Thursday, December 27, 2012

IS-LAB / University of the Aegean participates in Technology Foresight project consultation



The FORSEE / NETEUCEN open consultation event 
Thessaloniki 14 Dec 2012 Greece

On 14 December 2012 in Thessaloniki, Greece, the University of Patras, the University of Macedonia and the Industrial Systems Institute organized a national Open Consultation event targeting a foresight for ICT development in the South Eastern European region.

The ‘FORSEE http://www.forsee.eu/index.php  - Regional ICT Foresight exercise for Southeast European countries’ project  aims to introduce a sustainable mechanism for ICT Foresight in the region, attempting to tackle the absence of a regular process applied for technological future orientation and research policy review.

NET-EUCEN http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/neteucen-project-on-citizencentric-egovernance  project, was presented and discussed with experts by Yannis Koulizakis & Elena Spanou, MSc researchers of the Information Systems Laboratory of the University of Aegean, under the guidance of Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant Professor at the Department of Information and Communication Systems.

NET-EUCEN project creates, animates and manages a working network of stakeholders in the Governance and Policy Modeling domains belonging to all the European countries and with relevant knowledge of massive on-line service fruition and eInclusion policies and interests, thus covering the whole supply chain of the Service for Users (S4U).

The project addresses the following objectives:

  • to set-up a network composed by experienced S4U European stakeholders, sharing common practices, objectives and work methods;
  • to assess new and innovative application scenarios and foster their industrialization, set-up all over Europe by supporting the multidisciplinary approach to the finding of innovative ICT solutions for citizens, public administrations and large communities. 


Three parallel workshops took place at the second session. Discussion and evaluation of SWOT analysis in 3 subject areas (e-health, e-Government and Digital content) in the field of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).

In the third and the last session the headers of the workshops presented the results and the proposals of the discussions. The aim of the open dialogue was to compare the views of public and private sector professionals toward the subjects of the projects.

See more at: http://www.net-eucen.org 

Monday, December 17, 2012

Uni AEGEAN participates in Citadel on the Move Project - Athens Pilot


Citadel on the Move (http://www.citadelonthemove.eu/) aims to make it easier for citizens and application developers from across Europe to use Open Data to create the type of innovative mobile applications that they want and need. At present, Open Government Data is often difficult to access and use by the developer community, let alone the average citizen. Citadel on the Move aims to fulfill this need by:
·    Creating formats that make it easier for local government to release data in usable, interoperable formats
·   Developing Templates that make it easier for citizens to create mobile applications that can be potentially shared across Europe creating services that can be used on any device, anytime, anywhere.
Citadel Smart City Vision

DAEM (http://www.daem.gr) is the oldest and largest computer company in the field of local government operating since 1983. DAEM started 26 years ago as a company computer for the Municipality of Athens and was one of the pioneers in the application of new technologies. From then till now, DAEM has opened horizons transferring the power of information to citizens’ everyday life and is a modern, dynamic company focusing on IT systems and infrastucture. This company is responsible for the pilot of the city of Athens in the Sector of Transportation.

In the first phase of this pilot, there was a need to create a group of developers called as closed group, who, according to the available application templates and the available open data, will develop mobile applications.

A group of 5 MSc students and PhD Candidates from the University of the Aegean / Information Systems Lab under the leadership of Yannis Charalabidis, Assistant Professor in Uni Aegean, collaborated with DAEM and participated in testing of CITADEL pilot templates. After experimenting with the various application development templates, the ISL team provided feedback concerning the overall concept, technical issues to be resolved, suggestions and ideas on new features.

Friday, November 30, 2012

The UW iSchool presentation on Open Data and Collaborative Governance



The University of Washington (UW) 

  • The University of Washington is a multi-campus university in SeattleTacoma and Bothell.
  • UW has 16 colleges and schools and offer 1,800 undergraduate courses each quarter.
  • UW confers more than 12,000 bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral and professional degrees annually.

The UW Information School: A Home for Innovators and Leaders

As a leading member of the iSchool movement, the UW is a model for other information schools around the globe. The UW iSchool's approach to information instruction and scholarship builds on the traditional roles filled by information professionals and infuses this with a strong emphasis on the technologies through which information is increasingly delivered. By tackling key social and technical problems in the information field, the iSchool has become an important link between users of information and designers of information systems, connecting society with the information it needs.




Research Conversations: Open Data Challenges


Open Data and Collaborative Governance: Perspectives and Research Challenges

Presented by Professor Yannis Charalabidis, University of the Aegean

This research conversation presents current innovations and initiatives in the area of collaborative governance. Open and linked data, social media – based policy deliberation and electronic participation, policy modeling and simulation, serious games, citizen-driven service development, collective awareness and social innovation, opinion mining and sentiment analysis constitute new, interdisciplinary research areas for administrations worldwide, promising a more transparent and effective governance model. Participants will have the chance to see the state of the art and practice in European Union member states and projects, reflect upon the challenges and foreseen obstacles to overcome through applications of information and communication science. Learn and join open worldwide initiatives and research communities working on open and collaborative governance and see the future trends in ICT-enabled governance and policy informatics.

View of the class filling-in, before the lecture

Yannis Charalabidis and Jochen Scholl at UW 


More information: http://ischool.uw.edu/events/research-conversations-open-data-challenges

FInd my presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/open-data-and-collabodative-governance-research-perspectives-and-challenges

Thursday, November 15, 2012

Call for Chapters: IGI Book on Enterprise Interoperability Scientific Foundations


Editors
Yannis Charalabidis (University of Aegean, Greece)
Fenareti Lampathaki (National Technical University of Athens, Greece)
Ricardo Jardim-Goncalves (UNINOVA, Portugal)



Proposals Submission Deadline: November 30, 2012

Full Chapters Due: February 27, 2013


Introduction
Future Internet plays an important role in the quest of organizations and enterprises to become more competitive, enlarge their target markets, and develop innovative products and services while transforming towards new business models. Within this quest, Enterprise Interoperability (EI) has been a thriving applied research domain, studying the problems related to the lack of interoperability in the organizations and proposing novel methods and frameworks for enterprise integration and collaboration problems. However, in spite of the research methods and tools developed so far, the scientific foundations for EI that would permit their generalization and complete reuse have not yet been established. In this context, this book will contribute in the systematic analysis and publication of cutting-edge methods, tools, and approaches for assisting scientists and organizations in their quest for scientific-oriented, reusable, and reproducible interoperability solutions.

Objective of the Book
This book aims at providing the latest research advancements and findings for the scientific systematization of Enterprise Interoperability knowledge, such as core concepts, foundational principles, theories, methodologies, architectures, assessment frameworks, and future directions. It will bring forward the ingredients of this new domain, proposing its needed formal and systematic tools, exploring its relation with neighbouring scientific domains, and finally prescribing the next steps for eventually achieving the thrilling goal of laying the foundations of a new science.

Target Audience
The audience of the book includes:
* Researchers and Practitioners in the Interoperability Domain who will benefit from a documentation of the existing knowledge and from the recommended directions for future research.
* University Students and Professors of Computer Science, Software Engineering, and Management Sciences who will gain insights to the interoperability repercussions in their domains.
* ICT industry professionals engaged in interoperability solutions, software design and deployment projects, and modelling methods, as well as industry in general, who will find guidelines and reproducible solutions to identified problems.
* Policy makers and decision drivers at the local, national, or international level who will find recommendations on how to promote the scientific aspects of interoperability.

Recommended topics include, but are not limited to, the following:
This book focuses on shedding light on the underlying body of knowledge in the enterprise interoperability domain and on formulating and structuring the knowledge gained through pragmatic research in the domain over the last decades in order to avoid repeating research and missing opportunities for application.

Scientific Foundations of Interoperability:
* Basic research questions, key concepts, generic laws, and foundational principles of enterprise interoperability
* Ontologies, taxonomies, lexicons and other semantic elements for interoperability
* Formal methods to describe interoperability problems and solutions with an enterprise context
* Propositions on novel enterprise models, with interoperability semantics
* Populations of formal descriptions, generalization of interoperability approaches
* Definition and design of Interoperability knowledge bases
* Impact assessment frameworks, simulation methods, and tools for interoperability
* Models and tools for traversing problem-solution paths
* Metrics and algorithmic models for interoperability
* Other  scientific methods for interoperability

Interoperability and its Neighbouring Scientific Domains:
* Definition of scientific foundations, epistemological issues in science
* Taxonomies of the neighbouring scientific domains
* Methodologies for recognition of neighbouring scientific domains and identification of reusable elements
* Analysis of neighbouring scientific domains
* Shared formal and other descriptive methods identification
* Analysis of scientific methods for interoperability in other research domains

Perspectives and future research directions for Interoperability:
* Action plans for sustainability and evolution of scientific disciplines, in general, and interoperability, in particular, towards their scientific recognition
* Open research challenges and hypotheses for interoperability
* Visionary Scenarios of interoperable organizations
* Proposals on the value proposition and marketing of the scientific offerings for interoperability
* Guidelines and recommendations to key stakeholders

Submission Procedure
Researchers and practitioners are invited to submit on or before November 30th, 2012, a 2-3 page chapter proposal clearly explaining the mission and concerns of his or her proposed chapter. Authors of accepted proposals will be notified by December 30th, 2012 about the status of their proposals and sent chapter guidelines.

Full chapters must be between 8,000 and 10,000 words and are expected to be submitted by February 27th, 2013. All submitted chapters will be reviewed on a double-blind review basis.

Chapter formatting guidelines for edited books can be found at http://www.igi-global.com/publish/contributor-resources/.

Publisher
This book is scheduled to be published by IGI Global (formerly Idea Group Inc.), publisher of the “Information Science Reference” (formerly Idea Group Reference), “Medical Information Science Reference,” “Business Science Reference,” and “Engineering Science Reference” imprints. For additional information regarding the publisher, please visit www.igi-global.com.

Important Dates
November 30, 2012:     Proposal Submission Deadline
December 30, 2012:     Notification of Acceptance
February 27, 2013:        Full Chapter Submission
April 15, 2013:                Review Results Returned
May 30, 2013:                 Revised, Camera-Ready Chapters Submission
2nd semester 2013:      Book Publication

Call for Papers: Special Issue on Open and Linked Data for Science and Society

Special Issue on Open and Linked Data for Science and Society


Introduction
Transforming Government: People, Process & Policy (TG:PPP) – Transforming Government publishes leading scholarly and practitioner research on the subject of transforming Government through its people, processes and policy. Unique and progressive in its approach, the journal seeks to recognise both the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary perspectives of e‐Government, and welcomes both pure and applied research that impacts central and local Government. International perspectives are also welcome. The journal is also interested in exploring how research carried out in the private sector can be applied to the public sector as a means of improving efficiency and effectiveness. The journal is in its sixth year of publication.

Special Issue Scope
Open government data provide an unprecedented opportunity for societies to move towards transparency, evidence-based decisions, enhanced cohesion, public engagement and trust. Public Sector Information (PSI) may be offered as ”open and linked data” in many forms and through different media: from simple datasets describing traffic or unemployment, to web services linking and mashing information from different sources, to interactive visualization of complex phenomena, to citizen-based data gathering and transmission. In this way, data can be made available to scientists, citizens and enterprises, who in turn can use this for developing and offering value-adding services, thus forming a network or ecosystem around publicly available open data. All these developments require a solid base of empirical investigations, forward-looking positions, conceptual frameworks, methods, tools and services to be made available towards scientific, entrepreneurial and citizen communities.

Coverage
This Special Issue of TGPPP Journal solicits original high quality papers presenting theoretical frameworks or technical approaches to open and linked data that depict sound positions and views for advancing the provision, usage and final utilization of open data by scientists of all scientific domains, citizens and businesses. Topics of interest in this area include, but are not limited to: 
• Justification of requirements for public sector information, orienting from any scientific domain
• Examples and best practices of open data utilization for policy-making and scientific purposes
• Visionary ideas on open data utilization within society
• Metadata schemas for open and linked data management
• Methods and tools for open data acquisition, curation, management and publication
• Methods and tools for integrating and combining open data from distributed heterogeneous sources
• Methods and tools for combining linked open data with in-house or open structured information systems in the ‘deep web’
• Information systems and services for open data gathering and provision
• New approaches for public sector information visualization
• Collaborative governance approaches involving the use of open data
• Open data and citizen participation in information gathering / crowdsourcing
• New governance and business models for open data “ecosystems”
• Legal provisions and open issues at national and European level, regarding re-use of governmental data
• International cooperation in the field of open and linked data

Excellent contributors should provide multi-disciplinary approaches, possibly combining information science with social sciences, management, finance, engineering or law, to allow uptake of open data by diverse scientific domains, for modeling or solving complex societal problems.

Submission
Submissions must constitute original work and will be submitted to a double blind reviewing process.
Detailed instructions/author guidelines for the preparation of manuscripts are provided at: http://www.emeraldinsight.com/products/journals/author_guidelines.htm?id=tg
Submissions of full manuscripts should be made via the ScholarOne system available at: http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tgppp

Important Dates
· Submission deadline (full papers): March 15, 2013
· Camera-ready deadline (for accepted papers): September 2013

Guest Editors
Ass. Prof. Yannis Charalabidis
University of the Aegean
Greece
Email: yannisx@aegean.gr

Assoc. Prof. Marijn Janssen
Delft University of Technology
The Netherlands
Email: m.f.w.h.a.janssen@tudelft.nl

Dr. Keith Jeffery
Science and Technology Facilities Council
United Kingdom
Email: keith.jeffery@stfc.ac.uk

Wednesday, October 17, 2012

New Book on eParticipation in Southern Europe and the Balkans by Routledge



A new book on e-Participation in Southern Europe and the Balkans is just published, by Routledge. In this, together with Euripidis Loukis and Ann Macintosh we present several cases of electronic participation in southern European countries. The rapid development and the growing penetration of information and communication technologies (ICT) provide tremendous opportunities for a wide and cost effective application of the ideas of participative democracy and public participation in government decision and policy making. ICT can drive dramatic transformations in the quantity and quality of communication and interaction of government organizations with  citizens, revitalizing and strengthening the modern representative democracy which currently faces big problems of reduced citizens’ trust and involvement.




This book deals with the application of these e-participation ideas in the special and ‘difficult’, and at the same time highly interesting, national context of Southern Europe and the Balkans. The first chapter provides an overview of e-participation concepts and practices whilst the following chapters analyse pilot applications of e-participation concepts in eight different Southern European and Balkan countries (Spain, France, Italy, Slovenia, Serbia, Albania, Greece, Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM)). They cover both the ‘classical’ e-participation paradigm, based on official e-participation spaces created, operated and controlled by government organizations as well as emerging new e-participation paradigms including e-participation based on web 2.0 social media, and ‘scientific-level’ e-participation, based on opening government data to the scientific community.

This book is available in Amazon, at: http://www.amazon.com/E-Participation-Southern-Europe-Balkans-Participation/dp/0415623596/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1350473290&sr=1-3

Thursday, October 11, 2012

The ENSEMBLE project on Future Internet Enterprise Systems

The ENSEMBLE project (http://www.ensemble-csa.eu), funded by the European Commission, aims to coordinate research activities in the domain of Future Internet Enterprise Systems (FInES). Furthermore, ENSEMBLE aims to study systematically and formalize Enterprise Interoperability (EI) as a scientific domain, by combining systemic approaches, scientific multi-disciplinarity and a community-driven mentality. 

The final review of the project was done in European Commission premises in Brussels, in early October 2012.  It was a unanimous opinion by all participating experts that ENSEMBLE greatly contributed towards the two main objectives of the future internet enterprise systems community (the FInES cluster):

- The establishment of the Enterprise Interoperability Science Base
- The creation of the Research Roadmap for Future Internet Enterprise Systems

The ENSEMBLE team, from left to right: Charis Vassiliou, Michele Missikof, Keith Popplewell, Carlos Agostinho,
Vivian Kioussi, John Psarras, Fenareti Lampathaki, Yannis Charalabidis, Ricardo Goncalves

More information on the project deliverables can be found at: http://www.ensemble-csa.eu 

NOMAD Project Focus Group, at the Hellenic Parliament


The NOMAD project on Policy Formulation through non moderated crowdsourcing, organised with great success a focus group, which took place in the premises of the Hellenic Parliament, on the 17th September 2012 in Athens. 

The workshop was hosted by the European Programs Implementation Service of the Hellenic Parliament, produced valuable outcome for the continuation of the project thanks to the broad participation of people involved in policy making procedures. Specifically, approximately twenty people attended the event, among them members of the Hellenic Parliament’s Scientific Committees, policy advisors, representatives of NGOs and collective organisations. 


During the focus group, the NOMAD concept on providing tools to support policy makers’ decisions, through web content extraction, analysis and public opinion mining, was introduced to the participants. Then, the related technologies were demonstrated through a real use-case scenario on the “Energy planning” domain, triggering a lot of reactions by the audience. 




The discussion that followed was a very nice opportunity to gather feedback from potential end users and identify their needs regarding the capabilities that services and solutions to support them in policy formulation in an automated way, should provide. The participants showed intense interest in the project. More specifically, they were expressed with enthusiasm towards the capability of NOMAD to show how specific arguments based on the opinions of citizens can change in a specified time. They desire NOMAD to visualise these results and depict the trend of different arguments of a specific policy accompanied with geo-demographic information. They highlighted that they usually use social media to get a grasp of citizens’ opinions, but they have not found a systematic tool for this yet. Thus, as it was notably mentioned, they ideally expect from NOMAD to provide “a tool that will enable policy makers to establish political discourse with valid scientific reasoning”.

Finally, the audience was asked to fill in a questionnaire in order to collect information about their experience in using social networking as a tool to assist policy making processes, and tools that use the internet for better decision making. The input will help NOMAD consortium to design and develop tools that will use Internet and social networks for more effective decision making and policy formulation. 



For more information visit the project’s website www.nomad-project.eu  and connect with NOMAD Social media streams:


   

Wednesday, October 3, 2012

The eGovernment Summit in Saudi Arabia


The 3rd Annual Kingdom eGovernment Summit was held in Riyadh, on 25th and 26th of September 2012.  The Summit aimed to build awareness and accelerate the integration of e-Government in the day-to-day activities of the public sector and the services it offers to businesses and citizens. 

Leading solution providers had the opportunity to meet up to 150 influential Government officials representing a variety of key Saudi Arabian governmental bodies, giving experts the chance to discuss business solutions and upcoming ICT projects in Saudi Arabia and the GCC Region.

I had the pleasure to be among the invited experts / speakers, together with friends and colleagues from other European Union member states, such as Jeremy Millard (DTI, Denmark), Carlos Jimenez (Catalunia Administration), Blaz Golob (CeGD, Slovenia), Frank Leyman (Belgian Administration).

View of the audience at the Interoperability Session
My first talk targeted Open Data and Collaborative Governance, briefly presenting some "lessons from he field" and some insights on the ENGAGE Open Data e-Infrastructure project.  You may find my presentation here: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/open-data-and-collab 

Then, I had to moderate a session on eGovernment Interoperability, stating progress in European Union: European Interoperability Framework, National Interoperability Frameworks, SEMIC.EU,  the CIP Flagships (STORK, PEPPOL, SPOCS), W3C and IEEE working groups on interoperability in public administration formed a good part of the agenda.

View of the panel at the Open Data session

The Al Maasmak castle at the old city


Riyadh is a city of 5 million people, with several spots that are worth visiting, like the Kingdom Tower (where you can see the whole city from 300 metres / 99 stores high) or the Al Masmaak Castle (where a very important battle took place on 1902, eventually leading to the establishment of Saudi Arabia independent state).  



 
With Blaz Golob, CeGD Ljubljana, at the Kingdom Tower / view of Riyadh




Tuesday, September 18, 2012

Invited Lecture on Open Data at TU Delft

The lounge at TU Delft
It was a great pleasure and honour to give a lecture on "Open Data: Perspectives and Challenges" at the
students of the Master programme “Systems Engineering, Policy Analysis and Management”.

You may see the whole programme of the MSc at www.tbm.tudelft.nl/sepam

The lecture was attended by 30 first-year students, with relevantly little technical and administrative knowldege of Open Data. So, in the first 45 minutes we try to solve some "mysteries" of open data though visiting several open data sites and knowledge sources, while discussing on the various organisational and technical perspectives.

A panoramic view of the class at TU Delft.  
This part of the lecture was supported by a couple of social media and cloud resources made on site:

- A twitter hashtag (#opendatadelft) where we could post questions, links and pictures.
- A google doc for listing online questions and answers on open data issues
A little more than 1/3 of the class participated on-line, some creating twitter accounts on the fly.

The second part of the lectured focused on new challenges for open data systems, around metadata management, demand and supply of open data, scientific research on open data and more.
You may see the slides at: http://www.slideshare.net/charalabidis/on-open-data

With Marijn Jannssen, professor and host at TU Delft

You may see the full 1,5 hour lecture at:
http://collegerama.tudelft.nl/Mediasite/Play/e22f9f28c90f4530aa797231266f33121d?catalog=774d1bd9-cbeb-4aeb-9995-99c059ae3cf5

Monday, September 17, 2012

11th IFIP EGOV Conference – ENGAGE workshop and best paper award


Uni Agder prof., at the Kristiansand Arts Theater 
The eleventh conference on Electronic Government (eGOV 2012) sponsored by IFIP was held in beautiful Kristiansand, Norway on the first week of September 2012.  The conference provided a highly interactive and professional forum for exchanging research concepts, progress and results.   As in the past, IFIP EGOV featured refereed paper presentations, invited keynote presentations, high‐level discussion panels, workshops and a PhD Colloquium.

Kristiansand is really a very nice, for some too quiet, small city in a very green and blue environment (ideal for a Greek, if it was warmer at winter).  But so “cosy” and so close to sailing at open sea …

The first day started with listening to the keynote speech of Jon Hovland, PhD, Advisor to the e-Governance unit, Ministry of Administration, Reform and Church Affairs, Norway.  Jon gave a broad and inspiring view of the next plans and actions for an open, collaborative administration in Norway, and, administering the …

ENGAGE project workshop on open data
  • Anneke Zuiderwijk, Delft University of Technology: “Benefits and impediments of challenges for the use of open government data”.
  • Yannis Charalabidis, University of AEGEAN: “The ENGAGE platform for open data: Characteristics and Challenges”. After the ENGAGE platform presentation participants were asked to provide answers to questions on the functionality and the usability of the ENGAGE tools.
  • Marijn Janssen, Delft University of Technology: “Open data and the need for transforming government”, on the type of transformations that are needed in governmental organizations to make the provision of open government data successful.
Analytical questionnaires on open data requirements and a lot of comments and suggestions were collected from the workshop participants.


View of the participants at the Kristiansand Castle


The evening reception at the Castle, hosted by the Mayor and the Universiy of Agder, was attended by many participants.

With the awards comittee at the celebration

Some good news we had during the dinner on the second day, that was held in the magnificent and nicely placed Kristiansand music/arts theater: 

Our paper “Issues and guiding principles for opening governmental judicial research data”, by Anneke Zuiderwijk , Marijn Janssen, Ronald Meijer, Sunil Choenni, Yannis Charalabidis and Keith Jeffery won the Best Paper Award, for the Category “most promising practical concept”



The Best 2012 Paper Award 

The next day, our paper on the NOMAD eGovernance Project on Non-moderated Crowd-sourcing  was presented at the ePart conference. Finally, the plane left before 06:00, still night in Kristiansand …
Morning lign-up from Kristiansand to the world ... (05:30)


Wednesday, August 15, 2012

On Telescopes and Cameras: The Aegean Moon

During my visit in Tinos, Cyclades, I managed to pack and assemble a nice pair of telescope + camera, in a night with a half moon over the Aegean sea.

The telescope was a MEADE DS 2130 ATX (1020 mm), equipped with a 2X Barlow Lens and a NIKON mount ring (total cost around 500 EUR - slighthly more than half of the 18-200 Nikon zoom, which was not needed during the photoshoot).

The NIKON D90 body was mounted without ny lens and used to control the sutter speed and ISO, as focusing was done with the telescope knob (the weak part in the whole system).

Amazingly though, you could see the moon through the NIKON screen, even have video.

The main picture is below (with some edge recognition):



Mostly interesting thought was the video capabilities and result.  You can see the moon moving at real time below:



What we really see at the video, is the moon moving with a speed of 1 Km / second, covering a distance of 60 km in almost one minute.


Thursday, August 9, 2012

Aegean University meets IT industry and research: The Athens 2012 Roadshow

More than 30 pre and post-graduate students from the Information and Communication Systems Engineering Department, of the Aegean University in Samos, visited organisations, companies and research centres in Athens, during 5-7 June 2012.  The trip was an initiative of the University Carreer Office and the Information Systems Laboratory.

On-site visits were arranged for Microsoft Innovation Centre, Singular Logic, Athens Information Technology, Intrasoft International and the Athens International Airport.  The Athens 2012 Roadshow was concluded on June 7th, in a workshop at DANAOS Cinema, where students presented their projects, viewed presentations and discussed with more than 20 company and organisation executives, representing:
  • WinBank
  • Eurobank
  • Microsoft
  • SoftOne
  • Obrela Security
  • Taxi Beat
  • Simple Web Design
  • Parking Defenders
  • Games2Gaze
  • e-Trikala
  • Diastasys
  • CosmoOne
  • AllWeb
  • Athens Rail Transport (Metro / Tram)
  • Critical Publics

At the Microsoft Innovation Centre Athens

With Stelios Pantelopoulos, at Singular Logic


At the Athens Information Technology 

A view from the audience at DANAOS Cinema

At the Athens International Airport / IT Division





Monday, July 23, 2012

New Book on ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling

A new title was published by NTUA and Bookstars publishing on Governance and Policy Modelling.  Edited by Yannis Charalabidis, Fenareti Lampathaki and Dimitris Askounis, the book is titled "Paving the way for future research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling" and contains several chapters on how information technology can assist governance.

Taken from the preface:

"This book is a result of the collaborative effort of several internationally renowned policy scientists, complex system theorists, governance researchers, economists, management science and ICT experts, under the guidance of the CROSSROAD team.

Seville, Athens, Brussels, Lausanne and Samos Island have been welcoming venues for this group, offering opportunities for highly innovative and productive brainstorming. But, clearly, the on-line deliberation toolset deployed by CROSSROAD was the key differentiating factor, engaging several hundred researchers, public sector decision-makers, industry representatives and citizens.

May we all remember this collective experience in the times to come, a little proud that we tried the difficult road: not to just “do the things right”, but to make an attempt towards “doing the right things” for ICTenabled Governance and evidence-based decision making.

For us, for our children, for our society."

You may download the entire book as PDF here: http://crossroad.epu.ntua.gr/files/2010/02/CROSSROAD_Book-vf-allinon.pdf

You may cite this work as following:

Charalabidis Y., Lampathaki F., Askounis. D.: «Paving the way for Future Research in ICT for Governance and Policy Modelling», pp. 1 - 159, ISBN 978-960-6815-92-2, Bookstars Publishing, 2012

Friday, July 13, 2012

The 3rd Samos Summit 2012 on Open Data and Interoperability

More than 80 high-level ICT experts and decision makers from 20 countries participated in the international Samos 2012 Summit on “Open Data and Interoperability for Governance, Industry and Society”, that took place from 2nd  to 6th  July 2012 in  the island of Samos.


The Samos 2012 Summit on Open Data and Interoperability was co-organised by the University of Aegean, the Greek Interoperability Centre of the National Technical University of Athens, the ENGAGE eInfrastructures project (co-funded by the European Commission) and the ENSEMBLE Support Action (under the auspices of the Future Internet Enterprise Systems cluster of DG Connect), in order to foster international cooperation and strive for a new research and practice agenda in open data, collaborative governance, enterprise interoperability and future internet systems.


With an emphasis on Open Data, Interoperability and a new participative governance model for the public sector, the enterprise and within a connected, inclusive society, the Samos Summit was a first-class opportunity to see, interact with and influence cutting-edge European ICT research projects and initiatives.

The Samos Summit participants came from more than 20 countries, representing research and development centres of Google, IBM, Microsoft, Intrasoft International, Engineering, TXT, Whitehall Reply, Athens Technology Centre, Fraunhofer, Poznan supercomputing centre, Cycorp and more.  Representatives from several collective bodies and organizations joined the discussions and workshops of the Summit including W3C, ISA (European Commission unit for interoperability), EGI (European grid infrastructure), the Hellenic Parliament and Greek, Austrian, Slovenian, Spanish, Italian  public sector / eGovernment units.  See the List of Participants for more information.

The key messages of the Summit, as presented in the Samos Declaration, put the emphasis on the following actions:
  • Raise the legal and administrative barriers which prevent the spreading of open data
  • Support research on metadata, core vocabularies and visualization, as new ways of discovering and using open data
  • Promote innovation and entrepreneurship on open data applications for the public
  • Support open data use by science, in a global effort to reach evidence-based decision making on societal problems
  • Promote scientific approaches in solving interoperability issues, and especially the Interoperability Scientific Foundations
  • Strive for open data and interoperability “killer-apps”, in order to illustrate the power of ICT tools towards wider audiences
  • Foster collaboration among scientific communities, industry, SMEs, public sector and citizens, towards an ecosystem where the immense potential of open, interoperable data will be exploited

For more information and all the presentations and workshops of the Samos 2012 Summit visit: www.samos-summit.org

Samos 2012 Participants, outside Karlovassi Town Hall.
(with Uni Aegean students / researchers dancing team)


Participants at the Conference Site - Doryssa Hotel




Tweet Report #1: Tweets per user (1662 total in 3 days)

Tweet Report #2: Tweets per device (iOS rules...)

Tweet Report #3: Tweets (1662) vs retweets (2000+)

Tweet Report #4: Most common words in tweets