Tuesday, January 1, 2013

Opportunity: Games Startup at Right Pedal Studios, Brisbane


Posted by my Colleague Matt Ford on Facebook
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Hi all-- let me put in an extra plug for us freaking overwhelming Right Pedal Studios with awesome teams and game proposals before their 20 Jan deadline. I want this promising new fund to realise just how much potential this community has. The more great applications there are, the more benefits we will harvest. To get honest advice about this opportunity, contact me at matthew@fordfam.com, and/or go to the Mana Bar event on the 8th to learn more: https://www.facebook.com/events/468788233158922/ 

I'm not a RPS investor; my stake is with *you* as devs, and I think for many this is a great opportunity. Let's not pass it up.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

CFP: HCIS - 2nd International Workshop on Human-Centric Information Systems


HCIS - 2nd International Workshop on Human-Centric Information Systems

in conjunction with the 25th International Conference on Advanced Information Systems Engineering (CAiSE'13), Valencia, Spain, 17-21 June 2013 

HCIS Link: http://www.wst.univie.ac.at/communities/hcis/2013/
 
The HCIS workshop is focused on human orientation and human factors in the context of Information Systems (IS) research. The workshop aims to support investigations and novel solutions for human integration into IS, and interaction of humans with IS in general. In continuing the successful series of the HC-PAIS workshop series, the HCIS 2013 workshop will also provide a platform for discussing research on human orientation in different types of IS, such as Process-Aware Information Systems (PAIS), Business Process Management Suites (BPMS) and Workflow Systems (WfS). The workshop aims to offer a portal for researchers, discussions, and contributions of interdisciplinary research dedicated to the investigation of particularly human-centric activities and processes that demand human judgment, human skills and competencies, human experiences, and discernment. The HCIS workshop appreciates diversity in the chosen research methodology (reaching from e.g. empirical research to action research, and design science research), and welcomes technical, empirical, experiential, and exploratory contributions.  

 

Workshop topics

Contributions to further human factors in alliance with IS in general, or specific IS such as PAIS, BPMS, WfS are welcome.
  • Human orientation and human factors in IS 
  • Human resource modeling in IS 
  • Human-centric functionalities and services in IS 
  • Motivation, satisfaction and performance of humans working with IS 
  • Work life quality of humans working with IS 
  • Creativity in IS  
  • Teams, groups, and social collaborative processes in IS 
  • Role conflicts, role motivation, compliance behavior in IS 
  • Visualization, personalized visualization and representation  
  • Context-integration, customization in IS 
  • Security and Privacy in human-centric IS 
  • (Organizational) Culture, gender, and diversity in IS 
  • Process innovation and process adaptation for human-centric IS 
  • Cognitive theory reflection in IS  
  • User properties in the context of process modeling and IS 
  • User-centric automatisms and feedback loops in IS  
 

Important Dates

Workshop paper submission:27th February 2013
Notification of acceptance:20th March 2013
Submission of camera-ready papers:27th March 2013
Workshop:18th June 2013

Submission

Accepted papers of our workshop will be published in the joint Springer LNBIP proceedings.  
 
Papers should be submitted in PDF format until the 27th February (11:59 pm) 2013 via Easychair «https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=hcis2013». The results described must be unpublished and must not be under review elsewhere. Submissions must conform to Springer's LNBIP format and should not exceed 12 pages, including all text, figures, references and appendices. Submissions not conforming to the LNBIP format, exceeding 12 pages, or being obviously out of the scope of the workshop, will be rejected without review. Information about the Springer LNBIP format can be found at «http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-791344-0». Three to five keywords characterizing the paper should be indicated at the end of the abstract. 
 
Authors of the submitted HCIS workshop papers will receive the notification of acceptance until the 20th March 2012. The accepted papers will be published in the Springer LNBIP series.  

Registration

Accepted papers imply that at least one of the authors will register for the CAiSE’13 and present the paper at the HCIS workshop. Also please keep in mind that everybody attending the CAiSE’2013 workshops, will have to register for CAiSE 2013.  

Workshop Chairs

Sonja Kabicher-Fuchs «sonja.kabicher-fuchs@univie.ac.at»  
Stefanie Rinderle-Ma «stefanie.rinderle-ma@univie.ac.at» 
Jan Recker «j.recker@qut.edu.au» 

CFP: 9th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'13)


CALL FOR PAPERS AND SPECIAL TRACKS

9th International Symposium on Visual Computing (ISVC'13)
July 29-31, 2013
Aquila Rithymna Beach Hotel
Rethymnon, Crete, Greece

ISVC provides a common forum for researchers, scientists, engineers and
practitioners to present their latest research findings, ideas, developments
and applications in visual computing. We seek papers contributing to the state
of the art and practice in the four central areas of visual computing: (1)
computer vision, (2) computer graphics, (3) virtual reality, and (4)
visualization.  Of particular interest are papers that combine technologies
from two or more areas. For a list of topics, see http://www.isvc.net

ISVC'13 will consist of invited and contributed presentations dealing with all
aspects of visual computing. In addition to the main program, the symposium
will include several keynote presentations, special tracks, and a poster
session. A selection of best papers will be published in a special issue of the
International Journal on Artificial Intelligence Tools (IJAIT) (ISI/SCIE
indexed) and the Computers and Graphics journal(ISI/SCIE indexed). Also, a
"best paper" award ($500) is sponsored by Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs
(MERL). The symposium's proceedings will be published by Springer-Verlag in
Lecture Notes in Computer Science.

Important Dates

Special track proposals:    February 1, 2013
Paper submissions        May 10, 2013
Notification of acceptance    June 10, 2013
Final camera ready paper    June 28, 2013
Advance Registration        June 28, 2013
ISVC.13 Symposium        July 29-31, 2013

Keynote Speakers

     Thomas Ertl, University of Stuttgart, Germany
     Mel Slater, University College London, UK
     Serge Belongie University of California, San Diego, USA
     Anthony Hoogs, Kitware, USA
     Fei-Fei Li, Stanford University, USA

(Area 1) Computer Vision Area Chairs:
         Li Baoxin, Arizona State University, USA
         Porikli Fatih, Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL)

(Area 2) Computer Graphics Chairs:
         Zordan Victor, University of California at Riverside, USA
         Klosowski James, AT&T Research Labs, USA

(Area 3) Virtual Reality Chairs:
         Joaquim Jorge, Technical Univ of Lisboa, Portugal
         Luo Xan, Qualcomm Inc., USA

(Area 4) Visualization Chairs:
         Chen Min, University of Oxford, UK
         Gotz David, IBM, USA

Submission Procedure

Papers submitted to ISVC'13 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.

Special Tracks

Proposals are invited for special tracks on any topic relevant to the
symposium. Special tracks are intended to stimulate in-depth discussions in
special areas relevant to the symposium theme. A special track may span
multiple sessions, depending on the quantity and quality of the papers
submitted. All papers accepted in a special track will be published in the
symposium proceedings. If you are interested in organizing a special track,
please email a special track proposal to admin@isvc.net by February 1, 2013.
Each special track proposal should include the following information:

1. Title
2. Scope and Topics
3. Names of organizers and contact information
4. Initial special track committee
5. Anticipated number of papers

For a list of special tracks organized in previous years, please visit

George Bebis
ISVC'13 Steering Committee Chair

Friday, November 30, 2012

Ad: Halfbrick are hiring software developers


Interested in game development at one of the best mobile games studios in the world?

Halfbrick, the Australian creators of Fruit Ninja and Jetpack Joyride, are desperately seeking C++ programmers!

Apply via the link below:


Ross

Friday, November 23, 2012

Paper: A visual language for the collaborative visualization of integrated conceptual models in product development scenarios

Just had a paper "A visual language for the collaborative visualization of integrated conceptual models in product development scenarios" accepted for CIRP Design 2013.  This paper is a part of a collaboration with Johhanes Herter and Jivka Ovtcharova at the IMI, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, where I have been on exchange for the last three weeks.

Abstract: In various industrial and scientific fields, conceptual models are derived from real world problem spaces to understand and communicate containing entities and coherencies. Abstracted models mirror the common understanding and information demand of engineers, who apply conceptual models for performing their daily tasks. However, most standardized models in Process Management, Product Lifecycle Management and Enterprise Resource Planning lack of a scientific foundation for their notation. In collaboration scenarios with stakeholders from several disciplines, tailored conceptual models complicate communication processes, as a common understanding is not shared or implemented in specific models. To support direct communication between experts from several disciplines, a visual language is developed which allows a common visualization of discipline-specific conceptual models. For visual discrimination and to overcome visual complexity issues, conceptual models are arranged in a three-dimensional space. The visual language introduced here follows and extends established principles of Visual Language science.

Ross

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Brag: zOMG IndieDB, it’s teh QUT Pwns!

This has been a great week for our QUT Games and Interactive Entertainment students.  The final year project students are made to release their games to a popular independent game development site called IndieDB (www.indiedb.com).  IndieDB is used as a distribution channel by a number of very popular indie games, such as Minecraft.

A number of our teams have had some amazing results this week on the IndieDB site, with at one stage nine teams being in the top one hundred, two of them making the top ten and three (Applied Science, Crank and Torak) being featured on the main site banner at the same time.



But my favourite is seeing one QUT game, Rotation Fixation, briefly climb to number four, just above Minecraft!


We have also heard many stories of games sites running reviews of their games and a magazine planning to package a QUT game on a DVD they are giving away for free.

For our student teams, these are great achievements, showing that they are doing some excellent work.  Matt Ford and myself, as unit supervisors, are very, very proud.

So, you are all welcome to come along to the BGIE Industry showcase on Friday, 2nd Nov., to play these games, and mingle with the students and local industry reps.; or you can download the games from the links below.

Ross

Saturday, October 20, 2012

Paper: Improving Remote Collaborative Process Modelling using Embodiment in 3D Virtual Environments

Our paper "Improving Remote Collaborative Process Modelling using Embodiment in 3D Virtual Environments," by Erik Poppe, Ross Brown, Jan Recker and Daniel Johnson, has been accepted at APCCM 2013.

Abstract: Identifying, modelling and documenting business processes usually  require the collaboration of many stakeholders that may be spread across companies in inter-organizational settings.  While modern process modelling  technologies are beginning to provide a number of features  to support remote, they lack support for visual cues used in co-located collaboration. In this paper,  we  examine the importance of visual cues for collaboration  tasks in collaborative process modelling.   Based on this analysis,  we  present a prototype 3D virtual world process modelling tool that supports a number of visual cues to facilitate remote collaborative process model creation and validation.  We then report on a preliminary analysis of the technology. In conclusion, we proceed to describe the future direction of our research with regards to the theoretical contributions expected from the evaluation of the tool.

Well done Erik!

Ross