Leapspace iii - References ii

Regards the two other references listed by Leapspace in the previous post:

Jones, P. (2009) Socio-technical structures, 4Ps and hodges' model. Nursing and Clinical Informatics: Socio-Technical Approaches. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60566-234-3.ch011 

Jones, P. (2011) Socio-technical structures, 4Ps and hodges' model. Clinical Technologies: Concepts, Methodologies, Tools and Applications. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-60960-561-2.ch215 

The doi links above lead to a page where to read the 'View Full Text HTML', or 'PDF' you need a login. This suggests a paywall(?), but the paper can be found here:

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1842543&rec=1&srcabs=886584&alg=7&pos=3

These are not the original reference or title:

Jones, P. (2009) Socio-Technical Structures, the Scope of Informatics and Hodges’ model, IN, Staudinger, R., Ostermann, H., Bettina Staudinger, B. (Eds.), Handbook of Research in Nursing Informatics and Socio-Technical Structures, Idea Group Publishing, Inc. Chap. 11, pp. 160-174.

I am unable to check fully, but it appears in 2011, the paper was republished in another collection. It is nice to have a 'bovine' experience, with a lesson about copyright, open access, and predatory publishing. Alteration of titles is bound to result in repetition, confounding the accuracy of publication metrics and indices?

I am not going to add the second reference to the blog's bibliography.

CfP: '(Responsible) Standardisation for (the Digital) Society'

Session at STS Conference Graz

Folks,

The deadline for this CfP is approaching (30 January). 

We only ask for an abstract of about 500 words. 

 

You will find the Call at https://stsconf.tugraz.at/calls/sessions-in-digitalisation

The abstract should be submitted via

<https://www.conftool.com/sts-conference-graz-2023/index.php?page=submissions&cthaspasswd=yes×tamp=1668063380>

(you will first need to log-in or register).

Thematic Fields

The conference will be held on 8 - 10 May, in Graz (Austria). 

 

For further information about the event please visit https://stsconf.tugraz.at/

Hope to see many of you there.

Cheers,

Kai.

_________

Kai Jakobs

RWTH Aachen University

Computer Science Department

Informatik 4 (Communication and Distributed Systems)

Ahornstr. 55, D-52074 Aachen, Germany

Kai.Jakobs AT comsys.rwth-aachen.de

http://www.comsys.rwth-aachen.de/team/kai-jakobs/

EURAS - The European Academy for Standardisation.

http://www.euras.org

My source:
This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/SOCIOTECH, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk

Call for Short Essays - Interfaces: Essays and Reviews in Computing and Culture

Dear Colleagues,

Interfaces hope some of you will consider publishing with us, please forward to others who might be interested.  Many thanks!

Interfaces; Essays and Review in Computing and Culture publishes short essay articles and essay reviews connecting the history of computing/IT studies with contemporary social, cultural, political, economic, or environmental issues. It seeks to be an interface between disciplines, and between academics and broader audiences. It is very much interdisciplinary and past essays published have been from scholars and doctoral students from sociology, media studies, communication, information studies, history, history of sci/tech, science and tech studies,etc.  Essays are generally 2,000 to 3,500 words (a few go up to 4,000 which is fine if you wanted a longer essay, but 2,000 to 3,000 or 3,500 the norm).

Some possibilities, but not limited to...

• Think piece on some aspect of the sociology, geography, anthropology, history, or other social or cultural study of the digital world
• addressing a contemporary issue that in part contextualizes looking back at change over time
• An essay that provides a short, popular version that promotes a larger work (draws from and promotes a full-length article or a book, could announce pre-publication or point to post publication of larger work)
• Reflections on a body of literature (including an essay review on two or more books, essay on digital exhibit on computing/digital world)
• Other types of short essays on computing and culture

Interfaces | CHARLES BABBAGE INSTITUTE for Computing, Information and Culture

Essays go through editorial review (myself and my colleague Amanda Wick, co-editors), which is usually short and straightforward and leads to publication in about a month from original submission.

I hope you will consider submitting an essay to us! If I can answer any questions, please let me know.

Best, Jeff

"Injustice wears the same harsh face wherever it shows itself."-Ralph Ellison

Jeffrey R. Yost, Ph.D.

Director, Charles Babbage Institute

Research Professor, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine

222  21st Avenue South

University of Minnesota

Minneapolis, MN 55455

 

<>

 

Previously on W2tQ:

https://hodges-model.blogspot.com/search?q=interface

 

My source: SOCIOTECH list

https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/cgi-bin/webadmin?A0=SOCIOTECH

meta - Care

Individual
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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ------------------------------------------ mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

Group

meta^	care
Care	Meta*

 ^{^} meta: parity of esteem in care - mental life and well-being

^* © 2021 Meta

Hodges' Health Career - Care Domains - Model = 'meta-care'.

Call For Papers: Special Track on AI for Tackling Dis/Misinformation during Pandemics

Call For Papers: Special Track on AI for Tackling Dis/Misinformation during Pandemics In conjunction with the ACM International Conference on Information Technology for Social Good (GoodIT 2021)

The GoodIT conference is sponsored by ACM SIGCAS, the Association for
Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computers & Society.

The conference focuses on the application of IT technologies to social good.

The Special Track on AI for Tackling Dis/Misinformation during Pandemics focuses on new data technologies based on artificial intelligence, data governance, machine learning, natural language
processing, and social network analysis to aid experts in analyzing large volumes of social media data in order to detect fake news, misinformation, and disinformation. A number of open challenges need
more investigation from the research community, such as recent trends in composing information disorder by combining false and real content, the mechanisms that drive fake content diffusion during pandemics, how to differentiate fake content from personal viewpoints, why people tend to believe fake content and make decisions based on it during pandemics, and what are the different motivations behind the dissemination of fake content. Fact-checking and claim verification are two important strategies that are worth incorporating in the automated tackling and curtailment of fake content during and after pandemics.

************ Key Dates ************

Papers Submission Due:      May 1, 2021

Authors Notifications:        June 22, 2021

Final Manuscript Due:        July 10, 2021

GoodIT 2021:                    September 09-11, 2021

************ Important Links ************

Special Track Website: https://aitdmp.conceptechint.net

Submission Link: https://goodit2021.hotcrp.com/

************ Submission Guidelines  ************

All submissions will be reviewed using a single-blind review process.

The identity of referees will not be revealed to authors, but authors can keep their names on the submitted papers, on figures, bibliography, etc.

Papers should not exceed 6 pages (US letter size) double column including figures, tables, and references in standard ACM format. Papers must be submitted electronically in printable PDF form.

Templates for the standard ACM format can be found here:

https://www.acm.org/publications/proceedings-template No changes to margins, spacing, or font sizes are allowed from those specified by the style files. Papers violating the formatting guidelines will be

returned without review.

ACM has partnered with Overleaf, a free cloud-based, collaborative authoring tool, to provide an ACM LaTeX authoring template. The ACM LaTeX template on Overleaf platform is available to all ACM authors at: www.overleaf.com/gallery/tagged/acm-official

Accepted papers will be included in the ACM Digital Library. 

Special  issues associated with the conference are being organized.

************ Topics ************

Papers on practical as well as on theoretical topics and problems in various topics related to rumors, fake news, misinformation, and disinformation during and after pandemics, are invited, with special emphasis on novel techniques and tools for automated tackling and curtailment of fake content during and after pandemics. Topics include(but are not limited to):

• AI approaches for the detection of online influence and manipulation
• AI approaches to identify misinformation and disinformation campaigns
• AI approaches for spotting misinformation and disinformation spreaders.
• Social media mining for automated detection of misinformation propagation and disinformation circulation
• AI approaches for automated identification and verification of claims
• AI approaches for intention detection for misinformation and disinformation contents
• AI approaches for credibility assessment of Social media sources
• AI approaches for fake news curtailment, filtering and prevention.
• AI approaches for analysis/detection of distributed and multi-platform misinformation and disinformation disseminations
• AI approaches for predicting the Impact of misinformation and disinformation during pandemics
• New datasets and evaluation methodologies to aid in automated detection and analysis of misinformation and disinformation content in social media channels

**********The Conference Sponsored by**********

Association for Computing Machinery's Special Interest Group on Computers & Society http://www.sigcas.org/

This workshop is supported by the Association of Cyber Forensics and Threat Investigators (www.acfti.org) and the Industrial Cybersecurity Center (www.cci-es.org).

########################################################################

This message was issued to members of www.jiscmail.ac.uk/SOCIOTECH, a mailing list hosted by www.jiscmail.ac.uk

Thanks to Andrew Zayine.

Articulating the Socio-Technical and much more c/o @Atul_Gawande

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

HUMANISTIC ----------------------------------------------- MECHANISTIC

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group

John ---- Atul

"The story of modern medicine is the story of our human struggle with complexity. Technology will, without question, continually increase our ability to make diagnoses, to peer more deeply inside the body and the brain, to offer more treatments. It will help us document it all—but not necessarily to make sense of it all. Technology inevitably produces more noise and new uncertainties. Perhaps a computer could have alerted me to the possibility of a genetic disorder in John Cameron, based on his history of skin lesions and the finding of high calcium. But our systems are forever generating alerts about possible connections—to the point of signal fatigue. Just ordering medications and lab tests triggers dozens of alerts each day, most of them irrelevant, and all in need of human reviewing and sorting. There are more surprises, not fewer. The volume of knowledge and capability increases faster than any individual can manage—and faster than our technologies can make manageable for us. We ultimately need systems that make the right care simpler for both patients and professionals, not more complicated. And they must do so in ways that strengthen our human connections, instead of weakening them."

Cameron ---- Gawande "I had more time for his questions now, and I let him ask them. When we were done and I was about to get off the phone, I paused. I asked him if he’d noticed, during our office visit, how much time I’d spent on the computer. “Yes, absolutely,” he said. He added, “I’ve been in your situation. I knew you were just trying to find the information you needed. I was actually trying not to talk too much, because I knew you were in a hurry, but I needed you to look the information up. I wanted you to be able to do that. I didn’t want to push you too far.” It was painful to hear. Forced to choose between having the right technical answer and a more human interaction, Cameron picked having the right technical answer."

Atul Gawande, Why Doctors Hate Their Computers. Annals of Medicine, November 12, 2018 Issue

A Toolbox from: BCS 2nd Sociotechnical Annual Symposium

On the 26th October 2018 I attended the Sociotechnical symposium in London as planned.

There was a sense of deja-vu in terms of speakers and some content but it was worthwhile.

Peter Bednar presented his SOCIO-TECHNICAL TOOLBOX v.13.2 and I like the inclusion on the hyphen as there still is a divide to bridge, or at the very least for people on IT and complex projects to acknowledge. Peter explained how he 'landed' within academia. He also brought some copies of the toolkit and I was able to pick up one.

As a toolkit and on this particular topic the text is helpfully concise at 130 pages. As readers here will know 'information' is a concept of great interest here. The cover (lid?) appeals instantly, referring to "Information Systems Analysis and Design" that eventually arrives at "Job-Crafting". Below this is the "Infological Equation":

I = i(D, S, t)

Of course, it is what's inside that counts. There is an introduction to information systems, the above equation and ten pages devoted to systems thinking. There then follows the main section comprised of templates with descriptions, elements explained were necessary, advice, and examples of paperwork (in many cases e-forms also no doubt). From p.109 the appendix provides a series of questionnaires. Peter's own approach is included 'Critical Systems Analysis'.

What stands out looking at the various tools listed is how h2cm operates at a more generic and yet  still very useful level.

You can use h2cm to reflect and consider projects socio-technically across (potentially) all contexts. You can also however deal with so many other crucial dichotomies:

bio-social
psycho-political
physico-political
socio-political
medico-legal
human-machine (humanistic-mechanistic)
one-to-many (individual-group)
demand-supply
...

There is no link but the toolkit 2nd edition 2018 is published by Craneswater Press Ltd

inquiries AT craneswaterpress.co.uk

I'll revisit the event and there is a related call for papers which I will post soon.

PayWALL

individual

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INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

humanistic ----------------------------------------------- mechanistic

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

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group

'Who' profits?	The Sciences Qualitative - RESEARCH - Quantitative
The Public [Locus of the 'public purse']

My source:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/2181744-paywall-the-business-of-scholarship-review-analysis-of-a-scandal/

Un(en)titled

Do not forget to listen for the HUManity in the machine(s).

A research coordination network (RCN) for Digital Societies and Technologies

From: Wayne Lutters Date: 19 April 2012 20:02:13 GMT+01:00
To: "CHI-ANNOUNCEMENTS at LISTSERV.ACM.ORG"

Subject: Sociotech announcement

Hi All,

I'm happy to write that the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) is now funding:  "A research coordination network (RCN) for Digital Societies and Technologies".  The focus of the RCN is towards community building for sociotech scholars. This initial funding for this Digital Societies and Technologies RCN will run through December, 2016 in  support of three broad efforts: (1) sociotech community building; (2) planning and piloting shared sociotech resources(heading towards a community cyberinfrastructure) and (3) expanding the breadth, depth, impact and visibility of sociotech scholarship.

The Digital Societies and Technologies RCN and the successful Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) summer research institutes (http://sociotech.net/) serve a similar community of scholars. However, the summer research institute is not a part of the RCN effort - it remains both a vibrant activity and distinct from the RCN.

Beyond sharing the good news, we write to draw your attention to opportunities to participate in events supported by the Digital Societies and Technologies RCN.  Calls for participation in specific events and projects will begin being announced over the coming months and much of the RCN funding is to support workshops of various kinds.  We'll need your help to plan, organize, staff and participate in these!

Feel free to share this news with sociotech colleagues and others.

Sincerely, the RCN steering committee:

Steve Sawyer (PI) (Syracuse), Wayne Lutters (Co-PI) (UM-BC), Brian Butler (Co-PI) (UM-CP), Diane Bailey (Texas), Dan Cosley (Cornell), Tom Finholt (Michigan), Sean Goggins (Drexel) and Andrea Tapia (Penn State).

New authoritative overview of Social Computing by Tom Erickson, IBM Research Labs

Dear friends,

I'm happy to announce a new, *completely free*, and authoritative overview of Social Computing, which is highly relevant to anyone designing interactive products. It's written by Tom Erickson - veteran researcher at IBM Research Labs - and includes 9 HD videos filmed in Copenhagen. It also includes commentaries by renowned designers/researchers like Elizabeth Churchill - manager of the Internet Experiences group at Yahoo! - and Andrea Forte from Drexel University.

These materials have taken 10 months to produce and involved 3 editors, 2 peer-reviewers, a camera crew of 2 people, 1 sound technician and 1 video editor. We've decided to continue to create world-class educational materials by elite professors and elite designers and give them to you for free. We would, however, be really grateful if you would share these materials, blog about them, or help us in other ways.

You can watch the videos and read the full overview here:
http://www.interaction-design.org/encyclopedia/social_computing.html

Have a great day!

Best wishes from Denmark,

Mads Soegaard
http://interaction-design.org/about
-------------
My source: SOCIOTECH-INTERACTIONDESIGN Digest

The Difference that Makes a Difference: an interdisciplinary workshop on information and technology

Location: The Open University, Milton Keynes, UK

Dates: 7-9 September 2011

Few people would argue that the development of information technologies has had a profound impact on modern society. Information is communicated, stored and manipulated using digital computers, the Internet, and fixed and mobile telephony, resulting in a deep and extensive impact upon all aspects of our lives. While talk of information is routine and unproblematic for engineers and technologists, it has been recognised since the early days of digital technologies that there is an uneasy relationship between the engineer’s concept of ‘information’ and wider uses of the word (cf. Roszak, 1986).

It is nevertheless appreciated that information, whatever is meant by this concept, is important – indeed it is foundational – to a quite remarkably diverse range of disciplines. Information is emerging not only as the new language of science - from quantum information to the genetic code - but as a key commodity of business, a major concern of the state, the front line for crime and crime prevention, the primary arena of technological development, an increasing concern of philosophy, and even a focus for conceptual art. Indeed, it is difficult to identify any field of life in the developed world that can not now be seen to some degree to have a significant information aspect, and to a greater or lesser extent this has all emerged because of developments in information technology.

The idea of information as a distinct concept, applicable across a wide range of disciplines, is growing in prominence. It has been especially emphasised within the natural sciences (von Baeyer, 2003; Vedral, 2010; Davies and Gregersen, 2010) and philosophy (Floridi, 2010). Much of this work takes information theory as developed by technologists, beginning with Shannon (1948), as its starting point, but draws little on contemporary work of technologists. At the same time, a different strand of work has arisen, drawing its inspiration from the growing influence of the Internet, and largely conducted by technologists (e.g. Weinberger, 2007; Brown and Duguid, 2000). This research in turn has little connection with the work in natural sciences and philosophy.

As we move further into the ‘information age’, we need to make the bridge between information of the information technologist and understanding of information in other disciplines. As researchers and practitioners in diverse fields grapple with an understanding of information – what it is, how it can be modelled and tools for coping with it – now more than ever is the time to share insights and bring some clarity and coherence to these differing perspectives.

We have begun some of that work, largely with colleagues around the Open University, resulting in a recent edited book (Ramage and Chapman, 2011). However, these discussions need to go much wider and deeper. We therefore propose to hold an international workshop to bring engineers and technologists together with scientists, philosophers, social scientists and artists – leading thinkers from all and any discipline that uses the language of information – to talk and listen, and to share their insights with us all.

There have been and continue to be many conferences, symposia and workshops addressing the technology, the applications and the consequences of information technology, but it is rare to find opportunities to address the understanding of the nature of information itself.

The need for work addressed more specifically at understanding the nature of information is exemplified by a problem expressed by Terrence Deacon (2010):

For more than half a century we have known how to measure the information-conveying capacity of any given communication medium, yet we cannot give an account of how this relates to the content that this signal may or may not represent. These are serious shortcomings that impede progress in a broad range of endeavors, from the study of basic biological processes to the analysis of global economics.

This workshop seeks to bring together those working with information in a wide range of disciplines - engineers and technologists together with scientists, philosophers, social scientists and artists - to discuss and expand our collective understanding of what we mean by information in our different disciplines. We are not seeking to combine these different understandings, but to share them and to explore commonalities.

The title of the workshop is based on a celebrated definition of information by Gregory Bateson (1972, pp.457-9), who wrote:

A difference is a very peculiar and obscure concept. It is certainly not a thing or an event. This piece of paper is different from the wood of this lectern. There are many differences between them – of color, texture, shape, etc. But if we start to ask about the localization of those differences, we get into trouble. Obviously the difference between the paper and the wood is not in the paper; it is obviously not in the wood; it is obviously not in the space between them, and it is obviously not in the time between them. (Difference which occurs across time is what we call “change”.) ...

Kant, in the Critique of Judgment – if I understand him correctly – asserts that the most elementary aesthetic act is the selection of a fact. He argues that in a piece of chalk there are an infinite number of potential facts. ... I suggest that Kant’s statement can be modified to say that there is an infinite number of differences around and within the piece of chalk. There are differences between the chalk and the rest of the universe, between the chalk and the sun or the moon. And within the piece of chalk, there is for every molecule an infinite number of differences between its location and the locations in which it might have been. Of this infinitude, we select a very limited number, which become information. In fact, what we mean by information – the elementary unit of information – is a difference which makes a difference.

The workshop will consist of four main sessions, each with keynote speakers and a number of presentations from others. Our goal is for maximum participation. If you are interested in the role and nature of information, we invite you to join us in Milton Keynes in September.

Magnus Ramage and David Chapman

Thanks to David for my being able to post these details here. I have registered and if time permits will submit an abstract. I'm really looking forward to this workshop. pj

Jones, P. (1996) Humans, Information, and Science, Journal of Advanced Nursing, 24(3),591-598.

'information' on W2tQ

Care design: c/o DDC Copenhagen

On Monday afternoon I explored the city of Copenhagen walking to several sites - the Tivoli Gardens, the Tycho Brahe Planetarium and other parts of this lovely city. I ended up spending a couple of hours at the Danish Design Center.

Like my occasional visits to London's museums, the DDC although very small provided a couple of pearls. One display across a wall upstairs outlined the main forms of design theory and practice:

• The USER as designer
• TECHNOLOGY in the design process
• New MATERIALS and smart design
• NATURE
• SOCIAL design and CARE design
• GREEN design
• ART design
• EMOTIONAL design
• REPLACEMENT due to changing fashions (built in obsolescence!)
• SERVICE and CONCEPT design

The following text was displayed to describe SOCIAL design and CARE design:

The population pyramid has changed shape. The working-age group is shrinking compared to the group of people of retirement age. In addition, there is the large segment of the so-called weak - particularly in the 3rd world. Thus, social design and care design will be big and important design areas in the future, because the solutions will seek to strengthen the health care sector and improve conditions in the 3rd world and for underpriviledged people in general. Parameters such as increased dependency, quality of life and dignity are crucial elements in solutions relating to social design and care design. DDC display; August 23 2010.

Many themes come together here. Some are represented in the tags below. Care design is much more than what we might consider as 'standard design' aspects, such as; user interface [UI] and user experience [UX]. Care design is even more dependent upon user engagement.

There is another dependency that as yet has a '?' in the data entry box.

Care design needs coherent forms of personal, social and civic responsibility. These are yet to emerge as think tanks, governments and health experts seek (urgent) solutions.

In comparison to the above the 200 character limit on labels (tags) on Blogger presents a very small challenge. I can well imagine the outline of a book on 'care design': the result would be a big tome; but this would not just be (PJ inspired) hyperbole. Care design is not new, but the DDC text above must accentuate the individual, and not just care design at the public and private sector hospital level. Care design in an individual context is mission critical. Heady content - for books, websites and policies - as befits our times.

Thank you DDC, Copenhagen: wonderful indeed...

Development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads

The following very interesting item was posted on the Healthcare Information For All by 2015 [HIFA2015] list (I have added some formatting and links).

Dear All,

We received a Grand Challenges Exploration grant (a Gates Foundation initiative) for the development of a robotic health assistant to the management of malaria among nomads whose access to health service has always posed a concern. A robotic health assistant was constructed using aluminum casing. The device has three components: an interactive non-replaceable section that processes information and provides output. A replaceable laboratory containing supplies for qualitatively distinguishing between fevers associated with malaria and those that are non-malaria and a second replaceable component, a dispensary containing analgesics, ant malaria [*] and antibiotics for treating different types of fevers. The user communicates with the device using three buttons and receives feedback in Fulfude the nomadic Fulani language. The device interviews the user, processes the user’s responses and gives instructions. The accuracy of the information provided by the patient (user), and the ability of the user to carry out the instructions are critical to illness outcome. The device is solar-powered, is able to repeat previous instructions as many times as the patient desires, and provides referral.

Ten such robotic health assistants (ROBODOCs) were deployed among two main groups of nomads (those with previous experience using communication devices such as handheld mobile phones and those without such experience). The volunteer user was given basic information on the use, the switch-ON button, charging the device, and replacing the components. The user contacts a Field Assistant with hand-held mobile phone who in turn alerts the Research Supervisor whenever a case is managed. The Supervisor holds a phone interview with user and beneficiary patient at the end of the consultation with Robodoc as part of the quality assurance.

Robodoc was withdrawn after three months of deployment. Members of the community, beneficiaries and users were interviewed. Each device was examined for durability in the field. The ten units managed more than 80 cases of fever and appropriately diagnosed and treated 90% of them. Previous experience with using a modern communication device was not an important factor in the use of the Robodoc. The nomads found the device very useful and made suggestions on how it may be used for the management of several other health problems besides fevers.

We are keen to publish the findings from testing the device in a peer-reviewed journal. Does anyone have an idea of any journal that may be interested in this sort of research?

Oladele Akogun

HIFA2015 profile: Oladele Akogun is a professor of public health parasitology at the Federal University of Technology, Yola, Nigeria and Principal Scientist at the Common Heritage Foundation/Nigeria. He has spent over 24 years carrying out research and community service on access of community populations to health care delivery among marginalized populations. He is a pioneer researcher and contributor to the development of the community directed intervention approach to health service delivery now used in onchocerciasis control in Africa. With a Grand Challenges exploration (GCE) grant from The Gates Foundation, he is leading a team to develop a robotic health assistant for the management of malaria among nomads. He sits on two committees of the WHO/African region and on 5 committees at the Federal Ministry of Health, Nigeria. He has worked at various times as consultant to Constella-Futures, Africare and WHO where he worked for a year as Technical Adviser. He has made presentations to the African Regional Ministers forum on Primary Health, the US Congressional subcommittee on international aid and PAHO. He holds a PhD (1991) from the University of Jos and a Master of Public Health (2008) from the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. Some of his views are expressed in http://blog4globalhealth.wordpress.com/bios/akogun1/
akoguno AT yahoo.com

[*Notes from HIFA2015 moderator:
1. I think this should read 'antimalarials'.2. A picture of the device in action is available on the Gates Foundation website at:
http://www.gatesfoundation.org/global-health/Pages/grand-challenges-explorations.aspx
'Oladele Akogun of the Common Heritage Foundation in Nigeria is testing a 'fever kit' for use among nomadic populations. The device is equipped with simple diagnostic tools and prerecorded treatment instructions in the native language to help nomadic caregivers accurately diagnose and treat fevers in a way that reduces mortality and drug resistance.' Thanks, Neil PW]
(In re-posting I have added the image at left.)

CfP International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

********************* CALL FOR PAPERS *********************
(edited here for length)
*** INAUGURAL ISSUE ***

SUBMISSION DUE DATE: 1st May 2010

International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP)

Official publication of the Information Resources Management Association
http://www.igi-global.com/IJPOP

Co-Editors-in-Chief: Steve Goschnick & Sandrine Balbo
Published: Semi-annual (both in Print and Electronic form)

Mission of IJPOP:

The International Journal of People-Oriented Programming (IJPOP) is cross-discipline in range yet singularly focused on empowering individuals to conceptualise, design, program, configure and orchestrate Internet-powered mashups, game mods (modifications), aggregate and structure personal media and build standalone cloud-based and client-side applications (on smartphones, netbooks, laptops, desktops, home network and novel appliances) – into self-fashioned tools and products that ultimately suit the user's own unique needs and aspirations. Other individuals may well take up such apps, mods and mashups for themselves, further customising, enhancing and embellishing them, or they may in part be used in a social or family context (to the benefit of the collective aspirations of those Social Worlds of which the individual is a part) – nonetheless, the focus of composition, development and customisation is on a product for oneself, upon theory, concepts, techniques, methodologies and ultimately tools that service a market of one. Our mission is to be the first journal that comes to mind to academics and practitioners alike and remain the best with regard to all aspects of People-Oriented Programming. Our papers and reviews will be insightful and compelling to both educators and researchers, and often to a wider audience too – the people for whom this paradigm of software development has come about.

SCOPE:

People-Oriented Programming requires high-level tools to empower both the technical and non-technical user, which in turn calls upon research into meta-models that inform design and construction, that aid comparisons of these tools, and facilitates the interchange of content between them. The meta-models of most interest to POP initially, are drawn from two disparate disciplines – the Task Analysis (TA) and Agent-Oriented (AO) paradigms– both of which often have models with representations of entities matching the needs of POP, e.g. goal, task, object, agent, individual, role, intention and communication. Several AO architectures and methodologies have called upon branches of Psychology to formulate AO meta-models that incorporate mentalistic notions such as perception, motivation and intention, but which are most often aimed at constructing artificial humans and the like. In POP we too call upon those same Psychologies and similarly enhance and formulate meta-models and methodologies influenced by them, but with the intention of augmenting and empowering the individual human, in areas where they themselves desire aid or have identified a gap in their own abilities or resources, which they want to enhance.

From Sociology, POP draws upon ethnography with a focus on self-ethnography using tools such as cultural probes, life blogs and life logs to capture aspects of the individual's own life, themselves (or through a life coach), from which they draw the desire and/or frame the need for new technological artefacts to be used in their own lives. Interactivity, with respect to facilitating and streamlining a regular user's intention to build their own artefacts, and situatedness in terms of the individual's current location and activities, are two other facets of HCI (human computer interaction) that POP encompasses.

Video gaming is the first application area where large numbers of everyday users have been able to envisage and then developed their own innovations within existing games. So-called game mods are working examples of POP where players have appropriated userfriendly tools, usually built into the game engines by the vendors (e.g. The Sims, World of Warcraft, etc.). Video games have joined other media (e.g. movie, novel, comic) in the new genre of transmedia storytelling (e.g. franchises such as Tomb Raider, The Matrix, Harry Potter), allowing the player to enter the story 'so far', extending it in the 'now', constructing their own individualised narratives and increasingly, with the capability to enhance and extend the realm of the game itself. These individual constructed game mods allow players to extend virtual realms and narratives in real-time, in directions often unforeseen by the game engine makers. Such activities are increasingly a part of an individual's entertainment and education. Game modding as described, and the engines and tools that enable it, are within the scope of POP.

Internet-based mashup tools (e.g. Google Wave) have opened up a second application front beyond game mods, where POP is likely to gain mass adoption and occasionally produce radical user innovation. The selection and orchestration of disparate distributed services (e.g. web services; information feeds; the Cloud) by an individual within a user-friendly toolkit or framework, is also in the scope of POP. While the formal protocols and the technical enactment of such specific services are of little interest here, the quality, access, usage, aggregation and orchestration of them by the individual themselves, into a personalised synergy of capability made available through some enacting technology, are of acute interest to POP. Modeling techniques and people-friendly notations that bridge and coordinate distributed services together with local resources within POP tools – ones that the layperson can understand and use in conceptualising their designs - encompasses another cross-discipline facet of POP.

RECOMMENDED TOPICS:

Topics to be discussed in this journal include (but are not limited to) the following:

* Activity theory and modeling
* Agent meta-models, mental models
* Alert filter and notification software, automated task assistance
* Augmented reality, augmented interaction
* Automating personal ontologies, personalised content generation
* Client-side conceptual modeling
* Computational models from psychology
* Context-aware systems, location-aware computing, ubiquitous computing
* Cultural probes, self-ethnography
* End-user composition, end-user multi-agent systems
* Game development support tools
* Game mods, game engines, open game engines
* Home network applications
* Human-centred software development
* Interface generators, XML-based UI notation generators
* Interface metaphors
* Life logs, life blogs, feed aggregators
* Mashups, mashup tools, cloud mashups
* Model-driven design, didactic models, model-based design and implementation
* New generation visual programming
* Personal interaction styles, touch and gestures
* People-Oriented Programming (POP)
* People-Oriented Programming case studies
* Personal ontologies and taxonomies
* Personalisation, individualisation, market of one
* Personas and actors
* Real-time narrative generation engines
* Role-based modeling
* Service science for individuals
* Situated computation, social proximity applications
* Smart-phone mashups, home network mashups, home media mashups
* Software analysis & design, software process modeling
* Software component selection
* Speech and natural language interfaces
* Storyboarding, scenarios, picture scenarios
* Task flow diagrams, Task-based design
* Task models, task analysis, cognitive task models, concurrent task modeling
* Use case models, user interface XML notations
* User-centered design, usage-centered design
* User interface tools, XML-based UI notations
* User modelling, end user programming, end user development
* Wearable computing, bodyware
* Web-service orchestration, web-service co-ordination

SUBMITTING TO IJPOP:
Prospective authors should note that only original and previously unpublished articles will be considered. INTERESTED AUTHORS MUST CONSULT THE JOURNAL’S GUIDELINES FOR MANUSCRIPT SUBMISSIONS at:
http://www.igi-global.com/Files/AuthorEditor/guidelinessubmission.pdf

PRIOR TO SUBMISSION. All article submissions will be forwarded to at least three members of the Editorial Review Board of the journal for double-blind, peer review. Final decision regarding acceptance/revision/rejection will be based on the reviews received from the reviewers. All submissions must be forwarded electronically to: stevenbg AT unimelb.edu.au

All inquiries and submissions should be should be directed to the attention of:

Steve Goschnick
Co-Editor-in-Chief
International Journal of People-Oriented Programming
E-mail: stevenbg AT unimelb.edu.au

Additional links:

Goschnick, S. (2009). People-Oriented Programming: from Agent-Oriented Analysis to the Design of Interactive Systems, In. J.A. Jacko (Ed.): Human-Computer Interaction, Part I, HCII 2009, LNCS 5610, pp. 836–845.

Your odds on favourite: Hodges' model

HAYDOCK PARK 3:00

The Hodges-Jones Classic Integrated, Holistic &
Multidisciplinary Care Chase

Going: heavy

26m 1.75f

4	REALPOLITIK	250	225
3	SOCIAL SHENANIGANS	33	25
1	INTERPERSONAL SKILLS	5	3	4
2	HARD SCIENCE	Evs	10-11	5-6	10-11	5-6
5	SPIRITUAL LEANINGS	75	50	45	50
6	SOCIO-TECH NEGLECT	750	1000

Additional links:
Gamblers Anonymous

Gam-Anon

Gambling Commission

Inspired by BBC News and living by Haydock Park Racecourse

Ref info:
http://www.ukhorseracing.co.uk

2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical Systems

Workshop: “Keywords of the Sociotechnical”
Organizers:
Steven Jackson, University of Michigan;
David Ribes, Georgetown University;
Sean Goggins, Drexel University

We invite participation in the 2nd iConference Workshop on Sociotechnical systems, to be held prior to the iConference on the University of Illinois campus in Urbana-Champaign on February 3, 2010. To see “who we are”, check out the facebook group – “Researchers of the Sociotechnical” or our website at http://www.sociotech.net .

You may register here: https://www.ischools.org/conftool/

In 1975 British cultural historian Raymond Williams published his influential pocket dictionary Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture and Society. The text tackled the most difficult, contested and often under explored terms in his field: culture, agency, technology, etc. Today studies of sociotechnical systems finds itself at a place not unlike where British Cultural Studies was in the early 70s: a meeting place for scholars of multiple disciplinary backgrounds deploying concepts and tools whose commonality (and separateness) of meaning has yet to be fully established.

What are the words that transcend the sectional interests of, say, organizational science and HCI, CSCW and science and technology studies? When an HCI researcher and a social informatics scholar say ‘system’ or ‘design,’ are they really talking about the same thing? Relatedly, how do we go about attaching these keywords to concrete socio-technical research
problems in our diverse disciplinary traditions? How do we go about transforming a cross-field coincidence of research objects (Wikipedia, eScience, social practices in pervasive computing spaces, and countless others) into a mutually informed set of research problems?

This workshop will provide a venue to gather and discuss our intellectual traditions, research objects, and vocabularies in order to elaborate and clarify the keywords of the sociotechnical.

*Studying Sociotechnical Systems*

The workshop builds on and extends efforts that have included the 2008 & 2009 Summer Research Institute of the Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST). These Research Institutes, supported by the National Science Foundation and held at the University of Michigan (2008) and Syracuse University (2009), brought together a diverse set of researchers from fields as diverse as science and technology studies, human-computer interaction, management and organizational studies, library and information science, sociology, social informatics, and computer science, to begin exploring and framing a future research agenda centered on socio-technical research.

David Ribes, Ph.D.
Communication, Culture & Technology (CCT)
Georgetown University
http://davidribes.com

Additional links:

The Consortium for the Science of Sociotechnical Systems (CSST) [and above image source]

Innovation and the 'middle' in NHS computing

Let's start with a quote:

Information systems are no longer associated mainly with data processing; they are increasingly seen as a management tool and an aid to action. This means that the costs of failure are much greater, and these costs are incurred when expensive systems are not used or are inadequately used. Surveys have shown that in as many as half of systems there are large gaps between users' expectations and the system's performance.

When do you think the above was written?

Here's the reference:

Mumford Enid (1991) Need for relevance in management information systems: what the NHS can learn from industry. BMJ. June 29; 302(6792): 1587–1590

1991: quite sobering really.

Previous - part-time - work reviewing data standards proposals focuses the mind in terms of the role of standards in interoperability, service impact and other essential assessment qualities. As the NHS has sought to implement standards as with the National Programme for IT you are also aware of the clamour for creativity and innovation. Innovation is there in the title of agencies.

I have long pondered about the extent to which - like Nature and vacuums - standards abhor innovation and creativity. How much is the 'standard' about doing things by the 'book' ... page 57 : para.3 ...

My eye caught the viewpoint piece in this week's Computing -

If you approach the world positively, a downturn is a good time for innovation. The shortage of people and money can create the pressure that leads to creativity. There are three areas where action will help organisations succeed in exploiting IT to enable business innovation:
Kick out Prince2

What more is there to say about innovation and Prince2? The focus of the Prince2 project management methodology – on organisation and control, and defining what to deliver before you have begun – is death to innovation. It is a bad solution trying to solve the wrong problem. It takes the IT profession in the wrong direction if we want to contribute to business innovation. It has to go. The agile development movement provides much stronger foundations for succeeding with projects that result in business innovation.

Ashurst, Colin, Viewpoint: How to use IT to enable innovation, Computing, 5 November, 2009.

Of course there IS a world of difference between information standards and project management standards, but there is no escape from the need for (effective) management of transition and change WITH business continuity. Within that management - engagement approach (as per agile) -

+++++++ socio-technical +++++++

- perspectives, as highlighted by Mumford (and others) all those years ago must have a place.

Additional link:

BCS Sociotechnical Specialist Group

Foundations, projects, corners and cornerstones

Ok, so you have a new project - that's great!

Yes, we are going to build something - outstanding!

Sounds marvellous!

We are going to use up-to-the-nanosecond project management tools.

And you're going to do it by the book, charts and real-time tags.

Yes, with a dash of intuition plus - you know - gut instinct!

Well sure, pleased to hear that too.

We will take account of history, learn the lessons -
we've a researcher onboard you know?
Building a world-class team that's all fleet of foot and mind.

We'll tick all the boxes, check all the corners and leave no stone un-turned.

Truly admirable, but how many boxes and corners have you got and how many cornerstones* will you need?

Eh?

Hey listen up. Corners are for losers,

naughty children

and people lost in the dark.

Nobody is going to be stuck standing in the corner on this one!

Oh - right.

Well good luck....

Image sources:
'Cornerstone office': Cornerstone Corp. Center
Dan Flavin: at Artnet.

Inspired by the word 'cornerstone' and Untitled (Corner Piece) 1969 on visit to Tate Liverpool, 25 September 2009 (not the piece illustrated above):

Flavin made a number of works intended to be shown in corners, engaging directly with the architecture of the gallery. His use of commonly available fluorescent tubes enabled him to explore light as a non-physical material, animating gallery walls. The size of the work was determined so that the units could be fastened in the centre only, without having to be anchored to the floor. The artist rejected any symbolic significance of the object, insisting that it was simply a form that made good use of a corner.

Question: How many corners are there in Hodges' model?

*Cornerstones: here referring to stakeholders, sponsors, owners, partners, investors, builders, architects, designers...?

Medinfo 2010 South Africa 12-15th September

Cape Town, South Africa will host the 13th International Congress on Medical Informatics from the 12 - 15 of September 2010.

This will be the first time MEDINFO is held in Africa. It promises to boost exposure to grassroots healthcare delivery and the underpinning health information systems. This will open the door to new academic partnerships into the future and help to nurture a new breed of health informaticians.*

Conference Theme

Partnerships for effective e-Health solutions

Innovative collaborations promote solutions to health challenges

The theme for the International Medical Informatics Association’s 13th World Congress on Medical Informatics, Medinfo 2010 is Partnerships for effective e-Health solutions with a particular focus on how innovative collaborations can promote sustainable solutions to health challenges. It is well recognised that information and communication technologies have enormous potential for improving the health and lives of individuals. Innovative and effective change using such technologies is reliant upon people working together in partnerships to create innovative and effective solutions to problems with particular regard to contextual and environmental factors.

As Medinfo 2010 brings together the health informatics community from across the globe we are seeking to focus on how we can work together and share our experiences and knowledge to promote sustainable solutions to the challenges presenting to us all. This will be an historical event as Medinfo 2010 is hosted in Africa for the first time.

My sources:

Implementing Best Practices (IBP) Knowledge Gateway GANM
& The Conference Company and the Medinfo2010 website.

Africa! While I have linked to many, I have never attended an International informatics event. This one sounds really special being in Africa.
*I would love to pass over the baton that is Hodges' model and also discover what other conceptual frameworks may be out there...?