CfP: SENSE'09

There is around one week left before the submission deadline of SENSE09 on December 13, 2009. SENSE'09 is a workshop on Software ENgineering within Social software Environments in conjunction with the Conference on Software Engineering (SE2009), March 2-6, 2009, in Kaiserslautern, Germany. The workshop logo designed by Niels is elegant.

Gandhara – Das buddhistische Erbe Pakistans

The exhibition Gandhara - the buddhist heritage of Pakistan (legends, monastaries and paradises) has been opened in the Bundeskunsthalle in Bonn since last Thursday evening. Anna and I with our FIT colleagues enjoyed having attended the opening event and visiting the exponents on Gandhara cultural heritage from worldwide on November 20. Our group worked together with RWTH Aachen Center for Documentation and Conservation (ACDC) led by Prof. Dr. Michael Jansen as well as Fraunhofer Institute for Applied Information Technologies FIT led by Prof. Dr. Matthias Jarke, both of which support this exhibition together with Gerda Henkel Stiftung and Cultural Ministry of Islamic Republic of Pakistan. Gandhara was an important area connecting the west and the east in ancient times. It had a much lager geographic coverage beyond its current borders in Pakistan. Its buddhist culture had been influnced or started in the age of Alexander the Great and boomed from 1st to 5th centruries A.D. The Bamiyan Great Buddhas which were devastatingly exploded by the Taliban Regime are representive artefacts of the Gandhara heritage. A 3D reconstruction film of the Great Buddha in Bamiyan is played in the exhibition hall, technically supported by the Augmented Reality Group at FIT and by the CAVE project at RWTH Aachen University. In addition, we have hosted a community portal for Bamiyan Development since years.



Around 300 fine artefacts are on exhibition from November 21, 2008 to March 15, 2009, before they move on to Berlin and Zurich after then in 2009.

ICWL'09 is coming to Aachen

The 8th International Conference on Web-based Learning (ICWL'09) will be held in Aachen, August 19-21, 2009. It brings researchers together with interesting topics in reasearch areas of Web-based Learning, mobile learning as well as Technology Enhanced Learning. The Call for Paper is online and can also be downloaded in PDF. The important dates are:
Full Paper Submission Deadline: March 1, 2009
Workshop Proposals Submission Deadline: March 1, 2009
Poster Paper Submission Deadline: May 1, 2009

Call for Work in Progress Reports

The PerCom work-in-progress session will be held at the 7th IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom 2009) in Galveston, Texas, March 9-13, 2009. It aims to present and discuss emerging results, and novel research questions, approaches, and directions in the research area of pervasive computing with the paradigm that information systems at anytime anywhere.

Topics include, but are not limited to:
* Pervasive Computing and communication architectures
* Intelligent environments
* Service composition and application adaptation
* Smart devices and smart spaces
* Middleware services
* Mobile/Wireless computing systems and services
* Context aware computing
* Autonomic computing and communications
* Programming paradigms for pervasive systems
* User interfaces and interaction models
* End user programming and end user tools
* Mobile/Wireless service management and delivery
* Resource management in pervasive computing
* Trust, security and privacy issues
* Sensor networks and applications
* Pervasive service oriented architectures

Submission Deadline: November 2, 2008

Call for Participation: Developer's Day 2008

The Students in our group is organizing an exciting event on Oct. 13, 2008: Developer's Day 2008. This is an annual event at Informatik 5, RWTH Aachen University since 4 years. Students are encouraged to present technologies and tools on software development. It is an event organized by students for students who want to gain knowledge beyond their regular study program. Students are invited to give talks on self-chosen topics with a length of 30-45 minutes including time for discussion. At the same time, students gain insight into academic events.
The registration is still open at http://dbis.rwth-aachen.de/developersday/, on the behalf of:
General Chair: Dominik Renzel, Christian Hocken
Publicity Chair: Martin Frericks, Niels Drobek

STEG'08 Updates

As I posted a CfP for the First International Workshop on Story-Telling and Educational Games (STEG'08) several weeks ago, the workshop was held successfully in Maastricht last Tuesday. Some updates detail can be found at the Web site. A practical example of Storytelling and Technolog-Enhanced Learning is that we used Skype to present Nalin Sharda's presentation live from Melbourne, with 8-hours' time difference. In the wrap-up, Ralf drawed this graph based on a hot discussion of all participants.



My talk could be found here.

Ludwig-Erhard-Haus, Berlin

Berlin is getting to be one of the most modern cities in Europe. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, Berlin became the competition arena of renowned architects worldwide. I have not had any architecture excursions in Berlin. I took some pictures during my private and business trips and it could be nice to have some reviews in my blog.
In the most recent trip, I attended the LMC conference which was held in the Ludwig-Erhard-Haus (LEH) at Fasanenstrasse, near to the subway station of Zoologische Garten, the former central railway station of West Berlin. Ludwig-Erhard-Haus designed by the British architect Sir Nicholas Grimshaw was built from 1994-1998. It is opened to host conferences and other events related to economy. The economic issue is stressed, because Ludwig Erhard in his ministry as a federal chancellor first combined social economy and free market economy, which led to great economic progress in post war in Germany. It is also located beside the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce.
Sir Nicholas Grimshaw used to apply ellipse forms and curves for his architecture. LEH is featured with 15 steel beams in ellipse forms and large glass windows. There are two inside courtyards which collect sunlight for the building. Beside the courtyards six elevators are used as the main vertical transport means, because the steps are somewhat hidden, narrow, and inappropriate to the architectural scale. So you can always see awaiting people in front of the elevators. Fortunately, there are six fast elevators. There are also many irregular halls with columns in the middle of the space, so that only part of the room could be used for presentations. Electricity sockets are often missing for laptops in each room of such buildings nowadays.

An Announcement of the Final Presentation of Gaming Communities Lab

The students attending our lab course Gaming Communities give their final presentations at 18:00 tomorrow in AH II at RWTH Aachen University.
At the beginning of the Summer Term 2008, students were required to propose their own projects. The three following projects were selected from all, which builds up three groups consisting of 4-5 students.
1) Civilization IV historical scenario
2) Gaming Communities on iPhone, und
3) Empirical research on gaming vs. carreer/relationships/groups
During the semester, the students made ideas concreate and realized their proposed platform by programming. Evaluation process was also carried out. Students learned the whole life cycle of software development. The lab course requires 200 hours of work load. One group has also submitted a paper to STEG 08.

CfP: CSTST'08

The fifth international conference on soft computing as transdisciplinary science and technology (CSTST '08) will be held in Ergy Pontoise/Paris, 27-31 October, 2008. The paper submission deadline is 6 July, 2008. Soft computing is a new research area related to soft science. Fuzzy logic and probabilistic are part of key issues in soft computing. Soft Computing is defined in Wikipedia as:
Soft computing refers to a collection of computational techniques in computer science, artificial intelligence, machine learning and some engineering disciplines, which attempt to study, model, and analyze very complex phenomena: those for which more conventional methods have not yielded low cost, analytic, and complete solutions. Earlier computational approaches could model and precisely analyze only relatively simple systems. More complex systems arising in biology, medicine, the humanities, management sciences, and similar fields often remained intractable to conventional mathematical and analytical methods.

Red Dot Design Museum, Essen

As we had a pleasant institute excursion to Zeche Zollverein in Essen, one of the UNESCO World Cultural Heritage, on May 30, I happened to discover the colocated Red Dot Design Museum. Various industrial products design, ranging from stationery, home appliance, to machinery is exhibited. The annualred dot design award is granted. The jury evaluates the competitors according to the following four principles: innovation degree, funktionality und environmental friendliness and compatibility.
In short, the red dot design principle is that design is fuction oriented, the same as the Bauhaus design theory Forms follow Function. So is the museum building: simple and unremarkable. It was built in 1930s as a boiler building for the new Shaft 12 to enhance cole mining in the Ruhr Area. The whole Shaft 12 buildings designed by Fritz Schupp and Martin Kremmer are of the Bauhaus style. After the last mining in 1986, the boiler building is no more needed, either. Sir Norman Foster renovate it into a museum, which maches the notorious red dot design. The most exhibits are displayed in the old industrial building, while visitors are led in the new flowing corridors started on the first floor. The corridors are actually just kind of fly-over in white slabs or in glass. Beside the corridors, there are also some exhibtion areas. Spirally, visitors can go to the forth floor which has also the smallest square. The spaces are smaller than a floor lower.
The internal spaces are communicative between the new and the old in a horizontal as well as a vertical way. Led by the fly-over, visitors have the best paths to visit all exhibits. There's no splendid spacious effects, while a dialogue between the old parts and the new one can be perceived quietly and sharply. Sir Norman Foster made it and told every visitors that museums can also be simple except for being exaggerated. It was a little warm inside, because of the closeness of the old building, maybe because of the boiler essential. With regard to the exhibits, many of them are listed in the catelogue and are available on the market.

CfP: STEG '08

First International Workshop on Storytelling and Educational Games (STEG '08) will be held in conjuction with the 3rd European Conference on Technology Enhanced Learning (EC-TEL '08) in September 17-19 in Maastricht, the Netherlands. EC-TEL brings international communities in the research area of Technology Enhanced Learning together. STEG'08 aims to bring researchers together to present the achieved or on-going research as well as to discuss the development trends in the areas of both multimedia storytelling and computer games with regard to Technology Enhanced Learning.
Some random thoughts or questions about the topics are:
On the one hand, stories are told in kindergarten, schools, colleges, companies, in the circle of families, friends, and neighborhoods, by reporters, by actors and actresses. In the Internet, the term story has even more meaning, can also be used as a verb. What kind of media do you define as a story? How does storytelling help learning?
On the other hand, does computer games support learning? Is a classroom in Second Life more attractive and effective than the real world?
Innovative ideas, novel applications and interesting discussions in the TEL domain will be expected. If anyone that is interested in submitting a paper, the deadline of June 30.

Euro 08 for Virtual Campfire Scenario

This afternoon the RWTH Aachen camera team was at our group. We "starred" together in a short introductory film for the excellence research cluster UMIC to demonstrate our Virtual Campfire scenario. This evening, German national football team beated the Turkey and is going to the finale match on Sunday.

So what might the Virtual Campfire storyboard for a multimedia non-linear story of Euro 2008 look like? (photo resource: Spiegel Online)

Langen Foundation, Hombroich

I have heard of the Langen Foundation Museum located near Duesseldorf since it was about to be opened in 2004. This spring I visited it with friends in a sunny Easter Sunday. It was a little cold, however, splendid since it was the only sunny day in a long period of early spring.
A long narrow field path leads to the museum as well as the rocket station (sign: Raketenstation), which can only be droven by visitors, with green grasses and spring ambience around. Suddenly, we saw a special stone statue, then the glass cube flying on water, and cherry blossom in lines. It is the unique museum by Tadao Ando. And as usual, it is built of glass, beton slabs and water (if available), which integrates light perfectly. The outcoming rhythm of light and shadow on betons as well as in water can even make air much fresher. Simple geometry forms were composed in an interesting way, to shape interial spaces. Contasts between the static (beton) and dynamic (water), solidness (beton) and transparency (glass), white (beton) and green (grass) make a strong visual effect.
The Langen Foundation Museum mainly consists of a beton slab in C-curve with several door holes to welcome visitors in a neutral way, a beton cube in a glass cube for the exibition, and some small beton blocks for administration. All these three parts are located on a large free-style water pool and grasses organically. Surely, white gravel or sand is indispensible for as the bases, which is always used in Zen Garden to symbolize water. The main large exhibition hall is underground.
The Japanese collection was not shown, while a small Indian acient collection, Karl Lagerfeld's photography were on exhibition. Karl Lagerfeld's photos mostly show some abstract concepts or pattern in black and white. Some photos are about Zaha Hadid's mobile architecture, also in black and white. The concept is also brand new.
We went to Ratingen without visiting the Museum Island (Museuminsel) in Hombroich.

Learning World - Der Learning Management Congress (19.-20. Juni, 2008 Berlin)

Letzten Donnerstag und Freitag habe ich mich zum ersten Mal am 9te Learning World - Der Learning Management Congress in Berlin beteiligt. Diese E-learning Konferenz fand in Ludwig-Erhard-Haus statt, das sich neben IHK in der Nähe von zoologischen Garten befindet. Mit dem Motto Empower Learning Innovation. Integration. Inspiration. ist Web 2.0 ein großes Thema geworden. Alle Key Note Speaker reden über Web 2.0 inklusiv Wikis, RSS, und Tagging usw. Es gibt Anzeichen dafür, dass Web 2.0 stark Forschungen in der Domäne E-learning beeinflußt hat und weiter beeinfließen wird. Der 2.0 Spirit zieht immer mehr wissenschaftliche Aufmerksamkeit auf sich. Es führt auch zu Diskussion, worauf man den Wert angesichts Forschungen legen soll. Sind es die benutzerfreundlichen Benutzeroberflächer mit runden Buttons, Einsatz von Wikis und Tagging überall, oder einfach Podcasting? Der Weg zum E-learning 2.0 bzw. Enterprise 2.0 scheint doch noch lang. Zwar fehle es auf dem deutschen Markt viele Informatiker, sowohl Hochschulabsolventen als auch Ausgebilderten, so Prof. August-Wilhelm Scheer. Alle Vorträge und Preisverleihungen bis auf die 10-Minuten-Präsentationen wurden aufgezeichnet und wird bald auf der Webseite veröffentlicht, indem gutes E-Learning Material das Publikum zugängig gemacht wird. Ich habe unsere Virtual Campfire in der Session 10-Minuten-Präsentationen Forschungsprototypen demonstriert. Dabei habe ich auch viele spannende Vorträge gehört.

Call for Participation 网上游戏习惯调查

我们这个学期开了一个实验课程游戏社区，学生要求在这个课程上提出自己的项目提议，如何支持电子游戏迷建立网上社区。3个最有效的提议被采纳，4到5个学生一组在一个学期内完成这个项目。我和安娜的小组由斯丹芬，托比，瓦迪，和达克组成，要完成一个实践性研究电子游戏和职业，和社会关系，以及和社会群体的互动关系。欢迎热爱电子游戏的朋友来参加一个匿名的网上调查，谢谢支持！希望有机会把调查结果告诉大家！

We offer a lab course Gaming Communities this semester. Students are required to propose their own projects on how to support gaming communities innovatively. 3 best proposals among all are selected and 4-5 students are in one group to finish one project within the semester. Stephan, Tobias, Vadi and Darko advised by Anna and me are doing an empirical research about impacts of games on career, on relationships and on groups. We'll appreciate it very much, if you could finish the anonymous online survey for our research. We'd like to present you the result later.