An Interesting Workshop in Venice

I hope to see you there!

Workshop: Mediterranean Research on Free/Libre and Open Source Software 


Co-located with the Mediterranean Conference on Information Systems
Venice, Italy – 5 October 2006 – http://mcis2006.org


Workshop Co-Chairs:
Vincenzo D'Andrea, dandrea-reGABNQHgu//[email protected]
Department of Information and Communication Technologies,
University of Trento, Italy
Stefano De Paoli, stefano.depaoli-sSCKxaTP/Nr/[email protected]
Maurizio Teli, maurizio.teli-sSCKxaTP/Nr/[email protected]
Department of Sociology and Social Research,
University of Trento, Italy

Rationale:

Free/Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS) is a growing phenomenon,
changing the way in which information systems are developed, distributed
and implemented. The changes in the intellectual property regime, as
well as in the organizing practices and in the technology produced,
stimulate new questions and new answers to old questions. In the last
few years, a large number of researches focused on the motivations of
FLOSS developers, on how do they organize themselves and on how is it
possible to produce high quality software in loosely coupled contexts.

New emergent approaches, focusing, for example, on the practises and the
materiality of FLOSS, are contributing to the growing level of academic
discussions on FLOSS, as well as to its understanding, and to improving
IS development and FLOSS diffusion.

The aim of this workshop is to discuss with researchers and
practitioners, mainly coming from the Mediterranean region, if there are
new topics to be considered or new approaches in the study of
consolidated topics. The workshop flavour is that of the Social Studies
of Information Systems, so we solicit contributions by researchers
coming from social sciences and information systems fields, as well as
from practitioners. The workshop is intended as a dialogue between
different disciplines and perspectives. 

The workshop will focus on new approaches related to the following, non
exhaustive, list of topics:

      * new approaches to the study of FLOSS and related phenomena
        
      * developers and companies motivations: new approaches
        
      * organizing communities: new approaches
        
      * developing high quality FLOSS software: new approaches
        
      * FLOSS as a socio – technical phenomenon
        
      * intellectual property issues and FLOSS
        
      * designing FLOSS software and communities
        


Invited speaker: Yuwei Lin.

Workshop Description:

The workshop format is a full day, with presentations and discussions.
Perspective participants should send a brief (150 words maximum)
description of their focus of interest in the workshop topics.
Participants wishing to give a presentation during the workshop are
required to send an extended abstract of the presentation subject (1000
words maximum). All submission must include contact information and
affiliation, and must be sent to floss-d/8kSo/[email protected] September 20th.
Notification of acceptance will be sent on September 23rd. 


The registration to the Workshop is free for MCIS 2006 participants.
Without MCIS2006 registration, the workshop cost is 90 Euro. Workshop
registration does not include lunch or coffee breaks in the conference
centre cafeteria.


-- 
Maurizio Teli
PhD Candidate
Information Systems and Organizations
Department of Sociology and Social Research
University of Trento
mobile +39 335 6148320
maurizio.teli-sSCKxaTP/Nr/[email protected]