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.

Thinking about search engines

Berners-Lee argued that part of the Semantic Web is about identifying the originator of information, and identifying why the information can be trusted, not just the content of the information itself at a conference in Boston sponsered by AAAI last Tuesday. Semantic Web could be a solution to the problem of the Internet deception through identifying the web content creators. This association between Sementic Web and author identification is also mentioned in another paper that introduces the project Flink.
This argument leads to thinking about the ontology again. If you google any keyword, you would get the first several results by ontology. You google a person, you get his/her weblog, since it collects one's most complete information. If it doesn't exist, you get one's homepage hosted in one's working place. If it doesn't exist, ... Anyway, the web sources are more heterogenous than only to search a single databases like InforZoom by A9 people search. If you google a book, you get its Amazon link and its authors blog, such as Smart Mob and Freakonomics etc. If you search for a film, you get one entry from the imdb and so on and so forth. This ontology based search is not in line with Google's PageRank method, except that for example each book metioned in a web site is linked by Amazon and each paper by a DOI etc. Certainly, each keyword has various contexts, like the typical example of "Java" for computer scientists. In this case, the temporal context can confine the ontology. Before the java language was defined and the coffee was produced, it refers certainly to the island. So before the Da Vinci Code was pictualized, the search result was a book. Google might have used this search criteria, since Google Trends has been launched and could be used to get the ontology based on temporal facts.
Ontology based search engine might strengthen the web giants such as Amazon, WikiPedia in each field. Is it good to solve the problem of the Internet deception?

Bled, Ljubljana and Begunje in Slovenia

Before I began to attend the Prolearn Summer School in Bled, I joined in the fieldtrip on Sunday, 4th of June. Slovenia is not that large. It took only 2 and a half hour from Bled, which is located in the North of the country to the coast in the South. A nag en route was impossible because we met the best tour guide we have ever met. The most group members gave Sascha this esteem. He did not stop one minute to introduce Slovenia to the guests.

Tranversing the gold coast as well as the show windows in Trieste, we reached our first stop Piran, a mediaterean town. The market places and the colorful walls remind me of the squares in Rome or Florence. One colleague from Ljubljana said that she ever drove 2 hours from the capital to Piran, just to sit in a cafeteria on the sea shore for several hours.

After lunch in Strunjan, we visited the largest cave of Europe, the Postojna Cave. Sascha doesn't recommend the cave very much because it is somewhat commercialzed. He was proud of the caves he and his friends ever discovered by themselves. I could not notice the commercial issues since I have not visited any large cave since 28 years ago.

Then we visited the most important sightseeings in Ljubljana in the bus. The statue of Julia and France Preseren, the Slovenian national poet is one of the most impressive sightseeings, because Sascha had told so many of his stories and tragedy and recited his poems. The stories had almost moved every girl in the group. On the way back to Bled, Sascha did not have a lot to say, so the topic switched to the fabulous stories and conventions of his hometown, the most beautiful town with the most beautiful folks music in his opinion. In the end, we figued it out. It is Begunje.