dear colleagues, i am professor for internet and society at the university of salzburg and we plan to convoke a first-time face-to-face meeting of representatives of research and higher education institutions that work in the field of icts and society, information society studies, new media studies, social informatics including hci, and the like, to estabish an icts and society network around the globe in order to contribute to this emerging field. the venue is salzburg, austria, ict&s center. the date is 19-21 june 2008. the plan is to start in the afternoon on 19 june and conclude in the evening of 20 june. 21 june might be free for excursion to lovely salzkammergut. we kindly ask you to consider participation of one representative of your organisation. we cannot pay for travel or accommodation costs, but we provide on-site facilities like meeting room, refreshments, business lunch without fee and we will certainly help you with special price accommodation. confirmed so far is the participation of: - bill dutton, oxford internet institute - robin mansell, department of media and communications, london school of economics - gunilla bradley, school of ict, royal institute of technology, stockholm - gustavo cardoso, centre for research and studies in sociology, lisbon - lars qvortrup, royal school of library and information science, copenhagen - paschal preston, centre for society, technology and media, dublin city university one important item on the agenda will be to explore the possibility of a summer school for phd students in the field of icts and society as a common establishment of our network-to-be. since phd students is a main resource of our research, we also would like to ask you to enable the attendance of one or two excellent phd students of your organisation. the objective would be to hold within the framework of our meeting an early-stage-researchers workshop on icts and society with prepared contributions on the respective dissertation projects, so to say, as a kind of anticipation of the summer-school-to-be. holding this workshop depends on your reception of the idea. as soon as there is a critical mass of attendees, i will provide you with further information. i would appreciate to receive your answer before 10 january 2008. please, feel free to disseminate this invitation to possible partners of our initiative. thank you for your attention. looking forward to your response, prof dr wolfgang hofkirchner internet and society please address correspondence to the email-address wolfgang.hofkirchner@sbg.ac.at ict&s center for advanced studies and research in icts & society university of salzburg sigmund-haffner-gasse 18 a 5020 salzburg phone ++43 662 8044 4821 fax ++43 662 6389 4800 http://www.icts.uni-salzburg.at editor, tripleC - cognition communication co-operation peer-reviewed open-access on-line journal for the foundations of information science http://triplec.uti.at president, bertalanffy center for the study of systems science, vienna http://www.bertalanffy.org