Link: Virtual Chocolate Factory

Theo Priestly over at BPM Redux has sent me a link to a virtual chocolate factory that is using virtual world and web 2.0 technology for remote process management and collaboration. They see their main application to be in remote management of outsourced factories by design headquarters.

And no, I will not make any jokes here about virtual Oompah Loompahs.

Ross

CFP: 6th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC10)

Call for Papers
6th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC10)

Monte Carlo Resort & Casino
Las Vegas, Nevada
Nov 29 - Dec 1, 2010
http://www.isvc.net

The purpose of the International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC) is
to provide a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and
practitioners throughout the world to present their latest research
findings, ideas, developments and applications in the broader area of
visual computing. ISCV seeks papers describing contributions to the state
of the art and state of the practice in the four central areas of visual
computing: (1) computer vision, (2) computer graphics, (3) virtual
reality, and (4) visualization. ISVC10 will consist of invited and
contributed presentations dealing with all aspects of visual computing. In
addition to the main technical program, the symposium will include six
keynote speakers, one poster sessions, several technical sessions, and
eight special tracks.


*********************
***Important Dates***
*********************

. Paper submissions July 12, 2010
. Notification of acceptance August 31, 2010
. Final camera ready paper September 15, 2010
. Advance Registration September 15, 2010
. ISVC10 Symposium Nov 29 - Dec 1, 2010


***********************
***Keynote Speakers****
***********************

Dorin Comaniciu, Siemens Corporate Research, USA
Tobias Hollerer, Univ of California at Santa Barbara, USA
Ioannis Kakadiaris, Univ of Houston, USA
Marc Pollefeys, ETH Zurich, Switzerland
Steve Seitz, Univ of Washington, USA
John Stasko, Georgia Tech., USA


(Area 1) Computer Vision Chairs
Ronald Chung, The Univ of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Riad Hammoud, DynaVox Systems, USA


(Area 2) Computer Graphics Chairs
Muhammad Hussain, KSU, Saudi Arabia
Kar-Han Tan, Hewlett Packard Labs, USA


(Area 3) Virtual Reality Chairs
Roger Crawfis, Ohio State University, USA
Daniel Thalman, EPFL, Switzerland


(Area 4) Visualization Chairs
David Kao, NASA Ames, USA
Lisa Avila, Kitware, USA


***************************
***ISVC10 Special Tracks***
***************************


ST1: 3D Mapping, Modeling and Surface Reconstruction

Organizers:
Nefian Ara, CMU/NASA Ames Research Center, USA
Broxton Michael, CMU/NASA Ames Research Center, USA
Huertas Andres, NASA Jet Propulsion Lab, USA


ST2: Best Practices in Teaching Visual Computing

Organizers:
Albu Alexandra Branzan, University of Victoria, Canada
Bebis George, University of Nevada, Reno, USA


ST3: Low-Level Color Image Processing

Organizers:
Celebi M. Emre, Louisiana State University, USA
Smolka Bogdan, Silesian University of Technology, Poland
Schaefer Gerald, Loughborough University, UK
Plataniotis Konstantinos, University of Toronto, Canada
Horiuchi Takahiko, Chiba University, Japan


ST4: Low Cost Virtual Reality: Expanding Horizons

Organizers:
Sherman Bill, Indiana University, USA
Wernert Eric, Indiana University, USA


ST5: Computational Bioimaging

Organizers:
Tavares João Manuel R. S., University of Porto, Portugal
Natal Jorge Renato, University of Porto, Portugal
Cuhna Alexandre, Caltech, USA


ST6: Unconstrained Biometrics: Advances and Trends

Organizers:
Proença Hugo, University of Beira Interior, Portugal
Du Yingzi, Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, USA
Scharcanski Jacob, Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul Porto
Alegre, Brazil
Ross Arun, West Virginia University, USA
Amayeh Gholamreza, EyeCom Corporation, USA


ST7: Perceptual Organization

Organizers:
Parvin Bahram, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA
Loss Leandro, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, USA


ST8: Behavior Detection and Modeling

Organizers:
Miller Ron, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, USA
Bebis George, University of Nevada, USA
Rosen Julie, Science Applications International Corporation, USA
Davis Jim, Ohio State University, USA
Lee Simon, Army Research Laboratory, USA


**************************
***Submission Procedure***
**************************

Papers submitted to ISVC10 and special tracks must not have been
previously published and must not be currently under consideration for
publication elsewhere. A complete paper should be submitted in
camera-ready format. The length should match that intended for final
publication. The page limit is 12 pages. In submitting a paper the
author(s) agree that, upon acceptance, they will prepare the final
manuscript in time for inclusion into the proceedings and will present the
paper at the symposium.


***********************
***Paper Publication***
***********************

This is a fully refereed symposium. Papers will be reviewed with an
emphasis on potential to contribute to the state of the art in the field.
Each paper will receive two-three blind reviews and should not contain
names or other information revealing authors' identity. Selection criteria
include accuracy and originality of ideas, clarity and significance of
results, and presentation quality. All papers accepted will appear in the
symposium proceedings which will be published by Springer-Verlag in the
Lecture Notes in Computer Science (LNCS) series (pending approval).

Link: Excellent Software Visualisation Website

Found an excellent software and process visualisation website here, maintained by Grady Booch and Ruth Malen. It has a lot of software that I have come across before, neatly organised, and very up to date.

Well worth a visit.

Ross

Link: Honorable Mention on Jim Sinur Blog Comments

Was scratching around doing ego surfing, ahem, "performing blog impact evaluations", and found a reference by Theo Priestly about my work on one of THE Gartner Blogs by Jim Sinur.

It makes sense that Jim might have a passing interest in this area, as Andy Sinur is a games developer. But he is still waiting on case studies from Gartner clients to evaluate its usefulness. Thanks for the backup Theo.

Meanwhile, as of today, the jury's still out regarding my work, for Sandra Kelmsey. ;-)

I am not complaining. At least I'm getting some attention.

Ross

Book Chapter: Virtual environment visualisation of executable business process models

I have just uploaded a Book Chapter draft reference to QUT eprints that will be part of a book being published - Virtual Technologies for Business and Industrial Applications: Innovative and Synergistic Approaches.

This details our work regarding the linking of YAWL and Second Life, as per this video.

Contact me for further information about the paper.

Ross

Paper: AMCIS 2010 Collaborative business process modeling using 3D virtual environments

I have just uploaded our new paper accepted for AMCIS 2010 to the QUT Eprints Site. This paper details a collaborative BPMN modeling environment that my Masters student Stephen West has built for Open Simulator and Second Life. The main outcome is the creation of a useful 3D space to collaborate around a process model. A video of the work is posted here.

Jan Recker will be presenting the paper at AMCIS 2010. This work is part of our ongoing projects in the area of collaborative process modelling. Contact me if you need a copy of the paper before AMCIS.

Well done Stephen.

Ross

Article: Second Life Economic Report

Metaverse is offering an analysis of the economic situation at Second Life Q1 2010, in particular, critiquing Linden Lab's adoption of pure money transfer (without actual virtual goods) as a measure of economic activity. I'm not an economist, but the related analysis looks informed and reasonable to me.

I think the interesting point to note however, is that Second Life has put in a solid quarter by a number of metrics. This result can only be good for the virtual world industry as a whole. But, I find myself still not that desirous of purchasing virtual goods, not unless they influence my Real Life, and only music and video comes to mind in this regards.

Ross

Article: BPMVE Airport Process Video on TV!

Just had a look on the Australian ABC site for Stateline QLD, and have found my Airport Processes Video has been played as part of a news item on the Airports of the Future QUT research project. The original video is shown here at Youtube.

Ross

Link: Video of Mobile Phone DLP Projector

Samsung have a new mobile projector using Texas Instruments Pico Projector technology.

One of my desires is to see ad-hoc environments developed using the latest technology, allowing process modelling spaces to be portable and spontaneous in nature. This sort of display technology will go a long way to creating such spaces, especially as the mobile projector can be mounted in atypical ways to form interesting projection environments, and can then be placed in the pocket and taken home. This displays can be combined with touch table solutions and other surfaces to create productive ad-hoc digital interaction environments for collaborative process modelling. Such ideas have been explored by the Sixth Sense project at (where else but) MIT. Would be good to see this happen with Process Modelling, especially for client/analyst communication.

A word of caution here though. Let's hope we don't take it too far and do the Iron Man 2 thing and turn every surface (and volume) into a display. Ugh! :-|

Ross