Category Archives: OpenSym 2016

Monitoring the Gender Gap with Wikidata Human Gender Indicators

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Full Research Papers, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Wikipedia Track

Title: Monitoring the Gender Gap with Wikidata Human Gender Indicators

Authors: Maximilian Klein (GroupLens Research), Harsh Gupta, Vivek Rai (Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur), Piotr Konieczny (Hanyang University) and Haiyi Zhu (GroupLens Research)

Abstract: The gender gap in Wikipedia’s content, specifically in the representation of women in biographies, is well-known but has been difficult to measure. Furthermore the impacts of efforts to address this gender gap have received little attention. To investigate we utilise Wikidata, the database that feeds Wikipedia, and introduce the “Wikidata Human Gender Indicators” (WHGI), a free and open source, longitudinal, biographical dataset monitoring gender disparities across time, space, culture, occupation and language. Through these lenses we show how the representation of women is changing along 11 dimensions. Validations of WHGI are presented against three exogenous datasets: the world’s historical population, “traditional” gender-disparity indices (GDI, GEI, GGGI and SIGI), and occupational gender according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. Furthermore, to demonstrate its general use in research, we revisit previously published findings on Wikipedia’s gender bias that can be strengthened by WHGI.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Urban Data Platforms – An Overview

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Keynotes / Invited Talks, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings

Ina Schieferdecker of Fraunhofer FOKUS (Berlin), will be presenting the following keynote at OpenSym 2016:

Title: Urban Data Platforms – An Overview

Abstract: Along the increasing digitization and interconnection in almost every domain in society or business, data is growing exponentially. It is expected that the worldwide Internet traffic will triple until 2020 in comparison to 2015. In the same time, the transmitted data volume will move from 53,2 Exabytes per months to 161 Exabytes per months [Cisco, 2016]. Cities and communities can support the provisioning and usage of urban data and benefit from resulting new services for the monitoring, understanding, decision making, steering, and control. Providing urban data is also supported by the ongoing movement of opening governmental data, but goes beyond. Urban data can include data from public, industrial, scientific or private sources. Yet, the design of urban data is still ongoing and numerous initiatives and standardization efforts on smart cities and communities put the grounds for the uptake and interoperability of urban data.

Speaker’s Biography: Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ina Schieferdecker is Director of Fraunhofer FOKUS, Berlin, coordinates Open Data and ICT for Smart Cities at that institute and is also professor for Model-Driven Engineering and Quality Assurance of Software-Based Systems at Freie Universität Berlin. Her research interests include urban data platforms, critical infrastructures, networking, conformance, interoperability, security and certification. Schieferdecker received a PhD in electrical engineering from Technical University Berlin. She is President of the ASQF and member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), IEEE, ACM, and GI. She is member of the Nationale Plattform Zukunftsstadt, of the acatech Working Group Stadt der Zukunft, of the Smart City Network Berlin and of Fraunhofer Morgenstadt.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Out of Altruism or Because it Reads Well on the CV?: The Motivations for Participation in the Freifunk Community Compared to FLOSS

Announcement, Conference Contributions, F/L/OSS Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Out of Altruism or Because it Reads Well on the CV?: The Motivations for Participation in the Freifunk Community Compared to FLOSS

Authors: Lyudmila Vaseva (Freie Universitaet Berlin)

Abstract: Motivation of free, libre and open source software developers has been widely studied over the years. The reasons people engage in this seemingly altruistic behavior have been elaborated and classified. The present work addresses a slightly different issue: what motivates individuals to participate in community network projects? Are the reasons similar to or quite distinct from these relevant to contributors to free software? Based on recently conducted interviews with community network activists from the Germany based project Freifunk and established FLOSS motivation research, we will analyse the specifics of the Freifunk project and the factors which spur its members to action. The obtained insights could then hopefully be used to understand the underlying group processes and help build sustainable communities.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Evaluating Open Collaboration Opportunities in the Fire Service with FireCrowd

Announcement, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers, Wikis and Open Collaboration Track

Title: Evaluating Open Collaboration Opportunities in the Fire Service with FireCrowd

Authors: Eleanor R. Burgess (University College London) and Aaron Shaw (Northwestern University)

Abstract: In emergency response organizations like the fire service, personnel require easy access to reliable, up-to-date safety protocols. Systems for creating and managing Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) within these command and control organizations are often rigid, inaccessible, and siloed. Open collaboration systems like wikis and social computing tools have the potential to address these limitations, but have not been analyzed for intra-organizational use in emergency services. In response to a request from the Fire Protection Research Foundation (FPRF) we evaluated a high-fidelity open collaboration system prototype, FireCrowd, that was designed to manage SOPs within the U.S. fire service. We use the prototype as a technology probe and apply human-centered design methods in a suburban fire department in the Chicago area. We find that organizational factors would inhibit the adoption of some open collaboration practices and identify points in current practices that offer opportunities for open collaboration in the future.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Review of Estimation Method of Economic Effects Created by Using Open Data

Announcement, Community Contributions, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2016

Title: Review of Estimation Method of Economic Effects Created by Using Open Data

Authors: Tetsuo Noda, Masami Honda (Shimane University), Akio Yoshida (Independent) and Shane Coughlan (Opendawn, Kagawa)

Abstract: Public data collected or possessed by administrative agencies and subsequently released as Open Data is expected to bring about positive economic effects. The purpose of this paper is to establish whether that expectation holds true and how to best estimate the positive economic effect provided by the utilization of open data. This paper considers previous research covering the economic impact of open data and the utility of the approaches they suggest.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Politics of Cooption in Free and Open Communities

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Keynotes / Invited Talks, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings

Bradley Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy, will be presenting the following keynote at OpenSym 2016:

Title: Politics of Cooption in Free and Open Communities

Abstract: Developing software where all users have equal freedom to share, copy, modify and redistribute the software – in a community where all participants are equal – was once an odd fringe activity and cause only of interest to a small group of radical software developers. Today, this mechanism of sharing and collaboration is widely adopted not only by the software industry as a whole, but also by communities doing other collaborative work in areas as wide ranged as developing online encyclopedias, performing astrophysics research, and sharing information about users’ favorite television programs.

As “Open Source” has become a fad, it has been integrated into the larger culture. Furthermore, the software freedom movement has undeniably entered a period of cooption by for-profit companies who seek to exploit the benefits of these sharing communities, but do not necessarily wish to engage as equals with the individual hobbyists who build and foster those communities.

This talk, given by a practitioner who works daily in the politics of software freedom, will explore the current state of this political cooption, anecdotally examine how the political environment has begun to influence the structure of Open Source and Free Software projects, and consider whether these forces are likely to influence other non-software communities who have adopted the methodologies and principles of software freedom for their own work.

Speaker’s Biography: Bradley M. Kuhn is the President and Distinguished Technologist at Software Freedom Conservancy, on the Board of Directors of the Free Software Foundation (FSF), and editor-in-chief of copyleft.org. Kuhn began his work in the software freedom movement as a volunteer in 1992, when he became an early adopter of the GNU/Linux operating system, and began contributing to various Free Software projects. He worked during the 1990s as a system administrator and software developer for various companies, and taught AP Computer Science at Walnut Hills High School in Cincinnati. Kuhn’s non-profit career began in 2000, when he was hired by the FSF. As FSF’s Executive Director from 2001-2005, Kuhn led FSF’s GPL enforcement, launched its Associate Member program, and invented the Affero GPL. Kuhn was appointed President of Software Freedom Conservancy in April 2006, was Conservancy’s primary volunteer from 2006–2010, and has been a full-time staffer since early 2011. Kuhn holds a summa cum laude B.S. in Computer Science from Loyola University in Maryland, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Cincinnati. Kuhn’s Master’s thesis discussed methods for dynamic interoperability of Free Software programming languages. Kuhn received the O’Reilly Open Source Award in 2012, in recognition for his lifelong policy work on copyleft licensing. Kuhn has a blog, is on pump.io and co-hosts the audcast, Free as in Freedom.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Health & Play – Addressing together the challenges of creating an open source standard for breathing games

Announcement, Community Contributions, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2016, Workshops

Title: Health & Play – Addressing together the challenges of creating an open source standard for breathing games

Authors: Fabio Balli (Concordia University)

Abstract: This proposed workshop invites us to discover an initiative – the Breathing Games – that aims to mobilize citizens around respiratory health by creating a free/libre and open source standard for health games – a common. After being presented the two years journey of the initiative, participants will use their skills and talents to meet the current challenges of an open collaboration projet.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Benchlearning – A learning-format for best practice and knowledge sharing

Announcement, Community Contributions, Conference Contributions, OpenSym 2016

Title: Benchlearning – A learning-format for best practice and knowledge sharing

Authors: Benedikt Scheerer and Simon Dückert (Cogneon GmbH)

Abstract: In today’s business environment, industry and market entry barriers are vanishing (e.g.: in the automotive industry Google and Apple are about to enter the market). Moreover, due to the fierce global competition, companies are forced to come up with innovative (often also more complex) products. The digitalization even is about to rapidly transform also the business models of companies. Under those ever-changing market environments, the need for stronger cross-departmental, company-wide and even cross-company collaboration and also knowledge sharing becomes essential to cope with the mentioned challenges. Internal social media tools serve as the communication infrastructure for this needed knowledge sharing. Additionally, social media values transform the company culture.

In recent years, innovative companies have thus implemented those social media tools within the boundaries of the firm. Although names for these vary e.g. (Social Intranet, Corporate Social Network, Social Business, Enterprise 2.0) the challenges companies face when adopting these tools, especially after the technical implementation, are quite similar.

In 2011, we worked closely with a couple of customers in our region, e.g. adidas and Schaeffler. In our projects with them, we discovered that they were facing similar challenges regarding knowledge sharing efforts. Accordingly we discussed the idea of a cross-company learning format regarding knowledge sharing efforts. We chose Benchlearning as a format.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

Investigating teachers’ practices of using games in school: A pattern-based approach

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Open Educational Resources Track, OpenSym 2016, Proceedings, Research Contributions, Research Tracks, Short Research Papers

Title: Investigating teachers’ practices of using games in school: A pattern-based approach

Authors: Triinu Jesmin and Tobias Ley (Tallinn University)

Abstract: We introduce teachers’ practice patterns as a possible way to enhance knowledge building about game use in schools. We developed patterns through critical incident interviews with 15 Estonian school teachers and validated them in an online forum. We present the patterns, experiences around employing the approach for knowledge building and report some general themes on game use in schools that have emerged from this work.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.

A Crowdsourcing Practices Framework for Public Scientific Research Funding Agencies

Announcement, Conference Contributions, Doctoral Symposium, OpenSym 2016

Title: A Crowdsourcing Practices Framework for Public Scientific Research Funding Agencies

Author: Eoin Cullina (Lero, NUI Galway), Kieran Conboy (Lero, NUI Galway) and Lorraine Morgan (Lero, Maynooth Univeristy)

Abstract: Scientific research and the work of public scientific research funding agencies (SRFAs) has in recent times been impeded by various obstacles and challenges. SRFAs are predominantly engaged in tasks surrounding the assessment and funding of scientific projects through research call processes. Such traditional processes face various problems. Firstly, scientific research in recent years has seen increased competition between participants for decreasing resources globally. Added competition and submissions brings a new layer of complexity to existing processes. Secondly, it is difficult to build and assess multidisciplinary and trans-disciplinary research projects through existing approaches. Thirdly, existing call assessment/peer review processes have shown intellectual insularity, a lack of flexibility and a lack of transparency in project selection mechanisms. It is posited that crowdsourcing presents solutions to many of these challenges. Whereas research has seen the advancement of various crowdsourcing models and taxonomies it is posited that many of these do not suit the specific needs of SRFAs. A practical contribution is required whereby practices are advanced to assist task completion by SRFAs in research assessment and funding processes. Open collaboration presents asa means to enable SRFAs. Accordingly, this research proposes adapting an exemplary crowdsourcing framework for selecting, formulating and evaluating crowdsourcing practices for use by public SRFAs.

This contribution to OpenSym 2016 will be made available as part of the OpenSym 2016 proceedings on or after August 17, 2016.