i-Society 2006 » Contributors » Special sessions
Proposals for special sessions are invited from both industry and academia. If you would like to organise a special session with the i-Society 2006, please read our ‘Call for sessions’.
- The link between university research and industrial needs
- Why information technology’s potential to transform work is often unfulfilled
- Agent-enabled electronic communities
The link between university research and industrial needs
Very often Universities are involved in research activities solving hypothetical Industrial problems. As the body of research grows on a particular subject the problem becomes more and more diluted, its intrinsic complexity making way for increased research on the applied scientific techniques. When industry is engaged in the process, the body of research often does not contribute as well as it could as the research has expanded along its own direction which is often quite different than the needs of industry. The recent UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) review of Research Status of Operations Research in the UK evidences this fact by pointed out that a major weakness in the University research base is the ‘gap which remains between the output of successful research projects and what is needed for direct use be industry’. This session will invite papers which exemplify the link between Academia and Industry allowing lessons to be documented on how research projects should be conducted to ensure that the maximum benefits is obtained throughout the project for both sides.
Special session organisers
Barry McCollum, Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK
Why information technology’s potential to transform work is often unfulfilled
It took 38 years for radio to achieve a 50 million people audience. Television required a 13-year period; personal computer 10 years while the Internet took only 4 years. Organizations that can incorporate these major changes to their activities are going to have a competitive advantage during the next few years. According to Gosselin (2003), while the potential of information and communication technology to transform the world of work is enormous, in the UK, technology’s potential to transform work is often unfulfilled (I society Nov2003). The overwhelming message from the I society research is that the absence of sufficiently developed skills is holding organisations back from realising the full potential of their investment in ICT. It is now possible for customers or firms to order on a real time basis, 24 hours a day and 7 days a week as and when goods are desired. To survive in more competitive web-enabled environments firms must respond to these changes, especially where customers are more demanding (Gosselin (2003)). This special session will look at reasons why organizations do not realize the full potential of their investment in ICT; why information technology’s potential to transform work is often unfulfilled; and why firms are slow to respond to changes
Special session organisers
Bala Balachandran, London South Bank University, UK
Agent-enabled electronic communities
Internet has changed the way people communicate and share information.
The core framework of social networking – communication – is preserved, but there are many new aspects that constitute the phenomenon of electronic communities. This makes it possible to uncover the explicit topology of a social network and to discover new implicit relationships between the members of the community. However, the intelligent agents are intended to manage the presentation of the members within the community to facilitate the communication between the members. The examples of agent-enabled tasks within electronic communities include agent reputation in multi-agent systems (MAS), graph-based data mining and knowledge discovery, small-world topologies, etc.
The special session will take a closer look at different aspects of agent-enabled extraction, refinement and management of social network topologies underlying the electronic communities.
Special session organisers
Kevin Lü, Brunel University, UK
