sustainability

Call for Papers
CloudCom 2010 -- Special Session: Cloud Computing, HCI, & Design: Sustainability and Social Impacts
in conjunction with the 2nd IEEE International Conference on Cloud Computing Technology and Science (CloudCom 2010)

 

Nov 30 - Dec 3, 2010, Indianapolis, Indiana, USA

Please see the Special Session site:  http://eli.informatics.indiana.edu/cc-hci/
or the main conference site: http://2010.cloudcom.org/ or read below:

 

Theme

Cloud computing is a important trend—however historically precedented—which has implications for the way in which people interact with digital technologies. Some of the notions now associated with cloud computing relate to efficiencies and energy use, to marketing, and to revenue and enterprise models—these notions are manifest as terms and phrases like virtualization, software as a service (SaaS), hardware as a service (HaaS), and others. For many, cloud computing presents enterprise opportunity. For others, cloud computing may hold potentially dark implications from a sustainability perspective. For example, the organization Greenpeace writes:

“The cloud is growing at a time when climate change and reducing emissions from energy use is of paramount concern. With the growth of the cloud, however, comes an increasing demand for energy. For all of this content to be delivered to us in real time, virtual mountains of video, pictures and other data must be stored somewhere and be available for almost instantaneous access. That ‘somewhere’ is data centres - massive storage facilities that consume incredible amounts of energy.” [1]:3

We need to sort out what the sustainability and social implications of cloud computing actually are from an humanity-centered point of view. Do the promised efficiencies of cloud computing have implications for more sustainable practices or will these efficiencies create greater resource and energy use and less sustainable behaviors corresponding to the possibility that greater capabilities induce greater use?

We invite you to contribute short (4-6 page)  informed essays and/or original research reporting that address these issues from an HCI, Design, and sustainability perspective. We hope to attract contributions from a broad transdisciplinary community—all are welcome. The topics to address include but are not limited to:

  • What are the factors that affect energy use as consumers and enterprise shift to cloud computing?
  • Does cloud computing induce sustainable or unsustainable behaviors?
  • What is the role of HCI and interaction design in promoting sustainable practices in a cloud based computing world?
  • How does cloud computing relate to similar notions in HCI and pervasive computing, such as to Weiser’s notions of dynamic ownership of computing devices? [2]
  • Does cloud computing hold the possibility of inducing less disposability and increased durability of personal digital devices, or is the opposite more likely?
  • What are the trade-offs in potential energy use between the widespread advent of cloud computing, compared to the continued use of widely distributed personal computing resources, and is there a middle ground between these possibilities?
  • Who can affect the kind of energy sources that are used to implement cloud computing apropos of sustainable energy choices? [1]:5
  • Can cloud efficiencies and interactivity reduce energy use? [1]:5
  • ...

Archival Nature of Papers

 

All submitted papers will receive at least two reviews. Papers that are accepted for presentation at the special session will be published in the Cloudcom 2010 Conference IEEE proceedings, and will be available in IEEExplore (EI indexing). As such, accepted papers constitute archival, peer-reviewed work. All authors of papers accepted at the special session may revise and lengthen their papers for additional archival venues, according to the rules of IEEE and the ACM. The organizers will suggest at least one suitable venue and more likely more than one, as we hope to attract broad transdisciplinary participation. Note that the archival nature of papers accepted for this special session is different than the non-archival nature of papers accepted to SIGCHI conference workshops. The organizers and conference chair will supply a letter to this effect for those who may need same for their individual organizational reporting.

Submission

The submission format must conform to the following: 4 pages minimum and 6 pages maximum including figures, tables and references using IEEE proceedings format (download instructions: http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/yee/ieeepaperinstruct.pdf ). Authors should submit the manuscript in PDF format and make sure that the file will print on a printer that uses letter size (8.5 x 11) paper. The official language of the meeting is English. Please submit your paper to the SIVELB 2010 (https://www.easychair.org/account/signin.cgi?conf=sivelb2010 ) via an EasyChair account.

 

Important Dates

Submission deadline: 15 July 2010
Author notification: 15 August 2010
Camera-ready: 1 September 2010
Special Session: 30 November 2010

 

Organizers

Eli Blevis, Human-Computer Interaction Design, Indiana University at Bloomington, USA eblevis@indiana.edu
Jinjun Chen, Centre for Complex Software Systems and Services, Swinburne University of Technology, Australia jinjun.chen@gmail.com

 

NOTES
  1. Greenpeace (2010, March). Make IT Green: Cloud Computing and its Contribution to Climate Change. The Netherlands: Greenpeace International.
  2. Weiser, M. (1999). The computer for the 21st century. SIGMOBILE Mob. Comput. Commun. Rev. 3, 3 (Jul. 1999), 3-11.

Incubating the Future of Design Education

Speaker: 
Debera Johnson, Pratt Institute
Time: 
March 24, 2010 - 5:45pm - 7:30pm
Location: 
OCAD Auditorium, 100 McCaul St.
Series: 
Torch–sLab Unfinished Lectures

How can we incubate the future of design education and change the world at the same time? Get an inside look and meet some of the key people and projects that have shaped the success of the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation. Both a platform to launch a green business and a design consultancy for world projects, the Incubator offers a unique way to use the power of networks, collaboration and community to get things done. Deb will share the story of Solar Ivy, currently on display at New York's MoMA; a recent project for the Sustainable South Bronx Greenway project; and her latest Design Jam that brought 40 designers, HIV experts and media artists together for UNESCO's “Cultural Logic” project.

About the Speaker: 

Debera Johnson is known for stirring the pot and making the unlikely happen. She considers herself a catalyst for change, persistent collaborator and risk taker. To have company along the way she founded and directs the Pratt Design Incubator for Sustainable Innovation, Design in Kind and the Center for Sustainable Design Studies at Pratt.  A graduate from Pratt’s Industrial Design program, Deb is a tenured faculty and serves as Pratt’s Academic Director for Sustainability. Deb’s constant is to provide opportunities for talented people to do amazing things and thanks Pratt for giving her the platform to be an entrepreneur in an academic setting. More about Deb and her work is available at http://incubator.pratt.edu and http://csds.pratt.edu

Post-Copenhagen: What Strategies Now?

Speaker: 
Natalie Jeremijenko
Time: 
February 25, 2010 - 1:30pm - 3:30pm
Location: 
sLab, Ste. 600, 100 McCaul Street
Series: 
sLab Explorations

What happened at Copenhagen, what worked, what didn’t, and most importantly – what now?
Those who expected decisive agreements and large-scale governmental action from the recent Copenhagen negotiations are disappointed. However, now the emphasis falls on other strategies and technological opportunities we face to coordinate environmental movement, raise the standards of evidence and facilitate diverse responses to environmental challenges. How can distributed sensing and public publishing of data reveal this evidence, support local organizations and actions? How does Pachube – a kind of Facebook/YouTube for data – change the game? How can social networking be used in collective sense-making and lifestyle experiments to localize responsibility for environmental health? Is it the big opportunities – or not?

About the Speaker: 

Natalie Jeremijenko is an artist whose background includes studies in biochemistry, physics, neuroscience and precision engineering. Jeremijenko is a recipient of the 2008-2009 Van Alen Institute-New York Prize Fellowship in Sustainable Cities and the Social Sciences, and was recently named one of the 40 most influential designers by I.D. Magazine. She is an artist not-in-residence at the Institute for the Future (IFTF) in Palo Alto. Jeremijenko directs the xDesign Environmental Health Clinic [http://www.nyu.edu/projects/xdesign/] at NYU. Her work is described as experimental design, hence xDesign, as it explores opportunities presented by new technologies for non-violent social change. Her research centers on structures of participation in the production of knowledge and information, and the political and social possibilities (and limitations) of information and emerging technologies — mostly through public experiments. In this vein, her work spans a range of media from statistical indices (such as the Despondency Index, which linked the Dow Jones to the suicide rate at San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge) to biological substrates (such as the installations of cloned trees in pairs in various urban micro-climates) to robotics (such as the development of feral robotic dog packs to investigate environmental hazards). Jeremjenko’s permanent installation on the roof of Postmasters Gallery in Chelsea Model Urban Development (MUD) provides infrastructure and facilities for high-density bird cohabitation in an environmental experiment in interaction with the New York City bird population.

xCAMP Toronto Launch

Speaker: 
Natalie Jeremijenko
Time: 
February 25, 2010 - 3:30pm - 7:30pm
Location: 
sLab, Ste. 600, 100 McCaul Street

xCAMP is a collaborative design effort that will launch the xCLINIC Project in Toronto. Using a combination of art, social entrepreneurship, and critical making, the project aims at creating a movement for spreading environmental health awareness and action, building on the xCLINIC concept originally developed by Natalie Jeremijenko. There are many opportunities to participate in the xCLINIC project.

You can read more at: http://www.manara.ca/xclinic
If you are interested in registering for participation, please email: nharfoush {at} faculty.ocad.ca or  xclinic {at} manara.ca

The UPA 2010 International Student Design Competition is underway.  This is the second year for this competition. We have been receiving inquiries from student teams from around the world. We are preparing for the influx of project submissions, due on March 29, 2010. This year’s topic is "Design for a Sustainable World." http://www.upassoc.org/conference/2010/students/

Without your help we cannot make this International Student Design Competition a success.

We are currently looking for your help to review some submissions.  Each student group will submit a short paper (6 pages maximum) describing their project and design process.  Each reviewer will be asked to evaluate between three and five different project papers.  To evaluate each project should take about 20 minutes, including reading a 6 page paper and answering some questions.  Reviewers will have two weeks to complete this task (March 30 – April 13).

Please let us know if you can assist in this matter, and how many papers you are willing to review.

If you have colleagues who may be interested in reviewing, please send them our way!

Thanks in advance for your help! = aTdHvAaNnKcSe! J

Co-Chairs UPA2010 International Student Design Competition

ILONA POSNER, Toronto, Canada
KATHRIN HOLLINGER, Munich, Germany
CHRISTIAN STOESSEL, Berlin, Germany

Email: iSDC2010 {at} usabilityprofessionals.org