Date: Monday , 24th October 2005

3pm - 4:30pm

Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, Room S2.32
(Second Floor, Building S)

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But I Took it Out Last Week: The Garbage Can Revisited

Recent work on a model of organization decision making and its implementation as the computer simulation, Greta, is introduced. The model is in the tradition of the garbage can and its variants, but also draws heavily on concepts drawn from research into the power-political model of decision making. The objective is to extend previous explications of the garbage can by putting some real substance into the problems, decision alternatives and actions facing problem solvers within the system. An application of the model and its implementation is presented. This is in the form of a computer-based management game designed for both students of organization and management theory and practising managers. The game has been updated substantially recently and will be demonstrated during the seminar. Early work on this project was reported in (McGrath and More, 2001).

Reference: McGrath, G.M. and More, E. (2001). The Greta System: Organizational Politics Introduced to the Garbage Can, Journal of Decision Support Systems, Vol.31, No.2, pp. 181-195.

Dr Mike McGrath
School of Information Systems
Victoria University

Mike McGrath gained his PhD from Macquarie University in 1993. He is Professor of Information Systems at Victoria University and is currently visiting Monash as part of an Outside Studies Program. He has over 20 years experience in the IT industry - mostly at Telstra, Australia, where he worked in a variety of technical and management positions. Recent research has focused mainly on the development of a high-level information architecture for the Australian tourism industry, on issues associated with the takeup and diffusion of online technologies among small-to-medium tourism enterprises (SMTEs) and on development of a (system dynamics based) business planning simulator designed for prospective SMTE operators. In recent years he has conducted research and consultancy work for Telstra, IBM, Centrelink, DIST (Department of Industry Science and Tourism), NOIE (National Office for the Information Economy) the Department of Defence and Tourism Victoria.

Date: Wednesday, 12th October 2005

10am-11.30am

Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, Clayfield Room (Ground Floor, Building A)

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Visualising archival data : enhancing access to, and understanding of historical data - particularly cultural, social and political determinants of indigenous people

The topic will appeal to researchers and practitioners in many disciplines -
Information Management, Knowledge Management, Archives and Record-Keeping, Multimedia, Human-centred Computer Design, History, Sociology, Geography, Anthropology, Linguistics, Art and Design, and the Performing Arts

Richard Marciano
[ More details shortly ]

Date: Monday, 4th July 2005


Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, S2.32 (Second Floor, building S)

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Intelligent Content Management in Advertainment Production for Olympics 2008: A Study for Collaborative Tasking and Innovation

The Olympics serves not only as a gathering of international athletes – but also an international gathering of users collaborating together on purposeful tasks. 
Under the commission of Humanistic Olympics Research Center for Beijing Olympics 2008, and with support from China State Administration of Radio, Film and TV (SARFT), a team in the Communication University of China (former Beijing Broadcasting Institute, also a member of METIS Global Network – a cross-cultural research organization in multimedia studies), began working on the project of producing an ‘advertainment' portal for the coming Olympics event in Beijing, 2008.
The project involves novel use of technologies and concepts such as: universal description schema of complicated multi-level and high-dimension features of digital contents; effective feature extraction functionalities based on self-learning rules that bridge high-level and low-level semantics; configurable manipulation modules that deal with different levels of multimedia content analysis; intelligent resource allocation; migration and dispatching based on content features and usage patterns; and business intelligence foundation composed of DSS, OLAP and multimedia data mining functionalities.

Dr Cao Sanxing is the Academic Director of the Intelligent Information Processing Laboratory in the Communication University of China (CUC). 
Part of his work in CUC also involves serving as project director for the iMigra project – with part of its findings contributing towards knowledge to the intelligent content management project. 
Organisation of the Olympics project is liaised via the METIS Global Network ( www.metis-global.org ), of which Dr Cao serves as a Coordinative Researcher representing media research in China .  His professional experience also includes appointments as Chief System Architect and Vice-President for the E-Learning Centre, SOIT E-Commerce Technology Co. Ltd, and the Jinming Investment Consulting Co. Ltd. 
In his current capacity he also serves as an editor and paper reviewer to several journals and conferences.  Dr Cao plays a key role in the development of CUC, having also received recently, Honors for Special Contribution of the Strategic Development of CUC.

Date: Friday, 24th June 2005

Time: 3pm - 5pm

Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, S2.32 (Second Floor, building S)

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Myth, Ideology and Paradigm: developing a disciplinary framework for IS
(and for FIT restructures?)

From the time of its birth as an academic discipline, Information Systems has been plagued by doubt and dissension over the nature and extent of its core disciplinary knowledge.  This uncertainty manifests itself implicitly in the nature of the published IS literature, and explicitly in the periodic outbursts of debate on this topic.  There are few signs of the debate reaching a satisfactory resolution in the near future, which is a major problem for the discipline, particularly in the current climate of reduced interest in IT-based fields of study.

This seminar is based on a programme of research work on the nature of IS, and its place within the study of IT.
In particular, the impact of the debate on undergraduate curricula in IS, considered within the broader framework of undergraduate programmes in IT, is being investigated.
The seminar presentation will be focused on the nature of the belief systems from which differing opinions about the nature of IS arise, and on examining the implications of these differences for the types of approaches that can be taken to defining and teaching the discipline.

Martin Atchison is a leading SIMS academic who has played a major role in the Faculty of Information Technology [FIT] Strategic Review, and is currently completing his PhD.

Date:Thursday, 28th April 2005

Time: 2.30pm - 5pm

Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, S2.32 (Second Floor, building S)

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TRUTH, MEMORY AND IDENTITY
Connecting Australia Reconciliation with the International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia

At this very moment, the United Nations, Commission on Human Rights is meeting in Geneva to discuss, among other things, the right to know: the inalienable right of victims of violations of human rights and humanitarian law to know the truth about past events. The right to know invokes the duty to preserve memory as a collective right: a people's knowledge of the history of its oppression is part of its heritage and, as such, must be assured by preserving archives and other evidence concerning violations of human rights and humanitarian law. These and associated principles guide the U.N. and member states in their efforts of bringing the perpetrators of human rights violations to account. The principles are at the basis of truth commissions and reconciliation programs. Justice, provided by international and national judicial bodies, is also bound up with the right to know the truth and preserving memory. This Forum will explore how truth and memory, as instruments for reconciliation and justice, shape the identities of 'communities of recollections' (as John Stuart Mill called it) in space-time.

Date:  Friday,
11th March 2005

Time:
10:30 to 12 noon

Location: Monash Caulfield Campus, Building F, Level 2, Room F2.01

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The Future of the IS Discipline: Part Two

Abstract: Whilst there is much talk about whether there is or is not a future for the IS discipline, in this seminar Rudy Hirschheimattempts to articulate what the current thinking is from a US perspective. He also offers some thoughts on what the discipline can do to avoid the pitfalls of what happened with disciplines like Operations Research who failed to recognize the changing academic and practitioner landscape. The session is an interactive one, where everyone is able to share their thoughts on this vital topic.