Several of the workshops in the Communities and Technologies 2007 Conference may be of interest, in particular Digital Cities 5: Urban Informatics, Locative Media and Mobile Technology in Inner-City Developments; Organizers: Marcus Foth and Fiorella De Cindio.

The workshops for the Communities and Technologies 2007 Conference are now announced on the C&T web site.

All workshops are actively soliciting participants now. This year’s workshops include:

1. Community Informatics Beyond the Case Study: Using the TOP Data Archive; Organizers: Kate Williams and Ann Bishop
2. BOF – Between Ontologies and Folksonomies: Tools and Architectures for Managing and Retrieving Emerging Knowledge in Communities; Organizers: Dario Maggiorini, Alessandro Provetti, and Laura Anna Ripamonti
3. Past, Present, and Future Impacts of Communication Technologies on Healthcare Communities; Organizers: Pamela Whitten, Michael Mackert, and Lorraine Buis
4. Digital Cities 5: Urban Informatics, Locative Media and Mobile Technology in Inner-City Developments; Organizers: Marcus Foth and Fiorella De Cindio
5. Studying Interaction in Online Communities: From Data Sources to Research Results; Organizers: Thomas Lento, Howard Welser, Eric Gleave, and Marc Smith
6. Communities of Practice in Highly Computerized Work Settings; Organizers: Aditya Johri and Volker Wulf
7. ICT for Business Clusters in Emerging Markets, Organizers: Souyma Roy, Shantanu Biswas, and Kurt DeMaagd
8. Social construction and implications of research infrastructures; Organizers: Peter van den Besselaar and Rob Proctor
9. The paradox of communication: Towards a society of inattention? Organizer: Filippo Dal Fiore
10. Memory practices in computer-mediated communities: a research methods workshop, Elisabeth Davenport and Howard Rosenbaum
11. Public Practices, Social Software: Examining social practices in networked publics, Organizers: danah boyd, Nicole Ellison, and Scott Golder
12. Coaching community leaders on community cultivation and technology integration, Organizers: John D. Smith and Lauren B. Klein
13. Implicit Online Communities, Organizers: Mu Xia and Wenjing Duan

Conference website: http://ebusiness.tc.msu.edu/cct2007/

Discursive formations – Place, Narrative and Digitality in the Museum of the Future

Call for participation and collaboration

We would like to invite you participate in the “Discursive Formations – Place, Narrative and Digitality in the Museum of the Future” pilot project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC, UK). This is a collaboration between several institutions within the University of Cambridge: the Digital Studio of the Department of Architecture, the Fitzwilliam Museum and the Computer Laboratory.

The pilot project consists primarily of three interconnected workshops that will address the relationship between digitality and the Museum of the Future with an emphasis on the role of the moving image. The project aims to provoke interdisciplinary exchange, generate new design ideas and serve as a catalyst for future collaborations.

We would also like to take this opportunity to introduce http://moodle.expressivespace.org as a space for collaboration in practice-based research. “Discursive Formations” is the first project hosted by this new resource.

Project themes:

• ubiquitous computing; tangible interfaces
• pervasive, online, embodied narrative; expressive space
• real-time environments; video and pervasive games
• ephemeral, generative and adaptive architecture

Applicants are welcome to extend this list.

Important dates:

• Workshop application deadline: 1 March 2007
• Workshop acceptance deadline: 9 March 2007
• Workshop I: 16 March 2007
• Workshop II: 19 – 21 March 2007
• Workshop III: 21 – 23 March 2007
• Plenary session I: 21 March 2007 (pm)
• Plenary session II: 14 May 2007 (pm)

For details, see the link below.

Link: http://moodle.expressivespace.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=2#2

The Second Call for Papers of EuropIA.11.

Digital Thinking in Architecture, Civil Engineering, Archaeology, Urban Planning and Design : Finding the Ways

New digital cultures bring inevitable changes to our world and to the techniques, research methods and practices of design. The computer technology transforms slowly but surely the professions of environmental planning, architecture, archaeology and design. In recent years, we witness the emergence of digital methods using computer not only for facilitating technical tasks, but also to analyse project’s performance or amplify the creative thinking of designers. Educating the future professionals has become a real challenge due to the clash between fast developing technology and slower evolving new design thinking and values redefinition. Confronting multi-disciplinary theoretical, teaching and practice experiences at the Europia11, will help finding the ways to the future of design.

Link: http://europia11.free.fr/

Logo Cities: An International Symposium on Signage, Branding, and Lettering in Public Space

May 4-5, 2007
Concordia University, Montréal, Québec

Cities are awash in ‘public lettering’: street signs, newspaper mastheads, road signs, high-rise corporate logos, store/shop/restaurant signs, engravings on buildings and monuments, etc. They are at once branding and promotional devices; names (of buildings); labels; locating devices; material and technological artifacts; pieces of graphic, typographic, and industrial design; architectural heritage; industrial detritus; personal and cultural narratives. They are also intricately linked to the dominant preoccupations of the city: high-rise logos, for example, eloquently describe the commercial, financial, civic, even religious priorities of a particular urban locale – especially at night.

It is all the more surprising, given their sheer ubiquity, that signs have received relatively little coordinated attention – critical, creative, or otherwise. The Logo Cities symposium aims to draw together scholars, designers, artists, and artisans to foster an informed, critical dialogue about signage, branding, and lettering in public space. We invite expressions of interest and proposals for scholarly papers, panels, artworks and screenings that critically and creatively interrogate the intersections of signage, branding and lettering in public space – in any local, regional, national, or international contexts. We are especially interested in historical case studies; design and typographic studies; activist, artistic, and new media interventions; and, critical cultural analyses that offer new and adventurous insights into these phenomena from anywhere in the world. (NB We are less interested in advertising billboards and graffiti, given the substantial attention they have already received.)

Logo Cities will be held on the downtown campus of Concordia University, Montréal, May 4/5 2007. The event will include an art exhibition of creative works focusing on signage and lettering, alongside examples of old and new signs from around the city. The symposium will close with the Québec premiere of Helvetica, a new documentary film exploring the history and significance of this archetypal Modernist typeface which, for half a century, has been a ubiquitous presence in print and on signage in city streets, train stations and airports across the world. This screening of Helvetica will be introduced by the film’s director, Gary Hustwit.

The deadline for formal proposals is February 28, 2007. For more information and continual updates please visit the official symposium website. The website also features work derived from Logo Cities: Montréal, a research/creation project focusing on signage, branding and lettering in the city of Montréal.

Link: http://www.logocities.org/article/2/logo-cities-a-symposium-on-signage-branding-and-lettering-in-public-space