development and Management Issues and Methodologies

- Design and Development Methodologies and
Frameworks

- Iterative and Incremental Methodologies

- Agile Methodologies

- IS Design and Development as a Component-Based
Process

- IS Design and Development as Social Negotiation
Process

- IS D Design and Development as a Global and
Distributed Process

- Outsourcing in IS

- Outsourcing Risks, Barriers and Opportunities

- IS Project Management

- IS Quality Management and Assurance

- IS Standards and Compliance Issues

- Risk Management in IS

- Risk Management in IS Design and Development

IS Professional Issues

- Ethical, social, privacy, security and moral issues
in an e-society

- The role of information in the information society

- Myths, taboos and misconceptions in IS

- Practitioner and Research Relationship, Projects and
Links

- Validity, Usefulness and Applicability of IS Academic
Research

- Industrial Research versus Academic Research Issues

- Industry Innovation and Leadership and Academic
Laggards

- IS consultancy as a profession

- Organisational IS Roles

- Communities of practice and Knowledge Sharing

IS Research

- Core Theories, Conceptualisations and Paradigms in
IS Research

- Ontological Assumptions in IS Research

- IS Research Constraints, Limitations and
Opportunities

- IS vs Computer Science Research

- IS vs Business Studies

- Positivist, Interpretivist and Critical Approaches to
IS Research

- Quantitative vs. Qualitative Methods

- Deductive vs Inductive Approaches

- Multi-method Approaches and Triangulations in IS
Research

- Design Research and the Sciences of the Artificial
in IS

- Multidisciplinary Views and Multi Methodological
Approaches

- New and alternative approaches to IS research

- Examples of experimental research designs in IS

IS Learning and Teaching

- Patterns of Demand for IS Teaching Provision

- Fads, Fashions and Fetishes in IS Curricula

- Pedagogic practice in Teaching IS

- E-Learning in IS

- Instructional Design for IS

- National Cultures and Approaches to Pedagogy

- Multiculturality ad Diversity Issues in IS Learning and Teaching

International Conference on Computational Aspects of Social Networks (CASoN 2009)
June 24 – 27, 2009, Fontainebleau, France

Conference Objective:
Social networks provide a powerful abstraction of the structure and dynamics of diverse kinds of people or people-to-technology interaction. These social network systems are usually characterized by the complex network structures and rich accompanying contextual information. Recent trends also indicate the usage of complex network as a key feature for next generation usage and exploitation of the Web. This international conference on “Computational Aspect of Networks” is focused on the foundations of social networks as well as case studies, empirical, and other methodological works related to the computational tools for the automatic discovery of Web-based social networks. This conference provides an opportunity to compare and contrast the ethological approach to social behavior in animals (including the study of animal tracks and learning by members of the same species) with web-based evidence of social interaction, perceptual learning, information granulation, the behavior of humans and affinities between web-based social networks. The main topics cover the design and use of various computational intelligence tools and software, simulations of social networks, representation and analysis of social networks, use of semantic networks in the design and community-based research issues such as knowledge discovery, privacy and protection, and visualization.

The papers can be theoretical, practical and application oriented on the following themes (but not limited to):

* Network evolution
o Network evolution and growth mechanisms.
o Online communities and computer networks.
o Information diffusion in social networks.
o Detection of communities by document analysis.
o Topology of real networks.
* Recommendation
o Information diffusion in social networks.
o Recommendations for product purchase, information acquisition and establishment of social relations
o Impact of recommendation models on the evolution of the social network.
o Classification models and their application in social recommender systems.
* Advertisement models
o Economical impact of social network discovery
o Social advertising.
o Use of social networks for marketing.
* Search in network
o Web page ranking informed by social media.
o Search algorithms on social networks.
o Collaborative Filtering.
* Security
o Anomaly detection in social network evolution.
o Data protection inside communities.
o Crime data mining and network analysis.
o Modeling trust and reputation in social networks
o Misbehavior detection in communities
* Network geography
o Geographical clusters, networks, and innovation.
o Social geography.
o International Collaborations in e-Social network
* Web
o Automatic discovery and analysis of Web based social networks
o Link Topology and Site Hierarchy.
o Web mining algorithms.
o Web communities
o Web-Based Cooperative Work

Web Intelligence (WI) is a new research paradigm aimed at exploring the fundamental interactions between AI-engineering and Advanced Information Technology (AIT) on the next generation of Web systems, services, and etc. Here AI-engineering is a general term that refers to a new area, slightly beyond traditional AI: brain informatics, human level AI, intelligent agents, social network intelligence and classical areas, such as knowledge engineering, representation, planning, and discovery and data mining are examples. AIT includes wireless networks, ubiquitous devices, social networks, and data/knowledge grids, as well as cloud computing. WI research seeks to explore the most critical technology and engineering to bring in the next generation Web systems.

For information see http://www.wi-iat09.disco.unimib.it/WI09/WIhome.htm

HIGHLIGHT:

· The conference will take place at the University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, the industrial and business capital of Italy. (http://www.unimib.it/go/Home/English-version)

· WI 2009 bwill be co-located with the 2009 IEEE/ACM/WIC International Conference on Inteligent Agent Tecnology (IAT2009).

· Each day, either in the morning (before parallel meeting sessions begin) or just after the lunch hour, there will be a keynote presentation (plenary session) to all the attendance. Some keynote presentations will be held jointly with the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2009). A rough plan is to have 2-3 joint keynote speakers, plus 2-3 WI related invited speakers and 2-3 IAT related invited speakers, respectively.

· WI 2009 also welcomes Tutorial proposals, and will include tutorials providing in-dept background on subjects that are of broad interest to Web intelligence communities. Both short (2 hours) and long (half day) tutorial will be considered. The tutorials will be part of the main conference technical program and open to all attendees. Therefore, there will not be a separate tutorials registration fee (i.e., only one conference registration covers everything).

· WI 2009 also welcomes Workshop proposals. As an important part of the conference, the workshop program will focus on new research challenges and initiatives. All papers accepted for workshops will be included in the Workshop Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and will be available at the workshops. Detailed information will be available at the conference homepage.

The 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology (IAT 2009) will be jointly held with the 2009 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence at the University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, Italy, and it will be sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society Technical Committee on Intelligent Informatics (TCII), the Web Intelligence Consortium (WIC), and ACM-SIGART.

For information see – http://www.wi-iat09.disco.unimib.it/IAT09/IAThome.htm

IAT 2009 will provide a leading international forum to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, such as computer science, information technology, business, education, human factors, systems engineering, and robotics, to (1) examine the design principles and performance characteristics of various approaches in intelligent agent technology, and (2) increase the cross fertilization of ideas on the development of autonomous agents and multi-agent systems among different domains. By encouraging idea-sharing and discussions on the underlying logical, cognitive, physical, and sociological foundations as well as the enabling technologies of intelligent agents, IAT 2007 will foster the development of novel paradigms and advanced solutions in agent based computing. The joint organization of IAT 2009 and WI 2009 will provide an opportunity for technical collaboration beyond the two distinct research communities.

HIGHLIGHT:

· The conference will take place at the University of Milano Bicocca, Milano, the industrial and business capital of Italy. (http://www.unimib.it/go/Home/English-version)

· IAT 2009 bwill be co-located with the 2009 IEEE/ACM/WIC International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI2009).

· Each day, either in the morning (before parallel meeting sessions begin) or just after the lunch hour, there will be a keynote presentation (plenary session) to all the attendance. Some keynote presentations will be held jointly with the IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Web Intelligence (WI 2009). A rough plan is to have 2-3 joint keynote speakers, plus 2-3 WI related invited speakers and 2-3 IAT related invited speakers, respectively.

· IAT 2009 also welcomes Tutorial proposals, and will include tutorials providing in-dept background on subjects that are of broad interest to Web intelligence communities. Both short (2 hours) and long (half day) tutorial will be considered. The tutorials will be part of the main conference technical program and open to all attendees. Therefore, there will not be a separate tutorials registration fee (i.e., only one conference registration covers everything).

· IAT 2009 also welcomes Workshop proposals. As an important part of the conference, the workshop program will focus on new research challenges and initiatives. All papers accepted for workshops will be included in the Workshop Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society Press and will be available at the workshops. Detailed information will be available at the conference homepage.

My interview by JupiterMedia back in May is below. The original article can be found at http://www.semanticweb.com/article.php/3749916.

The ‘Digital Human’ and the Semantic Web
May 29, 2008
By Jennifer Zaino

No doubt about it, the technology behind the semantic web is truly disruptive. The challenge for companies will be to figure out how to provide applications based on it that match business drivers and meet business goals. Oh, and those applications had better account for the fact that understanding the “digital” human component — within and without organizations — is critical to those ends.

“With a disruptive technology such as the semantic web, there’s a need to really talk about the current state of how we develop semantic technologies and applications,” says Dr. Rachel Yager, director of semantic web company Machintas Inc., which is developing technologies to enable people to better represent themselves in their digital lives. “Not small-scale stuff, but large, enterprise-strength applications.”

In a presentation to be delivered at the LinkedData Planet conference taking place June 17 and 18 in New York, she’ll be doing just that, in a discussion that explores the challenges and approaches for effective semantic systems development. “In the software development lifecycle, what are the best approaches and processes and methodologies that one can use to start looking into semantic applications, and to cater to the evolving technologies in this exciting domain,” Yager says.

Indeed, the semantic web community is vibrant … and at a crossroads in terms of making this disruptive technology viable, says Yager.

“I really think that when we are dealing with the semantic technologies of today, there are some positions that a company can take for the future to better harness the evolving nature of this technology,” she says.

Semantic web technologies can help close the gaps that still exist in IT environments in terms of scalability, flexibility, and agility, and companies can take advantage of that to develop enterprise-class systems that can uncover and exploit the linkages among people, their own understanding of concepts, other data sets, and mass intelligence.

Don’t underestimate how important it is to consider the people part of the link. Human beings and their digital lives are now part of the web fabric, says Yager, and the line between the real and the virtual human is growing increasingly fuzzy. “The human person is part of the link, of the linked data planet — in fact, the most important link,” she says. “We’re in pursuit of flexibility in the name of building agile software for connecting better with people, representing people better in this linked data planet –that is needed.” Human relationships need to be understood to meet business objectives, she says.

For example, a business’ core assets are its employees, and the knowledge that is linked to those people, individually and as part of the collective intelligence, is critical to fulfilling enterprise missions.

“What distinguishes one company from another is the culture and the people and how they make things work,” says Yager. “The representation of people and the understanding of people and linking all that information — we now have a powerful and new way that we can have a richer representation of ourselves in the data on the web. And companies have to care about that, because their employees are going to be part of that.” The same is true about leveraging that understanding on the customer front. “There will be a stage when humans are the content,” Yager says.

Machintas, with its expertise in computational intelligence, is headed in the direction of helping companies understand the human part of the equation, by developing technologies that enable one to represent himself better in his digital life. It aims to bridge the gap between the way a computer and human can think, and to better link the human to the computer. Among the technologies it is working on to achieve these ends is adding a new dimension to semantics, in the area of granular computing. Granular computing, Yager says, is a confluence of technologies, including “fuzzy sets,” that allow someone to represent rich human concepts in a formal way in the computer. That’s a challenge, as concepts such as young and old, rich and poor and even risk, can mean something very different to different people.

2009 IEEE Symposium on Computational Intelligence for Financial Engineering (CIFEr 2009)

March 30–April 2, 2009, Nashville, TN, http://www.ieee-ssci.org/

The CIFEr Conference is the major collaboration between the professional engineering and financial communities, and is one of the leading forums for new technologies and applications in the intersection of computational intelligence and financial engineering. Intelligent computational systems have become indispensable in virtually all financial applications, from portfolio selection to proprietary trading to risk management.

Financial Engineering Applications:
• Risk Management
• Pricing of Structured Securities
• Asset Allocation
• Trading Systems
• Forecasting
• Hedging Strategies
• Risk Arbitrage
• Behavioral Finance
• Exotic Options
• Portfolio Optimization
• Front/Back Office Operations
• Algorithmic Trading
• Agent-based Computational Economics
• Electricity/Energy Markets

Computer & Engineering Applications & Models:
• Neural Networks
• Probabilistic Modeling/Inference
• Fuzzy Sets, Rough Sets, & Granular Computing
• Intelligent Trading Agents
• Trading Room Simulation
• Time Series Analysis
• Non-linear Dynamics
• Financial Data Mining
• Trading Business Rules & Dialects
• Rules and XBRL for Financial Engineering Applications
• Semantic Web and Linked Data for Computer & Engineering Applications & Models

ISKE 2008 is the 3th International Conference on Intelligent System & Knowledge Engineering. The conference this year is technically co-sponsored by IEEE, Ghent University and Belgian Nuclear Research Centre, and organized by Xiamen University, Fuzhou University, Fujian Agri. & Fore. University, Jimei University, Sanming University and Hunan Institute of Humanities, Science & Tech.. It will be held from 17 to 18 Nov 2008 in Xiamen, Fujian, China.

Goto http://iske2008.xmu.edu.cn/ for conference information.

Sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, co-sponsored by the International Neural Network Society, Evolutionary Programming Society and the Institution of Engineering and Technology, and composed of the International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN), IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE) and IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC), WCCI 2008 will be the largest technical event on computational intelligence in the world with the biggest impact. WCCI 2008 will provide a stimulating forum for thousands of scientists, engineers, educators and students from all over the world to disseminate their new research findings and exchange information on emerging areas of research in the fields.

The 2008 IEEE World Congress on Computational Intelligence (WCCI 2008) will be held at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre during June 1-6, 2008 (Sunday – Friday). WCCI 2008 is composed of the 2008 International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN 2008), the 2008 IEEE International Conference on Fuzzy Systems (FUZZ-IEEE 2008) and the 2008 IEEE Congress on Evolutionary Computation (CEC 2008). The congress will feature world-renowned plenary speakers, regular technical sessions, state-of-the-art special sessions, interactive poster sessions, moderated panel discussions, informative pre-congress tutorials, complementary post-congress workshops, and entertaining social functions.

Final Program (PDF file) is available. Please see http://www.wcci2008.org for detail information.

There was an interesting conference in Phoenix a week ago – Social Computing, Behavioral Modeling and Prediction . This workshop is sponsored by Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), with School of Computing and Informatics, ASU. 

Social computing is concerned with the study of social behavior and social context based on computational systems. Behavioral modeling reproduces the social behavior, and allows for experimenting, scenario planning, and deep understanding of behavior, patterns, and potential outcomes. The pervasive use of computer and Internet technologies provides an unprecedented environment of various social activities. Social computing facilitates behavioral modeling in model building, analysis, pattern mining, and prediction. Numerous interdisciplinary and interdependent systems are created and used to represent the various social and physical systems for investigating the interactions between groups, communities, or nation-states. This requires joint efforts to take advantage of the state-of-the-art research from multiple disciplines, social computing, and behavioral modeling in order to document lessons learned and develop novel theories, experiments, and methodologies in terms of social, physical, psychological, and governmental mechanisms. The goal is to enable us to experiment, create, and recreate an operational environment with a better understanding of the contributions from each individual discipline, forging joint interdisciplinary efforts.

IPMU Conference in Málaga, Spain: June 22-27, 2008

The IPMU Conference is organized every two years with the focus of bringing together scientists working on methods for the management of uncertainty and aggregation of information in intelligent systems. This conference provides a medium for the exchange of ideas between theoreticians and practitioners in these and related areas.

The 12th edition of IPMU will be organized by the Dept. of Applied Mathematics of the University of Málaga. The conference will be held in Torremolinos, a well-known touristic place very close to Málaga in southern Spain.

I’ll be there.  See you!