From my QUT colleague - Penny KyberzHi Everyone,
Our third and final Women in Games event for the year is an art competition and exhibition. Please let your students know about it.
We are inviting people of all ages to participate in our Fantastic Femmes character design competition. The competition is to design the artwork for a female games character that would make a great role model for gaming girls. Entries can include line art, hand drawn, computer generated and/or 3D renders in any style. The competition entry closes at 5pm, Friday November 25.
Entries will be displayed at our end-of-year exhibition at 5pm, Wednesday December 7, where the winners will be announced. Entrants must be able to attend the event to be eligible to win. Detailed competition rules and entry specifications are attached.
There is up to $500 worth of JB-HIFI gift vouchers to be won, so get designing!
http://rsvp.scitech.qut.edu.au
Thanks,
Penny.
Been meaning to get to this one for a while (content from an internal QUT email). An ERA rating of 5 is defined as: "The Unit of Evaluation profile is characterised by evidence of outstanding performance well above world standard presented by the suite of indicators used for evaluation." http://arc.gov.au/era/outcomes_2010/FoR/MIC0806
In addition, QUT has been ranked overall as 10th in Australia on research record. This is an amazing achievement, as QUT has only recently been focussing on research in addition to its teaching.
In addition:
The top journals in the global field of Information Systems are bundled in the widely accepted 'Basket of Six'. Sometimes two further journals (JSIS, JIT) are added and make up the 'Basket of Eight', ie. the highest regarded journals in the IS research world. The Association of Information Systems (AIS) endorses an online ranking base that allows to compare the performance of universities and authors over the last years.
In the most recent ranking (incl. 2010 data), QUT's Information Systems Discipline
* is ranked 14th worldwide in terms of publications in the 'Basket of Eight' over the last three years (highest in Australia, higher than any European university)
* is ranked 23rd worldwide in terms of publications in the 'Basket of Six' over the last three years (highest in Australia, higher than any European university)
In addition, Jan Recker (a colleague I have written a number of papers with) is ranked 37th in the Basket of Six list of authors over the last three years.
This is very satisfying and encouraging evidence for our standing in the global Information Systems community.
For these and further details see: http://vvenkatesh.com/
Makes it a little hard for me to keep up with, but good to be on a winning team. :-)
Ross
Information Systems Journal (ISJ)
Virtual Worlds as Information Systems
A Special Issue of ISJ on Virtual World Technology and Information Systems
Special Issue Guest Editors:
Ross Brown, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Andrew Hardin, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, USA
David Kreps, University of Salford, UK
Jan Recker, Queensland University of Technology, Australia
Virtual worlds have garnered unprecedented profile in both the media and academic research. Many IS Managers in their thirties have gained experience with 3D environments via gaming, and the appearance of game ready commodity hardware means that virtual worlds are now feasible as an Enterprise-wide Information System rollout. 3D virtual world interfaces are now increasingly used across a company as complementary information spaces, to web-based and other system services.
This strong momentum in IS practice, however, has not yet been matched by an intense academic focus. In particular, what is lacking is an in depth analysis of these worlds as potential business information systems interfaces, and their relevant design and use consequences.
The aim of this special issue is to provide a forum to present and discuss the emerging role of virtual world technology in the information systems community. The special issue explicitly advocates multi-disciplinary approaches that expand and integrate the current isolated research efforts in this exciting new area of IS research.
The special issue specifically aims at reporting on and discussing empirical and theoretical research in the use of Virtual World technology in Information Systems. In particular, we hope to provide a picture of the present state of international research with regards to how virtual worlds can shape the design, analysis, use, or management of information systems in organizations.
We encourage submissions that report on the use of research methods including experiments, surveys, case studies, focus groups and/or other empirical methods for the discovery of insights in the deployment, uptake, use, success or failure of Virtual World technologies in enterprises. Research contributed may range through various aspects of virtual world information systems, from development and integration, to impact studies on users.
We especially would like to encourage submissions on atypical usage of such worlds for Information System domains, in order that new and novel research may be brought to the attention of the international IS research community. In addition, we welcome papers that present, introduce or discuss novel approaches to emerging virtual world research, as this new domain will inspire different investigative approaches.
Contributed papers may deal with, but are not limited to:
- Social networking and communication in virtual worlds
- Virtual teams, collective cognition, and group performance, in virtual worlds
- Entrepreneurship in virtual worlds
- Virtual World technology and Interactive Systems Design
- System demonstrations and simulations
- In-world Information System modeling
- Human Computer Interaction
- Interfacing and integration of virtual world technology with other Information Systems
- Representations of Information Systems as virtual services
- Virtual world technology in IS education and training
- Adoption of Virtual World technologies and systems in corporate practice
- Diffusion of Virtual World technologies in social networking systems
- Virtual World technologies and co-creation of IT value
Submission Guidelines
Manuscripts should not normally exceed 7000 words and should be submitted online at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/isj. Authors will have to select Special Issue Submission as the manuscript type. Author guidelines are available at ‘author guidelines’ at http://www.blackwellpublishing.com/journals/isj/.
All submissions will be peer-reviewed following the double-blind review process of ISJ. The objective is to apply very high standards of acceptance while ensuring fair, timely and efficient review cycles.
Full initial paper submission deadline: 30 August 2010
First Review deadline: 30 November 2010
Revised paper submission deadline: (if required) 30 January 2011
Second Review deadline: 15 March 2011
Camera-ready paper submission deadline: 30 April 2011
Publication of special issue: mid-2011
Guest Editors:
Information Systems Discipline
Queensland University of Technology
Office 508 / 126 Margaret Street
Tel: +61 7 3138 9481
Fax: +61 7 3138 9390
Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia
Email r.brown@qut.edu.au
Webpage http://www.bpmve.org
Dr Andrew Hardin
College of Business
Department of Management Information Systems
4505 Maryland Parkway Box 456034
Tel: (702) 895-0447
Fax: (702) 895-0802
Las Vegas, NV 89154-6034
Email andrew.hardin@unlv.edu
Webpage http://faculty.unlv.edu/ahardin/
Dr David Kreps
Salford Business School
University of Salford
43 The Crescent
Tel: +44 (0) 161 295 5884
Fax: +44 (0) 161 295 5999
Manchester, M5 4WT, United Kingdom
Email D.G.Kreps@salford.ac.uk
Webpage http://www.business.salford.ac.uk/staff/davidkreps
Dr Jan Recker
Information Systems Discipline
Queensland University of Technology
Office 510 / 126 Margaret Street
Tel: +61 7 3138 9479
Fax: +61 7 3138 9390
Brisbane QLD 4000, Australia
Email j.recker@qut.edu.au
My colleagues in the YAWL project at QUT have released a new book entitled, "Modern Business Process Automation: YAWL and its Support Environment" via Springer Verlag. YAWL is the workflow tool I have been using in my research in Open Simulator. The book web site information now follows.
I have commented before about the difficulty of modelling 3D environments with typical virtual environment toolsets offered by Second Life et al. Another approach is the use of image-based modelling methods using computer vision techniques to generate 3D models from CCD imagery. This means that a business analyst can create a model of an enterprise from camera imagery, a technology well within reach of non-IT people.
Last weekend our research group had a retreat at the O'Reilly's Forest Retreat in Lamington National Park, Qld. I ran a session where I asked the group members present to write down five phrases that represent their research work. After removing obvious phrases, such as Business Process Management and Services, I uploaded the data to the Many Eyes visualisation service at IBM, and came up with this Wordle.
