Category Archives: Announcement

Let’s Build the Road Network of Civic Tech

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Keynotes / Invited Talks, OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014 is proud to announce the conference’s opening keynote!

Title: Let’s Build the Road Network of Civic Tech

Speaker: Stef van Grieken of Google Inc.

Abstract: Your awesome petition app is like a sports car without a freeway to drive on. Over the past several years we’ve built amazing civic apps that are improving public service delivery, engaging more citizens in the political process, and making governments more accountable around the world. But we’re rapidly approaching a point common to all new public technologies: the need for common infrastructure to enable massive scale. This talk will discuss three tenets of civic technology that will take us towards a common framework, and present research and examples of work doing this today. It’s time for developers, governments, corporations, academics, funders and citizens to come together and lay the groundwork for what’s next.

Biography: Stef van Grieken studied Industrial Engineering and Philosophy and describes himself as “a tech-entrepreneur and a bit of a geek.” He currently works as a Technical Program Manager at Google. His goal is to promote civic innovation through technology. Before joining Google Stef founded the Dutch civic technology organization Open State Foundation. With projects such as Nu.nl Public, Hack the Government, and Apps for the Nederland he worked on increasing public accountability and transparency. Some of these projects were awarded with ‘Time Magazine Top Website of 2012’ and a ‘European Public Sector Award’.

Registration, Location, and Travel

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014 opened registration! Please go here to register. Also, more information is available about the conference location as well as travel and accommodation. The program will be announced over the next few weeks but look forward to four fantastic keynotes/invited talks and a wonderful open collaboration research as well as community program!

 

Notification Deadline Heads-up

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Acceptance notifications will be sent out between June 7-15; please stay tuned!

Research Paper Submission Doors Closed, DocSym and Community Track Submissions Still Open

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

OpenSym 2014 closed its research paper submission doors on May 4th with a record number of submissions. We are very happy about this and are looking forward to a strong technical program in Berlin on August 27-29, 2014.

The Doctoral Symposium is still accepting submissions, and we also have left some room for a second round of Community Track paper submissions. Please see the respective pages for submission information.

Upcoming Paper Submission Deadline May 4th!

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submissions to OpenSym 2014 as well as the first round of community paper submissions are due

May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Please get your papers ready and

submit through OpenSym 2014 Easychair!

Guidelines by way of the general OpenSym 2014 Call for Submissions (Papers).

Sponsors

Call for Submissions (Papers): Open Data Research Track at OpenSym 2014

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: Open Data Research Track.

Call for Submissions to Open Data Research Track

Open Data has the potential to transform society, government and the economy, from how we travel to work to how we decide to vote. Many initiatives started to open data sets from the government, public organizations and from industry. Still however, research on Open Data falls short in the public.

This track contributes to the increasing awareness on Open Data in research. It asks Open Data researchers and practitioners from research, industry, civil society, and government to join the Open Data track at OpenSym and to share your approaches, methods and results with others.

We invite you to submit on, but not excluding:

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Call for Submissions (Papers): IT-Driven Open Innovation at OpenSym 2014

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: IT-Driven Open Innovation Research Track.

Call for Submissions to IT-driven Open Innovation Research Track

Open innovation expands the scope of research and development activities beyond the boundaries of single company structures and turns the participants into proactive and self-organized contributors. While most open innovation activities do not require extensive management control and guidance, they strongly rely on a functional infrastructure and powerful tools for data exchange, communication and cooperation in order to proceed efficiently and to generate valuable results. Information technology therefore plays a decisive role for open innovation.

There can hardly be doubt that recent developments in information technology such as social media have hugely contributed to the enormous popularity of open innovation. Nevertheless, scientific insight into this dynamic is still rather limited. This opens up a wide field of research in computer science, information systems and adjacent disciplines, including topics such as:

Continue reading Call for Submissions (Papers): IT-Driven Open Innovation at OpenSym 2014 →

Call for Submissions (Papers): Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track at OpenSym 2014

Announcement, OpenSym 2014

Research paper submission deadline: May 4th, 2014 (changed from April 20th to evade Easter celebrations/vacation).

Link to full call for submissions: Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track.

Call for Submissions to the Wikis and Open Collaboration Research Track (WikiSym)

While Wikipedia has shown that Internet-enabled open collaboration can be amazingly successful, the potential of open collaboration extends well beyond this single instance. This track is dedicated to the science and application of wikis and open collaboration technology outside of the context of Wikipedia.

Researchers and practitioners from all disciplines interested in open collaboration technologies are encouraged to submit to this track. We anticipate that papers accepted to this track will examine these technologies using a variety of lenses informed by diverse disciplinary perspectives.

We expect that some of the topics covered in this track will include (but by all means will not be limited to):

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Posted Academic and Other Historic Data

Announcement, General, Proceedings

As part of an on-going discussion on academic transparency and openness, we have decided to publish the historic academic data (no. submissions, acceptance rate, etc.) for WikiSym, now OpenSym. Please find it on the Historic Data page. This data has always been made available as part of the foreword to each year’s proceedings, but now it is available at one glance and not hidden away in some archive.

We intend to ensure a high quality of publications (which implies selectivity). We believe that the combination of a high quality of community events at OpenSym (workshops, tutorials, panels, demos, etc.) together with a high-quality academic program is the way to go to keep building a vibrant community at the conference. We believe this will support the scope extension from the more narrow WikiSym to the broader OpenSym in 2014.

OpenSym Impact Factor, Metrics, etc.

Announcement, OpenSym 2014, Proceedings

The renaming of WikiSym to OpenSym and the scope extension from “everything wiki” to “everything open” has invalidated various metrics of scholarly assessment and so we wanted to ask your opinion on how to position the revamped conference.

In the past, WikiSym was a computer science conference. The influx of Wikipedia researchers has benefitted the conference and the community and extended our scope. Still, WikiSym had a strong computer science focus. The expected influx of open access, open data, open source, open educational resources, open innovation, etc. research will further sharpen the profile of the conference. We certainly won’t be a pure computer science conference any longer.

Continue reading OpenSym Impact Factor, Metrics, etc. →