2nd CFP: Second International Workshop on Teaching and Learning of Information Retrieval TLIR'08 (fwd)

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                           Second Call for Papers

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             Second International Workshop on Teaching and
                  Learning of Information Retrieval 
                               (TLIR'08)

  		     London, October 18th, 2008

                    http://tlir08.soi.city.ac.uk
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                Workshop in conjunction with IiiX2008
            (http://irsg.bcs.org/iiix2008/workshopsp.php#)

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Justification, goals and summary of the workshop 
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Information Retrieval (IR) is a research area that has generated a great
deal of interest in recent years, largely due to the growth of the
Internet. Many different problems that have arisen during this time have
been tackled by the efforts of thousand of researchers around the world.
New advances are spread following the usual scientific channels, i.e.
journals and conferences, keeping researchers abreast of new developments
in the field.

FW: [KIDMM] Content Architecture - ISKO UK conference, London, 22-23 June 2009

FW: [KIDMM] 9th October event: "Making and Organising Knowledge in Communities"

Search Solutions 2008 - London, September 23

Search Solutions 2008 - London, September 23

Apologies folks, lets try that again... 

*** Note: Early Bird Registration expires on Sunday, September 7 ***

SEARCH SOLUTIONS 2008

Tuesday 23rd September
BCS London HQ, Covent Garden

Search Solutions is a special one-day event dedicated to the latest 
innovations in information search and retrieval. In contrast to other major 
industry events, Search Solutions aims to be highly interactive and collegial 
(with attendance limited to 60-80 delegates) and features a high quality 
technical programme. 

The format of the event will include presentations, panels and case studies in 
which invited speakers present and share opinions and expertise. 

The event should appeal to designers, developers, end users or indeed anyone 
interested in hearing the latest developments in web and enterprise search.

Provisional programme:

09:30 - 10:00 Registration and coffee 

Session 1: (Chair: Tony Rose)
·         10:00 Introduction Tony Rose, UXLabs
·         10:10 “Open Search including Search Monkey and other recent 
developments” Sian Clark, Yahoo
·         10:35 “Simple techniques for effective web search” Milad Shokouhi, 
Microsoft
·         11:00 “Innovating with Search: Views from the Customers’ 
Perspective” Nick Townsend, FAST

11:25 – 11:45           COFFEE BREAK                     

Session 2: (Chair: Andy MacFarlane)
·         11:45 “Automatically analyzing word of mouth” Thijs Westerveld, Teezir
·         12:10 “Trexy - Still Searching for Trails” Nigel Hamilton, Trexy
·         12:35 “Making a simple question into a complicated query”, Richard 
Boulton, Lemur Consulting

13:00 - 14:00            LUNCH 

Session 3: (Chair: Leif Azzopardi)
·         14:00 “Last.fm: Data and Personalized Music Recommendations” Elias 
Pampalk, Last.fm
·         14:25 “The Seven Critical Elements of Search Engine Marketing” Gary 
Jennings, WebOptimiser
·         14:50 “Ambisense and mobile search” Ayse Goker, AmbieSense

15:15 - 15:40            TEA BREAK 

Session 4: (Chair: Alex Bailey)
·         15:40 “Federated Semantic Searching using SPARQL”, Andrew Maisey, 
Solcara
·         16:05 “Meaning Based Computing: Beyond Search”, Fernando Lucini, 
Autonomy
·         16:30 Panel: “Here Comes Everybody”
How can information get organised, classified and categorised without an 
organisation to do it?  Mass participation is part of the answer, whether it is 
conscious "folksonomic" tagging and ranking of photos, movies, blog posts 
etc., or Amazon's exploitation of the buying habits of its readers, or Google's 
automated mass observation.  This is a chance to consider the relative merits 
of the "wisdom of crowds" versus the wisdom of subject experts.  Everybody's 
views are welcome -- naturally!

17:00 – 19:00           DRINKS RECEPTION

Search Solutions is organised by the Information Retrieval Specialist Group of 
the BCS (British Computer Society), and will be held at the BCS Central 
London Office:

BCS, 1st Floor
The Davidson Building
5 Southampton Street
London, WC2E 7HA
http://www.bcs.org/server.php?show=nav.8404 

For further details, see http://irsg.bcs.org/SearchSolutions/2008/sse2008.php

PhD

Funded PhD Position in Human Computer Interaction, Affective Computing
and Evaluation at the University of Lugano, Switzerland

Project Summary:

DEDUCE - Design of new tools to express Emotions During User Centred
Evaluation - is funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation
(SNSF). The project will aim at designing, implementing and evaluating new
tools for allowing easier interaction with users when measuring
usability of interactive systems. These new tools should stimulate free
expression of emotions generated by interaction with system under evaluation
and provide a mean to record these too. It is expected that these new
interactive tools will be engineered in such a way to be used not only at
evaluation time to facilitate users but also to support evaluators while
analysing data.

The PhD position is in the Faculty of Informatics of the University of
Lugano (USI) in Switzerland, http://www.inf.unisi.ch/. The successful
candidates will build on the Faculty's ongoing research and will help define
and explore this exciting area of research.

Applicants must have a strong background in Computer Science and/or closely
related areas (e.g. Mathematics, Statistics or Engineering with strong
emphasis on Computer Science) a keen interest in HCI /e- publishing topics
and excellent skills in both written and spoken English, as the working
language of the Faculty is English.

The appointment will be for 3 years, starting as soon as possible. The
salary will be CHF 39'600 for the 1st year, growing to CHF 45'600 for the
3rd and 4th year. PhD fees are paid by the project.

Applicants are requested to send:
* a curriculum vitae and a list of publications
* the name of 3 references;
* a letter clearly stating the motivation to apply.

Deadline for submitting applications is November 1st 2008, or until the
position is filled. Informal inquiries about these vacancies can be sent to
Dr Monica Landoni (monica.landoni@...).

________________

Dr Monica Landoni
Senior Researcher
Faculty of Informatics
University of Lugano USI

ACM SIGIR 2009: Request for mentoring

32nd Annual International ACM SIGIR Conference
Boston, MA, July 19-23 2009.

http://sigir2009.org/

SIGIR is the major international forum for the presentation of new
research results and for the demonstration of new systems and techniques
in the field of information retrieval (IR).

Request for mentoring

http://sigir2009.org/mentoring

The ACM Special Interest Group in Information Retrieval (ACM SIGIR)
offers a mentoring program for papers being submitted to the ACM SIGIR
2009 conference. If you would like help with your submission, you may
ask for a mentor: a person who will help you with your submission to the
SIGIR audience through one-to-one advising, usually via e-mail. A mentor
can also familiarize you with the standards and deadlines of SIGIR
submissions. He or she will also help you understand how to align your
paper with the expectations of the typical SIGIR reviewer. Mentors are
volunteers familiar with successful submissions.

Mentors are primarily available for full papers. To request a mentor,
please send an email to Mounia Lalmas at mounia at acm.org. Requests can
be sent between November 1, 2008 and November 17, 2008. No requests will
be accepted after November 17, 2008. Please include:

- Your name and the names of your co-authors.
- The name of your department or school, and institution.
- A plain-text description of your work (a title and abstract is a
minimum requirement).
- Any specific questions or areas in which you would like help.
- At this stage, please do not include your draft paper.

Reasonable expectations for a mentor include giving advice as to the
most appropriate forum for your work, suggesting improvements to your
submission, suggesting how to deal with language problems, or referring
you to relevant research of which you might not have been aware.
Typically, a mentor might spend 3-7 hours on a submission. We carefully
match mentors to mentees, and wish to support you in developing your
work into a high-quality submission with a good chance of being accepted
and published.

Note the following:

- People requesting mentoring must have an almost complete submission
ready for the mentor to review by the date they request a mentor.
- If there is an experienced information retrieval researcher in your
department, a request for mentoring may be declined.
- Reviewers will not be informed of whether a paper has been mentored.
That is, the fact that a paper was mentored is not considered during the
paper selection process.
- A mentor will be assigned 2-3 days after the request has been made and
approved.

Mentors can be requested from November 1, 2008. The deadline for
mentoring requests is November 17, 2008.

Mounia Lalmas
SIGIR 2009 Mentoring Chair