Apologize for cross-posting: CALL FOR PAPERS: CIRN 2009: Empowering communities: learning from community informatics practice. 4-6 November 2009 Monash University Prato Centre, Italy. For more information, or to submit an abstract for a referred or non-refereed paper, the PhD colloquium, a workshop or a poster session, please go to www.ccnr.prato2009/ CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT & CALL FOR PAPERS We are seeking abstracts and proposals from academics, practitioners and PhD students for this exciting conference and workshop event at the Monash University Centre, Prato Italy (near Florence). The Centre for Community Networking Research, Monash (www.ccnr.net), in conjunction with the Community Informatics Research Network (www.ciresearch.net), and sponsors has held highly successful annual events since 2003, as well as associated workshops over the years, in the UK, France, and Portugal. The conference has an increasing representation of delegates from Francophone and Spanish-speaking countries, and we welcome your attendance. While the official conference language is English, if there are sufficient papers for either language, language-specific sessions will be arranged. This conference is also being run in conjunction with the IDIA2009 Conference 28-30 October 2009 Kruger National Park, South Africa, Digitally Empowering Communities: Learning from Development Informatics Practice, KEY DATES * 1 April 2009: abstracts due for consideration - the earlier the better. * 1 May 2009 : acceptance/rejection of abstracts. Refereed papers are blind peer reviewed. * 1 July 2009 : papers due * 1 September 2009: final version of papers after blind peer review (for academic papers) for publication in the official conference proceedings. MAIN THEME The idea of 'empowerment' has a number of special connotations in the Community Informatics space. Community Informatics is an approach to empowering communities with information and communication technologies. There is a widespread expectation that Community Informatics will enhance democracy, develop social capital, build communities, develop economies and empower individuals and groups, and result in many different forms of social change. Community Informatics, in bringing together communities and technologies, works across at least three dimensions, though there may be others which are relevant. * The Context and Values held by different stakeholders in Community Informatics * The Processes and Methodologies which are brought to bear in Community Informatics * The Systems (both technical and human) which are brought to bear in Community Informatics We use cases or examples of projects and programs to consider the intersection between these three dimensions. The different interpretations that can be given to the concept of 'empowerment' gives rise to a number key questions about the relationships between the different dimensions of community informatics and how we describe and analyze the communities and cases we work with. Keynotes will be delivered by Aldo de Moor (Community Sense, Netherlands) and Leopoldina Fortunati (Univ. of Udine, Italy). COST: Registration will be approximately 310eu, with substantial reductions for PhD students and delegates from developing countries. Costs include first class Italian catering. SPONSORS:Monash University; CIS University of Washington; Turabo University; SLIS, University of Illinois-Champaign; SLIS, Marseilles. Other inquiries-- prato2009 AT fastmail.fm Larry Stillman--for the Conference ------ Ende der weitergeleiteten Nachricht