Greening ICT towards Sustainability Conference

Friday 15 – Saturday 16 May 2009
10min from Ballarat, 80min from Melbourne

ICT Professionals, investigate how they can be more environmentally sensitive in the use of computing and how they can mitigate against future risks. Hear Symantec’s presentation on Green IT: The Colour of Money, hear how Intel is helping deliver Energy Efficiency and Innovation through Eco Technology, discover how the ETS (Emissions Trading Scheme) or Carbon Trading will impact on the ICT Industry, listen to speakers talk about Cloud Computing, Sustainable Business and how ICT is contributing to solving issues with Water Management.

This year again, you will have the opportunity to add your experience and knowledge in the Symposium discussions where you can have your say on such diverse topics as The Carbon Footprint, Virtual IT Environments, Innovation & New Technology, ICT Sustainability & its Impact in the Environment, Recycle & Re-use and much, much more.

Conference registration includes a comprehensive and exciting two day Conference Program, Catering (morning tea, lunch & afternoon tea on Friday & Saturday), Pre Dinner Drinks and Conference Dinner.

Novotel Forest Resort
1500 Midland Highway
Creswick, Vic 3363

Register at http://tinyurl.com/d79mzq

“Impostor Syndrome” hampers women’s rise to top of IT tree

A keynote speaker at the Connecting Up conference in Sydney, May 11-12, 2009 will present a case for the “Impostor Syndrome” as a key reason women do not embrace success in IT careers.

Jody Mahoney, Vice President, Business Development, at the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology: http://www.anitaborg.org, will discuss the syndrome reported by many successful women that they often feel as if their achievements are a fluke. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impostor_Syndrome

Jody will also explore in another presentation “tools to engage in the dynamic, fun, unpredictable, and always interesting world of raising money on behalf of NGOs”.

The 3rd annual Australian Community Technology Awards will be presented at a gala dinner on Monday May 11.

Tracey Fellows, managing director of Microsoft; Google Australia’s head of engineering, Alan Noble; and Martin Stewart-Weeks, Chair of the Australia Social Innovation Exchange, join the international speaker lineup, which also includes:

Cheryl Kernot – Centre for Social Impact, University of NSW
Mark Pesce – Social network guru, writer, New Inventors panelist
Monique Potts – Digital Media Project Manager at the ABC
Peter Deitz – founder and Executive Director of www.socialactions.com
Allen Gunn – Executive Director Aspiration www.aspirationtech.org

A full program of workshops and breakout sessions is available at http://www.connectingup.org/conference/program.

The conference will be held at the Novotel Brighton Le Sands, Sydney, Australia from May 11-12.

About Connecting Up Australia
Connecting Up Australia is a community-based nonprofit organisation. It operates the Donortec technology donation program for nonprofits (http://www.donortec.com.au),which has channelled over $40m in technology donations to nonprofits in the past two years, the annual Connecting Up conference on nonprofit technology issues and the annual Australian Community Technology Awards. In 2008 its CEO, Doug Jacquier, received the Innovator of the Year award in the Equity Trustees Nonprofit CEO Awards.

BlogHer09

BlogHer09 is the fifth annual conference for an online community focused on creating opportunities for women whoblog to pursue exposure, education, community and economic empowerment. The theme for this year’s BlogHer conference is “In Real Life”—an attempt to emphasize what blogging has brought everyone in their “real life.”

BlogHer ’09 will be at the The Chicago Sheraton and Towers from July 23-25, 2009. They will kick off on Thursday July 23rd with the 3rd annual BlogHer Business Conference, and will continue with the two-day 5th annual BlogHer Annual Conference on Friday and Saturday, July 24-25.

More from BlogHer09

ReGenerating Community Conference

Call for Papers & Presentations

The ReGenerating Community Conference is about ways in which global issues are being addressed locally through collaborations between artists, communities and local government.

While there is a growing literature around the correlation between involvement in creative or artistic activity and improved health and well-being, the links between creative communities and civic engagement are less well documented.

Demonstration of this link could have significant effects on the development of public policy and the targeting of resources to community-based arts projects.

Papers are invited on the conference themes:

• addressing global issues locally through collaborations between artists, communities and local government
• the links between creative communities and civic engagement
• the ways creative processes can mobilize communities for positive social change
• cultural citizenship and cultural rights, as an aspect of a broader human rights agenda

In part the conference grows out of Generations, a three year project sponsored by the Australia Council on enhancing the relationship between community art and local governance. Generations was initiated by the Cultural Development Network, Victoria, and conducted across five local government areas in Victoria, NSW, and Queensland to explore the links between engagement in community based arts activities and active civic engagement.

The conference will include keynote presentations, parallel papers, panel discussions, ‘on-the-couch’ conversations, case studies and artists’ responses. Formal presentations and an interactive arts program will be integrated to make a lively program.

Proposals are invited from local, interstate and overseas presenters including academics in cultural studies and social policy; councillors and local government workers from arts and culture, community services, economic development, community, social urban and environmental planning; public policy developers and community leaders, artists and arts workers engaged with communities.

Proposals for non-traditional formats such as film, video and performance are welcome. Proposals for whole panels to explore specific topics are also encouraged.

Second round of proposals: April 30, 2009

Being held – Sept 2 – 4, 2009. RMIT University, Melbourne

International Symposium on Wearable Computers – Call for Papers

ISWC’09, the thirteenth annual IEEE International Symposium on Wearable Computers, is the premier forum for wearable computing and issues related to on-body and worn mobile technologies. ISWC’09 will bring together researchers, product vendors, fashion designers, textile manufacturers, users, and related professionals to share information and advances in wearable computing.
 
ISWC’09 invites to submit original work in one or more of the following formats: full papers, notes, posters, late breaking results, demonstrations, videos, tutorials and workshops.
 
*SUBMISSION DEADLINES*
 
Papers & Posters                 March 30, 2009
Workshops & Tutorials            February 1, 2009
Late Breaking Results            May 18, 2009
Design Contest                   May 18, 2009
 
ISWC’09 will be held from September 4-7, 2009 in Linz (Austria). Tutorial/Workshops September 4, Doctoral Colloquium September 4, Main Conference September 5-7, 2009.
 
All details or for subscription to the ISWC 2009 Alert Ticker: www.iswc.net
or info@iswc.net

Spaces of Art Conference

An international conference on institutional / post-institutional curatorial and related practices in contemporary art. Convenors: Reuben Keehan and Blair French

Spaces of Art engages questions crucial to the future of art institutions and their relationship to contemporary practice in the 21st century, with particular reference to curatorial and artistic strategies in Australia and the Asia-Pacific.

Within recent curatorial debates, the term ‘new institutionalism’ has described a tendency toward the incorporation of the principles of institutional critique into institutional practice. Particularly visible in Europe, new institutionalism has its origins of the shift of key independent curators into directorial roles in the late 1990s, but also in the perceived need for galleries and museums to provide a more sympathetic platform for the increasingly participatory, process-based and self-reflexive practices of contemporary art. With its emphasis on transience, open-endedness and social experiment, and its placement of discursive activities such as education and publishing on equal footing with the more conventional exhibition function of galleries, new institutionalism draws as much from the working methods of artist-run initiatives as it does from social and cultural theory.

The final list of participants is posted on the website. The two days of conference presentations will comprise a mix of formal presentations and discussion panels within three session groupings—‘Institutional Critique or Institutionalised Criticism?’, ‘Spaces and Sites: Australia and New Zealand’ and ‘Alternatives in Asia: History, Context, Current Practices and Critiques.’

Spaces of Art is presented by Artspace Visual Arts Centre in association with the Art Gallery of New South Wales and the Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (NSW Chapter). This project is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its Arts Funding and Advisory body.

http://www.artspace.org.au/public_archive/conference_spacesofart

Conference
17 – 18 April 2009
Artspace Visual Arts Centre & Art Gallery of New South Wales

Parallax – 2009 National Architecture Conference

A line-up of leading international designers and thinkers is assembling for Australia’s foremost architecture conference in April, 2009.

Parallax is this year’s Australian Institute of Architects national conference, under the creative direction of  TERROIR directors Gerard Reinmuth (Sydney), Richard Blythe (Melbourne) and Scott Balmforth (Hobart).

TERROIR’s provocative program invites the profession to take a ‘parallax’ view of the conditions in which it practices, heartily fuelled by contributions from leading international designers, philosophers and cultural commentators.

Confirmed conference guest, the controversial public intellectual Slovoj Žižek (Slovenia/UK), uses parallax to refer to situations where the same thing, when viewed from two different perspectives, presents itself in two completely irreconcilable ways.

“Žižek’s confronting assertions will make us think much harder about what we are willing to believe and accept. His interrogative perspective will stir our thoughts about the choices we make as practitioners and how we determine what becomes privileged in our selections,” said Reinmuth on behalf of the creative team.

Other confirmed guests are: Aaron Betsky (USA), Tatiana Bilbao (Mexico), Sou Fujimoto (Japan), Bijoy Jain (India), Jeff Kipnis (USA) and Peter Wilson (Australia/UK/Germany).

Describing their program as the “writers festival of architecture”, the creative directors have designed six main thematic sessions – Studio, Politics, Media, Young Guns, Collaboration and The Cosmopolitan. Each is built around two key speakers exploring a specific issue, followed by a facilitated panel for extended discussion and debate. The Parallax format promises free flowing discussion with regular crossovers during the event.

“The best conferences build momentum as they unfold over a few days, as key topics emerge in response to the particular cocktail of speakers present and the opportunities they are given to unpack these topics over an extended period,” said Reinmuth.

In the 12 workshop sessions a keynote guest will discuss issues of particular local relevance of contemporary practice in conversation with an Australian speaker.

Early bird registrations: March 2nd, 2009

Parallax – 2009 National Architecture Conference
30 April – 2 May, Melbourne
architecture.com.au/parallax

More info on Žižek – http://www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm
Žižek’s Facebook page: –  http://www.facebook.com/pages/Slavoj-Zizek/8406557479

Poetry Prize – The Hidden Life of Suburbs theme

The Williamstown Literary Festival (www.willylitfest.org.au)

The 6th Williamstown Literary Festival will be held 1st-3rd May 2009 and will be bigger and better than ever. The Festival is a popular local cultural event focusing on literature, drama and writing which presents established and emerging writers and literary figures.

In 2009 the Festival will be located in two places, due to major renovations of the Town Hall. Some sessions will take place in the Town Hall and others in the Mechanics Institute in Electra Street. Keep in touch with the event and subscribe to the e-news.

Poetry submissions will be based on the topic of “The Hidden Life of Suburbs”.

Deadline: Friday, March 13, 2009

The Open Source Developers’ Conference – where will it be now?

The Open Source Developers’ Conference has been run successfully for the last 5 years, drawing bigger crowds every year.  For the first three of those years (2004-2006) it ran in Melbourne before moving to Brisbane (2007) and Sydney (2008).  Each year it has had at least three full streams of content running concurrently, catered tea breaks and lunches, a formal sit-down conference dinner on the first night, and free speaker entry.  Some years have also included one or two days of tutorial content.

The Open Source Developers’ Conference provides an important opportunity for developers of open source applications and developers who use open source tools to share knowledge and teach each other about the changes and new ideas that have come up in the last year or so.  Our core focus is on writing code, and the tools that make that easier.

The Open Source Developers’ Club exec are seeking applications from interested parties to host the 2009 Open Source Developers’ Conference.  Location is not an issue, so long as you are in the oceanic region.  If you are interested, or know someone that is, please complete the application form at http://tinyurl.com/osdc2009-application before 1st March 2009. The submission email address is included at the top of the form.

We do have some model rules ( http://www.osdcon.org/wiki/Model_Rules ) and a lot of ideas to share.  Having said that, we’re willing to be as active or quiet as you need us to be.

Australian International Documentary Conference 2009

The Australian International Documentary Conference (AIDC) is the pre-eminent industry gathering for factual content creators, broadcasters and screen agencies. AIDC is an extended international Market Place for broadcast product.

In February 2009, AIDC will focus on audiences and their behaviour as part of the conference’s themed program strand Who’s Watching? An exploration into the demand for factual programs or: By Whom, What, When, Where and How is factual content consumed?

Serious gaming and interactive content will play a pivotal role during the 2009 conference. It is our aim to initiate relationships between filmmakers, television producers, games developers, web application designers and investors.

How do you make an excellent one-off creative documentary? Through workshops, masterclasses and panel discussions, the best in the business will share their knowledge with you in a program strand dedicated to the Art and Craft in Documentary Making.

AIDC attracts a large number of national and international buyers to its Market Place. Sign up for our e newsletter to receive frequent updates about our Market Place initiatives and conference program development.

18 – 20 Feb 2009
Adelaide

http://www.aidc.com.au

http://www.aidc.com.au/register/register-now