‘Creative practice, complexity and the creative economy’ Research Symposium

The role of complexity in the creative economies: connecting people, ideas and practice: a research project In the past 12 months, the organizers have been involved the AHRC funded project. The role of complexity in the creative economies: connecting people, ideas and practice (AH/J5001413/1). The project aimed to explore how complexity theory and its methodological approaches can help in providing a better understanding of the creative economy as a field of research by connecting various distinctive theoretical and methodological perspectives. The aim was to outline a broader analytical framework to bridge the interrelation of ideas, people and practices in the creative economy within broader socio, cultural and economic contexts. A detailed project outline is available online: http://bit.ly/wjbZ48

Call for Papers

This research symposium constitutes the closing event of the AHRC funded project The role of complexity in the creative economies: connecting people, ideas and practice (AH/J5001413/1). During the symposium, there will be presentations and discussions on the findings emerging from the research project. However, the symposium also aims to be a platform for other academics or practitioners doing research on the interactions between complexity theory, creative practice and the creative economy and will provide an opportunity for knowledge sharing on the research. As such, the organizers are seeking contributions from academic and practitioners discussing their investigations and experiences of using complexity theory in their research on the creative economy or in their creative practice and the potential methodological challenges involved.
We aim to make presentations and relevant information available electronically at www.complexity-creative-economy.net and further outlets for publication and dissemination are also going to be suggested to take this debate forward.

Submitting an Abstract

All interested scholars and practitioners are invited to submit, by email, an abstract for their proposed contribution to the symposium of around 1,000 words by no later than 1st April 2012 to the organisers. Abstracts must include full contact details. Decisions regarding contribution acceptance will be communicated within two weeks from the abstracts submission deadline.

The Briefing – R&D News

In the days where paper was king there was a good reason why lots of different publications covered the same stories: they had to serve their readers, and there was a good chance that they did not have the opportunity to read more than a few magazines a month. With the web, that has changed. People don’t copiously read a single magazine site, they surf the net.

Engineers are not tied to a single technical area: most likely they are interested in many. But the practice that was useful in the old days—that of the same story duplicated in many publications—has continued, and causes information overload now.

I think that what we as technologists, engineers, programmers and scientists want is to be kept well informed on lots of subjects without having to wade through 1000 RSS articles per day: most of which are consumer trivia, self-serving press releases, duplicates, share-price tracking, and other things that just waste our time.

At The Briefing, we see our contribution as being to wade through those 1000 articles for you and pull out the ones that genuinely seem to be interesting and new. Then we make them easy to navigate or search through. On top of that, we aim to fill gaps left by the existing media with our own coverage.

One of the things that makes us different from many aggregation sites is that we do this in a completely honest way. We don’t pretend the stories are ours: we don’t pull them into our site. Instead, we send you to the source that brought the story to us.

Another thing that makes us different is that our site is not completely cluttered up with ads. Apart from the banner ad at the top of the page, we have no plans to do any kind of display advertising at all. Our goal is to make money only when it’s a win-win-win situation: a win for the reader, a win for the affiliate, and a win for us. That means that we don’t mind earning money if it’s from something that the reader will find useful anyway (like a jobs listing), but we do mind earning money from flashing boxes that offend, annoy, and generally take up valuable space that could be filled with news.

We hope that you think this is a job worth doing and will support us either by actively contributing your expertise to the service—even if that simply means telling us what you think does and doesn’t work on the site—and/or by subscribing to our premium RSS feeds. We’re sharing our subscription income with our contributors, and we’d all appreciate the money!

Sunny Bains
Editorial Director
The Briefing

source: http://the-briefing.com/

ASSYST Workshop on Mathematics for the Dynamics of Multilevel Systems

Following highly successful meetings on Mathematics in the Science of Complex Systems at ECLT in Venice and Warwick University in February and June 2011, we are holding the meeting Mathematics for the Dynamics of Multilevel Systems at the European Centre for Living Technology, Venice, 26th – 28th February 2012.

This meeting takes place in the context of the recent DYM-CS call from FET. That call closes in January 2012. Our meeting will give an opportunity for those who have participated in this call to share their ideas before the evaluations, and it aims to create a collaborative context for the projects which are selected for funding. There is no conference fee and accommodation, meals and some travel support will be provided. Attendance is strictly limited. Anyone wishing to attend this meeting should contact [email protected] saying briefly their interest in the meeting and why they should be allocated a place. Places will be allocated on the basis of engagement with the DYM-CS programme and/or individuals having a clear contribution to make to the DYM-CS community. We expect to be oversubscribed and apologise in advance that we cannot accept everyone on this occasion.

source: http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7/ict/fet-proactive/dymcs_en.html

Reports from ECCS11 Bursary Winners

One of the work packages of ASSYST is to provide conference support and, in particular, to attempt to increase variety in the CS community by supporting female scientists and minority groups. This year we provided 32 bursaries to people to attend ECCS’11. The bursaries provided limited contributions towards the conference fee and/or travel expenses for female scientists, young researchers, and others who would otherwise be unable to attend ECCS’11. There were also a number of conditions for receiving the bursary, one of which was to provide feedback about how they had benefitted from attending the conference. You can read the full reports at below.

Erika Fille T. Legara
As envisioned, I had such a worthwhile time and experience at the 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems. Learning about the latest trends in my field of research was very enlightening and inspiring, especially that the lectures came from the prominent people in the field. In addition to the engaging research topics, I also enjoyed the conversations and discourse I had with my contemporaries, most especially with other YRN (Young Researcher Network in CSS) members who were present at the conference. The series of networking events was particularly beneficial to the young researchers. Finally, the conference was a very ideal environment for a fresh PhD graduate who is into complex systems research and who is currently in search for possible post-doctoral positions. I, myself, had the opportunity to discuss my interests, possible research directions and options with the professors present at the ECCS11. Altogether, I had a very productive stay at the conference.

Ali Sanayei
The 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems held at the Medical University of Vienna was a nice opportunity to meet many people who work on “complex systems” from different points of view. Although there is no a unique definition of a “complex system” so far, the various kinds of contributions and discussions confirmed that finding an appropriate definition of a “complex system” is still problematic.
The conference was organized very well and I really appreciate Stefan Thurner, his crew, Complex Systems Society, ASSYST, and all the sponsors for this success. The only comment that I want to point out is the lack of philosophical discussions in the meeting. It would be so nice if we had even one keynote speaker to talk about “complex systems” from a philosophical point of view. Although we saw “foundations of complex systems” as one of the main interest topics of the conference, it did not cover philosophical viewpoint at all. I hope that we have such discussions in the forthcoming conference which is so important and necessary to improve the “science of complex systems”.

Junhuan Zhang
I acknowledge ASSYST for providing me a bursary to attend ECCS’11 from 12-16 September. I got a wonderful time in this conference. Firstly, my poster was reviewed and discussed by many professors and PhD students. And I can make a further improvement to my research based on these discussions. Moreover, I learnt many new developments in the application of complex system to finance after listening to other scholars’ presentation, especially for Complex Dynamics of Human Interactions to financial markets. Through the whole conference, I also attended the FuturICT / YRN Complex ECCS 2011 networking event. In this event, I made many good friends from different countries and further cooperation will be held in the similar interests between us.

Raffaello Morales
Attending ECCS’11 has been the most exciting and profitable experience since I’ve started my PhD. In just a week time I had the opportunity to meet basically all the relevant personalities of the field I work in and to share with them opinions and advices on the forefront topics. For me it was also very important as it has been the first opportunity to discuss my research with the scientific community. The network of contacts that I have established in this occasion will no doubt help me to develop new ideas and will foster collaborations and exchange of opinions which are fundamental for a healthy science.

Olesya Mryglod
The conference ECCS’11 was special for me mostly because of its interdisciplinarity. It was very useful to meet people from very different branches of science and to find common interests. In some presentations I was interested due to considered objects. New methods and approaches were described by the other speakers. It was great to find some information about fresh software to analyze, to compare and to visualize complex networks. I also liked the first FuturICT session with “brainstorm” – I think it’s a good idea to bring together young researchers with very different scientific backgrounds. So, I can conclude that I spent a good time in a sense of communication and in a sense of inspiration to work.

Pavel Em
Attending to ECCS’11 in Vienna was really good time! It was significant because we were in the public lecture of Nobel Prize awarder, listened speeches of many scientists from over the world, made our presentations and met a lot of interesting people. Besides, Vienna with its cultural atmosphere was unforgettable. After ECCS’11 in Vienna I want to working more diligently. I presented results of my research on poster section and on one of satellites. I hope to present new results of my researches in ECCS’12 in Brussels.

Parongama Sen
The ECCS1’11 conference had the format of three days of lectures on general topics and two days of different satellite conferences. A number of topics of interest to me like complex networks, econophysics, sociophyics were covered in the conference by leading scientists working in these fields. The scope of the subject “complex systems” is very large and I am thankful for the opportunity to get the feeling of which of the issues are currently gaining attention and why. This is very important to survive as an active research worker. I also had the chance to discuss my own problems with several senior participants in the conference, like C. Castalleno, B. Tadic among others as well as the younger group. The poster session was quite well attended and discussions during the poster session were especially helpful. Overall, the conference had a number of very good talks (unfortunately because of the parallel sessions, it was not possible to attend all) and posters with a broad spectrum of topics.

Alessio Cardillo
My Experience about the 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS) in Wien (Austria) can be summarised as amazing. During the conference days I had the opportunity to talk and share ideas with many people with many different scientific backgrounds to mine. This, combined with the great feedback I had about the poster I presented at the main conference, gave me the opportunity to develop new ideas and establish scientific relations with a lot of people also attending the conference. Also, given the general scope of the conference, I had the possibility to see the state of the art in the whole field of complexity science. These two facts alone are enough for me to consider the attendance to ECCS conference a success. The ASSYST bursary provided me the chance to achieve this important experience. Without the bursary, I would have not been able to go to the conference due to the small amount of funds at my disposal for travelling. Thanks to ASSYST, my research can boost towards better (hopefully) destinations in the upcoming times.

Oxana Chesnokova
I am really happy that I have visited ECCS’11. There I have learnt many interesting things, for instance, a lot about superstatistics and generalized entropy. It isn’t strictly related to my current work but is really interesting for me as a physicist by education. It was a good luck for me to make the acquaintance of students who work with Constantino Tsallis. It is really useful to know them and have an opportunity to discuss their work. We are still in touch and I hope it is just a beginning.

In addition to the above, I should mention about outstanding talks of M.Gell-Mann and R.Devaney. M.Gell-Mann is a living classic. So it was really inspiring to have opportunity to talk to him after his talk. It was pleasant to figure out that he knows Russian letters and some Russian words.

Mauricio Girardi
The European Conference on Complex Systems had a challenge to group the most relevant works in different branches of complexity. I think this task was fulfilled, letting people to contact with views and approaches to problems where physicist, economist, chemists, biologists, etc can strongly interact. The major benefits, certainly not only for me, in participating this conference were the open-minding, the exchange of experience and contacts for future cooperation. High level seminars (including Nobel prized celebrity), talks and poster presentations enriched my baggage. I would like to thank ASSYST for giving me the opportunity to participate this fantastic event.

Michele Tizzoni
Attending ECCS’11 has been for me a great opportunity to meet young and senior researchers in the field of complex systems. I enjoyed the talks presented by some outstanding keynote speakers, like Murray Gell-Mann and Geoffrey West among others, and several exceptional contributed talks in the parallel sessions. Moreover, I met many young Ph.D students engaged in the Young Researches Network in Complex Systems Science. Most of them are working on topics different from mine, therefore interacting with them I could discover new research areas and exchange ideas on different research fields. Eventually, I had the unique opportunity to present my work in a session of the main conference and receive useful feedbacks on my presentation! I have to say that thanks to the support of ASSYST I met a vibrant research community, which truly inspired me for my future research work.

Carlos G. Acevedo-Rocha
It is difficult to say how I benefited from the ECCS11 conference since it was full of very interesting people and exciting concepts emerging in the field of complexity science. Nevertheless, as I told many people: “You can follow a lecture either completely or very partially since most of the scientists use different languages and methods owed to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference”. Although I could not follow many lectures because of the mathematics, algorithms or whatsoever terminology, I was very happy to learn new things in areas not directly related to mine. However, in the following lines I want to exemplify how I benefited from the concepts explained in a particular lecture, which could be applied to my research field. In his keynote lecture, Peter Schuster explained methods developed to quantify fitness landscapes of RNA molecules, which I think, will be possible to apply likewise in proteins. In the field of protein engineering and evolution, the reconstruction of empirical fitness landscapes reveals paths accessible for evolution. The fitness landscape depends on the variable that is being looked for; consider, for example, an enzyme able to resolve one of two possible enantiomers (these are structurally similar molecules albeit with opposite chirality and thus properties). The efficiency of the kinetic resolution for one or the other enantiomer by an enzyme would depend on its mutations within the active site, among other factors. Beneficial mutations can be obtained by a method called Iterative Saturation Mutagenesis, whereby carefully selected residues close to the active site of an enzyme are randomized to a desire amino acid alphabet (e.g. 20 canonical amino acids) in an iterative manner. After several rounds of the trio variation-selection-amplification followed by screening, one or more variants with a desired fitness can be obtained, from which the evolutionary pathway can be established by reconstructing evolutionary intermediate proteins with different degrees of fitness. The analysis of evolutionary pathways allows understanding not only how bio-molecules such as proteins are constrained by evolution, but also to explore how different beneficial mutations arise and thus shed a light on the efficacy of the directed evolution methods being used. For instance, is it possible to optimize a protein by selecting in the next round of mutagenesis positive or negative fitness variants? Can the same or better fitness be achieved by exploring different evolutionary pathways? I aim to answer these questions during my postdoc, so I am very happy that I was able to learn methods and ways of thinking of other scientists working with nonlinear systems.

Jing Qin
When I start to write this paragraph, it has been a while since I attended ECCS’11. However, the memory during this particular period of time is still so fresh to me. Every talk I attended in the conference, every technique I learned there, and every wonderful moment I shared with my new friends whom I met there, just like happened yesterday. I truly enjoyed each day, each hour and each second I spent during ECCS’11 in Vienna.

I enjoyed the conference for the following reasons. First, it indeed represents the most advanced level of the research in complex system. As a junior postdoc, I truly cherished this opportunity by which I can learn from the best scientists in order to have a touch with the newest topic of the field. Secondly, it is also helpful and considerable for junior researchers to understand the benefits and challenges of a network approach. For instance, a short and general course on complex networks theory, provided by one of the satellites named XNet. Last but not the least, not only through the conference, but also some chances offered by the young person’s network at CSS, I have met some new friends who work in the similar field with me, we have a lot of common topic to talk with each other.

At the end of this letter, I really want to thank the European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society for offering me this great opportunity to attend the conference. It is really a great and wonderful conference.

Andrzej Jarynowski
ECCS’11 was for me a highly-dense learning & teaching platform. I’ve never learnt as much during only one week! Possibility of listening to people, who I’ve known from books or papers, interacting with other young research and sharing experience, confirmed that my hard work in science can be profitable. I’ve appreciated very much also a feedback given after my presentation, which has already improved my models. Summarizing, I’d like to thank for supporting my participation at ECCS’11, because without that, I probably couldn’t attend and lost all profits I’ve gained.

S. M. Bouguima
I could not have attended this project without the support of Assyst. I recognize, and I am grateful for the financial support of the Open University. During the conference, I had many conversations about my research. I was able to meet important people in the field and get acquainted with much material and learn some technical issues related to my work. I succeed to make some problems into perspective. More precisely, in our model, I presented a prey-predator system; it will be interesting to consider the effect of fragmentation of the environment. This will lead us to a patchy model which can be studied by the material presented in this conference. I had heard of new thing, namely application of game, network and statistical mechanics in more concrete problems like population dynamics, sociability, and policy. Last but not least, I would to express my sincere thanks for Jane Bromley.

Dr. Agata Fronczak
I have mixed feelings after the conference. Below I outline a few observations.
First, there are no strong leaders in the community, I mean scientific leaders. Why do I think so? Most of invited and keynote speakers did not present interesting results. Here, another problem arises, what is the acceptance procedure for talks? I am not lonely in the feeling that the key ingredient is: “he is my colleague”, or “she is a colleague of my colleague”. The argument behind the statement is that a short abstract, instead of a long paper (as it was on the previous ECCS events) is enough to decide whether to accept the talk or not. With this the organizers say: we do not need to know what have you done, tell us who are you, do you have grants, who is you boss, should I know you? On the other hand, maybe, the weakness of the talks is due to crises of the science of complex systems, and the science as a whole. Professors presenting nondescript results of their PhD students – it is not the way for doing serious research. The famous relation between the Master and his Student, where is it? 99% of PhD students claim that they meet their supervisors a few times a year…

Second, the CS community dramatically needs to educate its own students. The science of complex systems must be more critical. Pure physicist is not able to create reliable economic models. Pure biologist happens ridiculous in describing natural processes by means of nonlinear equations with complexity exceeding his/her comprehension.

Now a few positive remarks:
The lecture by Prof. West was very interesting. Prof. West is a great scientist, the best showcase for the science of complex systems. I will also remember the lecture of Prof. Tsallis. Although, I think that the idea of non-extensive entropy would gain much more attention if Prof Tsallis was not so attached to his own formulation of the concept.

Funda Atun
I have encountered European Conference on Complex Systems while working on complexity theory to find some insights for understanding the nature of dynamic city systems. Since the very beginning I was very excited about being involved in the conference and I would say that the conference answered to all my expectations by high quality of the talks and the perfect organization. During the conference I have had the opportunity to share the results of my ongoing research and to improve them by discussing with other scholars and by gaining experiences from high quality and various talks. ECCS’11 conference was very valuable experience for me in terms of improving my knowledge on complexity science, knowing about recent studies and interacting with other researchers. I would like to thank ASSYST for providing me this great opportunity.

Angel Akio Tateishi
An international conference is always a great experience: all kinds of English pronunciation, ALL KINDS! We know others cultures, foods, people and especially for ECCS’11 I’ve had to learn to enjoy sparkling water and apple juice (with bubble water). However, in despite of the cultural differences two thing are the same: the passion and dedication of the conference participants to science, and meet people like that make us want to study more and more.

Fernando Jose Antonio
European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS’11) was a huge event gathering physicists from many countries. The talks were very interesting. Additionally, the poster sections were very impressive.
Participating of ECCS’11 was a great opportunity to engage with people from different universities, providing an initial connection to interact with them.

Barbora Trubenova
I am a PhD student at the University of Manchester. This year, owing to the bursary I received, I had a pleasure to participate in the European Conference on Complex Systems 2011. As this was my first conference ever, I did not know what to expect, however, I am very satisfied with the experience. This conference allowed me to learn more about research methods used in complex systems and to get some new ideas for my future research. I received very helpful comments on my presentation and a feedback on my own work, which will undoubtedly help me with my further studies.
I was pleased to meet other researchers working on similar problems, but I also appreciated the opportunity to learn about completely different areas of research. I enjoyed the conference very much and I hope to attend the European Conference on Complex Systems next year as well.

Christian Beck
The ECCS in Vienna was a nice experience and probably one of the largest meetings so far, with around 700 participants. My invited talk went well and I benefited from lots of discussions with friends and colleagues. A particularly nice experience was to have dinner with Nobel-prize winner Murray Gell-Mann and to discuss with him on superstatistics (a generalized statistical mechanics method for complex systems). Some of the talks at ECCS were excellent and inspired me to think about future research projects in complexity science.

K.P.Hari
Many Thanks for ASSYST for awarding a bursary to attend the European conference for complex systems (ECCS11). This conference has benefited me immensely in terms of sharing my artistic perspective of “complexity” to a diverse global audience. Each day of my art making I would find people from different domains interacting with my work in manifold ways. Their questions and feedback were profound which in turn has acted as a feeder to my thought process. This conference has also helped me find new friends who have shared valuable resources and contacts to add value to my future work. Apart from personal benefits, I had a wonderful opportunity to listen to many speakers and presentations at the conference. I found them very illuminating. My understanding of complex systems has now shaped further.

Giovanni Petri
ECCS 2011 was a splendid conference by all accounts and it was the ASSYST bursary that allowed me to profit from all this. On the scientific level, the quality of the keynote and, generally, the speakers was very high and managed to convey the breadth of complex systems science. On the personal level, it was a great opportunity to meet old friends and colleagues, to put a face on that name you saw so often on papers and, personally, to establish some contacts that might prove crucial for a future postdoc. In this sense, for me the ASSYST bursary’s and ECCS11’s effects will (hopefully) be long-lasting.

Roseli S. Wedemann
The ECCS 2011 was very successful. The talks were very interesting in general, with interesting topics related to complex systems research, given by very good speakers. Also the poster sessions presented very interesting work. I also attended good talks in the Satellite Meeting on Complexity and Networks. Particularly useful to my work were the talks on complex networks, related to studies of the brain and mental processes. These provided me with new information on recent developments, which I can apply to my modelling efforts. The conference was very well organized and provided also an excellent opportunity to meet with colleagues living in many different countries, and exchange ideas and information to continue work. It also supported an interesting environment for inter-cultural exchange.

Paul Expert
The conference was a great success thanks to the excellent job done by the organising team in putting together a very high quality programme. Going to ECCS was a great and very beneficial experience as gave me the opportunity to present my work to a wide range of researchers outside my field, and being myself exposed to exciting new ideas and research themes. The social aspect was also very enjoyable. Vienna is a very agreeable human-sized city, loaded with history. The conference gave me the chance to catch up with people and friends I had not seen for a long time, as well as meet new interesting people.

Jan Engelhardt
Thanks to the ASSYST bursary I was able to visit the ECCS in Vienna this year. It was my first ECCS and I was very impressed by the large number of people interested in complex systems sciences. I really enjoyed the environment with a lot of social events especially the conference dinner. I was able to meet a lot of new people working on very different kinds of complex systems. I also got a better understanding of which topics are relevant in Europe e.g. there were much more physical problems than I expected. It was also very intriguing to discuss my research topics during the poster sessions and to listen to the large number of excellent keynote speakers.

Evangelia Panagakou
I am very satisfied from my participation to ECCS ’11. I would really like to thank ASSYST for giving me the chance to attend the conference! The topics of the lectures were very interesting. I learnt about different fields where complexity exists and this gave me some ideas for future work… I met with other young and senior researchers and professors and we talked about my work and their work and we exchanged ideas. Furthermore I had the opportunity to present a poster explaining my group’s work and getting valuable feedback on it. ECCS ’11 and the FuturICT events really helped me to further increase my motivation to continue studying and working on my PhD and on related topics. I look forward to attending ECCS ’12 in Brussels!!

Cigdem Yalcin
European Conference on Complex Systems organization is so well-designed conference which wherever it would be hold, one could feel the energy of the participants. It is very invaluable of the contributions of the European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society to young researchers, who would otherwise be unable and in particular female scientists to attend European Conference on Complex Systems. According to my experiences as a female in the science world, this bursary programme of European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society is not only a financial support, it also supports the genderlessness in the science. With this bursary programme I had been an opportunity to participate in ECCS’11, to follow the new trends and improving foundations of complex systems theory and to give a poster presentation.

Reports from ECCS11 Bursary Winners

One of the work packages of ASSYST is to provide conference support and, in particular, to attempt to increase variety in the CS community by supporting female scientists and minority groups. This year we provided 32 bursaries to people to attend ECCS’11. The bursaries provided limited contributions towards the conference fee and/or travel expenses for female scientists, young researchers, and others who would otherwise be unable to attend ECCS’11. There were also a number of conditions for receiving the bursary, one of which was to provide feedback about how they had benefitted from attending the conference. You can read the full reports at below.

Erika Fille T. Legara
As envisioned, I had such a worthwhile time and experience at the 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems. Learning about the latest trends in my field of research was very enlightening and inspiring, especially that the lectures came from the prominent people in the field. In addition to the engaging research topics, I also enjoyed the conversations and discourse I had with my contemporaries, most especially with other YRN (Young Researcher Network in CSS) members who were present at the conference. The series of networking events was particularly beneficial to the young researchers. Finally, the conference was a very ideal environment for a fresh PhD graduate who is into complex systems research and who is currently in search for possible post-doctoral positions. I, myself, had the opportunity to discuss my interests, possible research directions and options with the professors present at the ECCS11. Altogether, I had a very productive stay at the conference.

Ali Sanayei
The 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems held at the Medical University of Vienna was a nice opportunity to meet many people who work on “complex systems” from different points of view. Although there is no a unique definition of a “complex system” so far, the various kinds of contributions and discussions confirmed that finding an appropriate definition of a “complex system” is still problematic.
The conference was organized very well and I really appreciate Stefan Thurner, his crew, Complex Systems Society, ASSYST, and all the sponsors for this success. The only comment that I want to point out is the lack of philosophical discussions in the meeting. It would be so nice if we had even one keynote speaker to talk about “complex systems” from a philosophical point of view. Although we saw “foundations of complex systems” as one of the main interest topics of the conference, it did not cover philosophical viewpoint at all. I hope that we have such discussions in the forthcoming conference which is so important and necessary to improve the “science of complex systems”.

Junhuan Zhang
I acknowledge ASSYST for providing me a bursary to attend ECCS’11 from 12-16 September. I got a wonderful time in this conference. Firstly, my poster was reviewed and discussed by many professors and PhD students. And I can make a further improvement to my research based on these discussions. Moreover, I learnt many new developments in the application of complex system to finance after listening to other scholars’ presentation, especially for Complex Dynamics of Human Interactions to financial markets. Through the whole conference, I also attended the FuturICT / YRN Complex ECCS 2011 networking event. In this event, I made many good friends from different countries and further cooperation will be held in the similar interests between us.

Raffaello Morales
Attending ECCS’11 has been the most exciting and profitable experience since I’ve started my PhD. In just a week time I had the opportunity to meet basically all the relevant personalities of the field I work in and to share with them opinions and advices on the forefront topics. For me it was also very important as it has been the first opportunity to discuss my research with the scientific community. The network of contacts that I have established in this occasion will no doubt help me to develop new ideas and will foster collaborations and exchange of opinions which are fundamental for a healthy science.

Olesya Mryglod
The conference ECCS’11 was special for me mostly because of its interdisciplinarity. It was very useful to meet people from very different branches of science and to find common interests. In some presentations I was interested due to considered objects. New methods and approaches were described by the other speakers. It was great to find some information about fresh software to analyze, to compare and to visualize complex networks. I also liked the first FuturICT session with “brainstorm” – I think it’s a good idea to bring together young researchers with very different scientific backgrounds. So, I can conclude that I spent a good time in a sense of communication and in a sense of inspiration to work.

Pavel Em
Attending to ECCS’11 in Vienna was really good time! It was significant because we were in the public lecture of Nobel Prize awarder, listened speeches of many scientists from over the world, made our presentations and met a lot of interesting people. Besides, Vienna with its cultural atmosphere was unforgettable. After ECCS’11 in Vienna I want to working more diligently. I presented results of my research on poster section and on one of satellites. I hope to present new results of my researches in ECCS’12 in Brussels.

Parongama Sen
The ECCS1’11 conference had the format of three days of lectures on general topics and two days of different satellite conferences. A number of topics of interest to me like complex networks, econophysics, sociophyics were covered in the conference by leading scientists working in these fields. The scope of the subject “complex systems” is very large and I am thankful for the opportunity to get the feeling of which of the issues are currently gaining attention and why. This is very important to survive as an active research worker. I also had the chance to discuss my own problems with several senior participants in the conference, like C. Castalleno, B. Tadic among others as well as the younger group. The poster session was quite well attended and discussions during the poster session were especially helpful. Overall, the conference had a number of very good talks (unfortunately because of the parallel sessions, it was not possible to attend all) and posters with a broad spectrum of topics.

Alessio Cardillo
My Experience about the 2011 European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS) in Wien (Austria) can be summarised as amazing. During the conference days I had the opportunity to talk and share ideas with many people with many different scientific backgrounds to mine. This, combined with the great feedback I had about the poster I presented at the main conference, gave me the opportunity to develop new ideas and establish scientific relations with a lot of people also attending the conference. Also, given the general scope of the conference, I had the possibility to see the state of the art in the whole field of complexity science. These two facts alone are enough for me to consider the attendance to ECCS conference a success. The ASSYST bursary provided me the chance to achieve this important experience. Without the bursary, I would have not been able to go to the conference due to the small amount of funds at my disposal for travelling. Thanks to ASSYST, my research can boost towards better (hopefully) destinations in the upcoming times.

Oxana Chesnokova
I am really happy that I have visited ECCS’11. There I have learnt many interesting things, for instance, a lot about superstatistics and generalized entropy. It isn’t strictly related to my current work but is really interesting for me as a physicist by education. It was a good luck for me to make the acquaintance of students who work with Constantino Tsallis. It is really useful to know them and have an opportunity to discuss their work. We are still in touch and I hope it is just a beginning.

In addition to the above, I should mention about outstanding talks of M.Gell-Mann and R.Devaney. M.Gell-Mann is a living classic. So it was really inspiring to have opportunity to talk to him after his talk. It was pleasant to figure out that he knows Russian letters and some Russian words.

Mauricio Girardi
The European Conference on Complex Systems had a challenge to group the most relevant works in different branches of complexity. I think this task was fulfilled, letting people to contact with views and approaches to problems where physicist, economist, chemists, biologists, etc can strongly interact. The major benefits, certainly not only for me, in participating this conference were the open-minding, the exchange of experience and contacts for future cooperation. High level seminars (including Nobel prized celebrity), talks and poster presentations enriched my baggage. I would like to thank ASSYST for giving me the opportunity to participate this fantastic event.

Michele Tizzoni
Attending ECCS’11 has been for me a great opportunity to meet young and senior researchers in the field of complex systems. I enjoyed the talks presented by some outstanding keynote speakers, like Murray Gell-Mann and Geoffrey West among others, and several exceptional contributed talks in the parallel sessions. Moreover, I met many young Ph.D students engaged in the Young Researches Network in Complex Systems Science. Most of them are working on topics different from mine, therefore interacting with them I could discover new research areas and exchange ideas on different research fields. Eventually, I had the unique opportunity to present my work in a session of the main conference and receive useful feedbacks on my presentation! I have to say that thanks to the support of ASSYST I met a vibrant research community, which truly inspired me for my future research work.

Carlos G. Acevedo-Rocha
It is difficult to say how I benefited from the ECCS11 conference since it was full of very interesting people and exciting concepts emerging in the field of complexity science. Nevertheless, as I told many people: “You can follow a lecture either completely or very partially since most of the scientists use different languages and methods owed to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference”. Although I could not follow many lectures because of the mathematics, algorithms or whatsoever terminology, I was very happy to learn new things in areas not directly related to mine. However, in the following lines I want to exemplify how I benefited from the concepts explained in a particular lecture, which could be applied to my research field. In his keynote lecture, Peter Schuster explained methods developed to quantify fitness landscapes of RNA molecules, which I think, will be possible to apply likewise in proteins. In the field of protein engineering and evolution, the reconstruction of empirical fitness landscapes reveals paths accessible for evolution. The fitness landscape depends on the variable that is being looked for; consider, for example, an enzyme able to resolve one of two possible enantiomers (these are structurally similar molecules albeit with opposite chirality and thus properties). The efficiency of the kinetic resolution for one or the other enantiomer by an enzyme would depend on its mutations within the active site, among other factors. Beneficial mutations can be obtained by a method called Iterative Saturation Mutagenesis, whereby carefully selected residues close to the active site of an enzyme are randomized to a desire amino acid alphabet (e.g. 20 canonical amino acids) in an iterative manner. After several rounds of the trio variation-selection-amplification followed by screening, one or more variants with a desired fitness can be obtained, from which the evolutionary pathway can be established by reconstructing evolutionary intermediate proteins with different degrees of fitness. The analysis of evolutionary pathways allows understanding not only how bio-molecules such as proteins are constrained by evolution, but also to explore how different beneficial mutations arise and thus shed a light on the efficacy of the directed evolution methods being used. For instance, is it possible to optimize a protein by selecting in the next round of mutagenesis positive or negative fitness variants? Can the same or better fitness be achieved by exploring different evolutionary pathways? I aim to answer these questions during my postdoc, so I am very happy that I was able to learn methods and ways of thinking of other scientists working with nonlinear systems.

Jing Qin
When I start to write this paragraph, it has been a while since I attended ECCS’11. However, the memory during this particular period of time is still so fresh to me. Every talk I attended in the conference, every technique I learned there, and every wonderful moment I shared with my new friends whom I met there, just like happened yesterday. I truly enjoyed each day, each hour and each second I spent during ECCS’11 in Vienna.

I enjoyed the conference for the following reasons. First, it indeed represents the most advanced level of the research in complex system. As a junior postdoc, I truly cherished this opportunity by which I can learn from the best scientists in order to have a touch with the newest topic of the field. Secondly, it is also helpful and considerable for junior researchers to understand the benefits and challenges of a network approach. For instance, a short and general course on complex networks theory, provided by one of the satellites named XNet. Last but not the least, not only through the conference, but also some chances offered by the young person’s network at CSS, I have met some new friends who work in the similar field with me, we have a lot of common topic to talk with each other.

At the end of this letter, I really want to thank the European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society for offering me this great opportunity to attend the conference. It is really a great and wonderful conference.

Andrzej Jarynowski
ECCS’11 was for me a highly-dense learning & teaching platform. I’ve never learnt as much during only one week! Possibility of listening to people, who I’ve known from books or papers, interacting with other young research and sharing experience, confirmed that my hard work in science can be profitable. I’ve appreciated very much also a feedback given after my presentation, which has already improved my models. Summarizing, I’d like to thank for supporting my participation at ECCS’11, because without that, I probably couldn’t attend and lost all profits I’ve gained.

S. M. Bouguima
I could not have attended this project without the support of Assyst. I recognize, and I am grateful for the financial support of the Open University. During the conference, I had many conversations about my research. I was able to meet important people in the field and get acquainted with much material and learn some technical issues related to my work. I succeed to make some problems into perspective. More precisely, in our model, I presented a prey-predator system; it will be interesting to consider the effect of fragmentation of the environment. This will lead us to a patchy model which can be studied by the material presented in this conference. I had heard of new thing, namely application of game, network and statistical mechanics in more concrete problems like population dynamics, sociability, and policy. Last but not least, I would to express my sincere thanks for Jane Bromley.

Dr. Agata Fronczak
I have mixed feelings after the conference. Below I outline a few observations.
First, there are no strong leaders in the community, I mean scientific leaders. Why do I think so? Most of invited and keynote speakers did not present interesting results. Here, another problem arises, what is the acceptance procedure for talks? I am not lonely in the feeling that the key ingredient is: “he is my colleague”, or “she is a colleague of my colleague”. The argument behind the statement is that a short abstract, instead of a long paper (as it was on the previous ECCS events) is enough to decide whether to accept the talk or not. With this the organizers say: we do not need to know what have you done, tell us who are you, do you have grants, who is you boss, should I know you? On the other hand, maybe, the weakness of the talks is due to crises of the science of complex systems, and the science as a whole. Professors presenting nondescript results of their PhD students – it is not the way for doing serious research. The famous relation between the Master and his Student, where is it? 99% of PhD students claim that they meet their supervisors a few times a year…

Second, the CS community dramatically needs to educate its own students. The science of complex systems must be more critical. Pure physicist is not able to create reliable economic models. Pure biologist happens ridiculous in describing natural processes by means of nonlinear equations with complexity exceeding his/her comprehension.

Now a few positive remarks:
The lecture by Prof. West was very interesting. Prof. West is a great scientist, the best showcase for the science of complex systems. I will also remember the lecture of Prof. Tsallis. Although, I think that the idea of non-extensive entropy would gain much more attention if Prof Tsallis was not so attached to his own formulation of the concept.

Funda Atun
I have encountered European Conference on Complex Systems while working on complexity theory to find some insights for understanding the nature of dynamic city systems. Since the very beginning I was very excited about being involved in the conference and I would say that the conference answered to all my expectations by high quality of the talks and the perfect organization. During the conference I have had the opportunity to share the results of my ongoing research and to improve them by discussing with other scholars and by gaining experiences from high quality and various talks. ECCS’11 conference was very valuable experience for me in terms of improving my knowledge on complexity science, knowing about recent studies and interacting with other researchers. I would like to thank ASSYST for providing me this great opportunity.

Angel Akio Tateishi
An international conference is always a great experience: all kinds of English pronunciation, ALL KINDS! We know others cultures, foods, people and especially for ECCS’11 I’ve had to learn to enjoy sparkling water and apple juice (with bubble water). However, in despite of the cultural differences two thing are the same: the passion and dedication of the conference participants to science, and meet people like that make us want to study more and more.

Fernando Jose Antonio
European Conference on Complex Systems (ECCS’11) was a huge event gathering physicists from many countries. The talks were very interesting. Additionally, the poster sections were very impressive.
Participating of ECCS’11 was a great opportunity to engage with people from different universities, providing an initial connection to interact with them.

Barbora Trubenova
I am a PhD student at the University of Manchester. This year, owing to the bursary I received, I had a pleasure to participate in the European Conference on Complex Systems 2011. As this was my first conference ever, I did not know what to expect, however, I am very satisfied with the experience. This conference allowed me to learn more about research methods used in complex systems and to get some new ideas for my future research. I received very helpful comments on my presentation and a feedback on my own work, which will undoubtedly help me with my further studies.
I was pleased to meet other researchers working on similar problems, but I also appreciated the opportunity to learn about completely different areas of research. I enjoyed the conference very much and I hope to attend the European Conference on Complex Systems next year as well.

Christian Beck
The ECCS in Vienna was a nice experience and probably one of the largest meetings so far, with around 700 participants. My invited talk went well and I benefited from lots of discussions with friends and colleagues. A particularly nice experience was to have dinner with Nobel-prize winner Murray Gell-Mann and to discuss with him on superstatistics (a generalized statistical mechanics method for complex systems). Some of the talks at ECCS were excellent and inspired me to think about future research projects in complexity science.

K.P.Hari
Many Thanks for ASSYST for awarding a bursary to attend the European conference for complex systems (ECCS11). This conference has benefited me immensely in terms of sharing my artistic perspective of “complexity” to a diverse global audience. Each day of my art making I would find people from different domains interacting with my work in manifold ways. Their questions and feedback were profound which in turn has acted as a feeder to my thought process. This conference has also helped me find new friends who have shared valuable resources and contacts to add value to my future work. Apart from personal benefits, I had a wonderful opportunity to listen to many speakers and presentations at the conference. I found them very illuminating. My understanding of complex systems has now shaped further.

Giovanni Petri
ECCS 2011 was a splendid conference by all accounts and it was the ASSYST bursary that allowed me to profit from all this. On the scientific level, the quality of the keynote and, generally, the speakers was very high and managed to convey the breadth of complex systems science. On the personal level, it was a great opportunity to meet old friends and colleagues, to put a face on that name you saw so often on papers and, personally, to establish some contacts that might prove crucial for a future postdoc. In this sense, for me the ASSYST bursary’s and ECCS11’s effects will (hopefully) be long-lasting.

Roseli S. Wedemann
The ECCS 2011 was very successful. The talks were very interesting in general, with interesting topics related to complex systems research, given by very good speakers. Also the poster sessions presented very interesting work. I also attended good talks in the Satellite Meeting on Complexity and Networks. Particularly useful to my work were the talks on complex networks, related to studies of the brain and mental processes. These provided me with new information on recent developments, which I can apply to my modelling efforts. The conference was very well organized and provided also an excellent opportunity to meet with colleagues living in many different countries, and exchange ideas and information to continue work. It also supported an interesting environment for inter-cultural exchange.

Paul Expert
The conference was a great success thanks to the excellent job done by the organising team in putting together a very high quality programme. Going to ECCS was a great and very beneficial experience as gave me the opportunity to present my work to a wide range of researchers outside my field, and being myself exposed to exciting new ideas and research themes. The social aspect was also very enjoyable. Vienna is a very agreeable human-sized city, loaded with history. The conference gave me the chance to catch up with people and friends I had not seen for a long time, as well as meet new interesting people.

Jan Engelhardt
Thanks to the ASSYST bursary I was able to visit the ECCS in Vienna this year. It was my first ECCS and I was very impressed by the large number of people interested in complex systems sciences. I really enjoyed the environment with a lot of social events especially the conference dinner. I was able to meet a lot of new people working on very different kinds of complex systems. I also got a better understanding of which topics are relevant in Europe e.g. there were much more physical problems than I expected. It was also very intriguing to discuss my research topics during the poster sessions and to listen to the large number of excellent keynote speakers.

Evangelia Panagakou
I am very satisfied from my participation to ECCS ’11. I would really like to thank ASSYST for giving me the chance to attend the conference! The topics of the lectures were very interesting. I learnt about different fields where complexity exists and this gave me some ideas for future work… I met with other young and senior researchers and professors and we talked about my work and their work and we exchanged ideas. Furthermore I had the opportunity to present a poster explaining my group’s work and getting valuable feedback on it. ECCS ’11 and the FuturICT events really helped me to further increase my motivation to continue studying and working on my PhD and on related topics. I look forward to attending ECCS ’12 in Brussels!!

Cigdem Yalcin
European Conference on Complex Systems organization is so well-designed conference which wherever it would be hold, one could feel the energy of the participants. It is very invaluable of the contributions of the European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society to young researchers, who would otherwise be unable and in particular female scientists to attend European Conference on Complex Systems. According to my experiences as a female in the science world, this bursary programme of European ASSYST project and the Complex Systems Society is not only a financial support, it also supports the genderlessness in the science. With this bursary programme I had been an opportunity to participate in ECCS’11, to follow the new trends and improving foundations of complex systems theory and to give a poster presentation.

International Meeting on Visualization in Complex Environments

The International Meeting on Visualization in Complex Environments took place at Politecnico di Torino, November 17-18, 2011. The programme covered the tracks Visualization and Decision Making in Spatial Environments, Visualization and Scientific Data Exploration and Visualization and Communication.

The dramatic progress in ICT and Internet-based applications has meant that individuals and organizations are exposed to an ever-increasing stream of data. In such an environment, the burden caused by information overload and processing is largely compensated for by the extraordinary potential which the availability of plentiful distributed data unleash for the management of complex environments. Information visualization tools provide a creative way to address the issues. They offer a means to deal with a large amount of data and make sense of the emerging information. They also yield new capabilities to amplify cognition. By making it easier to exchange and share information they are artifacts for social affordance, as they enhance in novel ways the environment’s properties permitting social action.

This meeting was an opportunity to get insights into the possibilities offered by visualization and into the benefits likely to be accrued to the various societal organizations as they use these new tools. Contributions are gathered around three main headings which exemplify some of the roles information visualization can play in this respect and notably: decision making in complex environments, exploration of large data-base and communication. The meeting was a joint event by ASSYST and FuturICT, in collaboration with IRES (Institute for Economic and Social Research of the Piedmont Region), ISI Foundation, CSI-Piemonte, DUPT (Department of Urban and Regional Planning of the University of Florence), Turin Polytechnic and Faber. The event was also sponsored by University of Warwick, Open University, Regione Piemonte, National Research Council of Italy and Global System Dynamics &Policies.

Sessions

A) Visualization and Decision Making in Spatial Environments
Thursday, November 17, Facoltà di Architettura, Castello del Valentino, 14.00-18.30
Visualization to monitor and supervise spatially distributed systems, such as metropolitan and regional areas. Attention is paid to how visualization can integrate and make explicit the cooccurrence of different spatially relevant phenomena, such as those concerned with urban security, environmental risks, energy and transport management, thus supporting decision making in complex environments.
14.00 Opening: PIERO FASSINO (Sindaco di Torino), FRANCESCO PROFUMO (President of the Italian National Research Council, Rector of Politecnico di Torino), Piedmont Regional Authorities, CRISTINA PRONELLO (Politecnico di Torino), JEFF JOHNSON (Open University), STEFANO PIPERNO (IRES Piemonte)
14.30 Chair: FERDINANDO SEMBOLONI (Università di Firenze)
CHRISTIANE WEBER, Laboratoire Image des Villes, Strasbourg, From Observation to Representation toward Decision Making process
MICHAEL BATTY (CASA), Visualising Cities Through Models, Maps & Machines
GIOVANNI RABINO (Politecnico di Milano), Urban Modeling and Visualisation: The Semantic Link
MARCO QUAGGIOTTO and WOUTER VAN DEN BROECK (ISI), Visualization and interfaces for complex systems research
16.45 Break and Student Poster Session
17.15 Round Table: JEFF JOHNSON (Open University, chair), MARCO CAVAGNOLI (CSI Piemonte), STEFANO DE FRANCISCI (ISTAT), MAURIZIO TREVISAN (Regione Toscana), DANIELA PAOLOTTI (ISI), SYLVIE OCCELLI (IRES Piemonte)
18.15 Close
18.30 A “walking visualization” of Turin historical district

JOINT ASSYST – FUTURICT MEETING Torino, 17-18 Novembre 2011

B) Visualization and Scientific Data Exploration
Friday, November 18, Facoltà di Architettura, Castello del Valentino, 9.00-13.30
Visualization as a means to look into large data-base and yield an interpretation about data that can expose complex patterns or correlations. This is the realm of visual analytics a new scientific field which is being established at the crossroads between design and computing.
9.00 Opening: ROBERTO MORIONDO (Regione Piemonte), MARCO AJMONE MARSAN (Politecnico di Torino), STEVEN BISHOP (UCL), ROSARIA CONTE (CNR), PAUL LUKOWICZ (Passau University), CLAUDIO LUBATTI (Comune di Torino)
9.30 Chair: FuturICT
DIRK HELBING (ETH Zurich), FuturICT and the Role of Visualization to Understand What Data Are Telling Us
ROLAND STRAUSS (Managing Director of the Knowledge4Innovation EU Platform)
SOULLA LOUCA (Chair of the ICT COST DOMAIN of the EU Commission)
PHILIPP SLUSALLEK (DFKI)
11.00 Coffee
ANNA CARBONE (Politecnico di Torino), Visualizing fully 3D fractal pattems
MIN CHEN (Oxford University)
12.00 Round Table: JEFF JOHNSON (Open University, chair), CLAUDIO INGUAGGIATO (CSP), GIOVANNI FERRERO (CSP), STEVEN BISHOP (UCL), CAMILLE ROTH (CNRS/EHESS), MASSIMO GIORDANI (TIME&MIND, IRES Piemonte), CLAUDIO LUBATTI (Comune di Torino)
14.30 From the Aosta Valley to the Mediterranean sea, Virtual Reality Theatre, Territorial Integrated Project @ Politecnico di Torino
CAMILLE ROTH (CAM/CNTRS), Reconstructing streams of media issues from large textual corpora

C) Visualization and Communication
Friday, November 18, Virtual Reality Multi Media Park, Corso Lombardia 190, 16.30-19.30
This session is hosted within the FABER event, organized by the Turin City Council
The focus will be on bringing together expert and lay knowledge and on the co-generation of information in locally based communities. The role of information visualization in providing contexts for general public information and thus adding value to it will be specifically addressed.
16.30 Welcome coffee
17.00 Opening: TOMMASO GAROSCI (IRES Piemonte), FRANCO CARCILLO (Comune di Torino, Servizio Telematico Pubblico), JEFF JOHNSON (Open University)
Chair: ASSYST
JORGE LOUÇÃ, ANTONIO FONSECA (Lisbon University Institute), Beyond data visualization in communication networks: perceiving collective intelligence ANNA DE LIDDO (Open University), Visualizing Deliberation to Enable Transparent Decision-Making in Participatory Urban Planning
18.15 Round table: JEFF JOHNSON (Open University, chair), RICCARDO STAGLIANÒ (Repubblica), ANNA MASERA (La Stampa), PAOLO CIUCCARELLI (Politecnico di Milano), MARIO PEROSINO (Regione Piemonte), GIULIANA BONELLO (CSI), FRANCO CARCILLO (Comune di Torino)
19.15 Close

source: http://areeweb.polito.it/ricerca/noiselab/FuturICT/Visualization.html

African RoadMap

The African RoadMap for Complex Systems Research is being developed following the “African Conference on the Science of Complex Systems” held on the 9th and 10th November 2011, in Dakar. The conference was an opportunity to discuss the African Roadmap and its Digital Campus – towards a UNESCO Unitwin Network.

This conference brought together local networks in Africa and link them with other networks through the International Digital Campus. In particular it focused on how this new infrastructure can enable individuals and groups to create new social and economic activities to create jobs. The emphasis was on youth unemployment and how the chronic lack of opportunities for young people can be rectified by individuals reconfiguring the resources available to them in the context of the technological advances of recent years.

The conference has drafted the first Complex Systems Roadmap of Africa and its Digital Campus (CSDC-Africa) in harmony with those designed by scientists in other countries and regions worldwide. This prepared for the UNESCO UNITWIN submission in 2012. Youth Employment in Africa was discussed both as a specific complex evolving systems challenge for modern societies and as a criterion for designing the CSDC-Africa. The Digital Campus will use the next technological revolution of cloud computing which can efficiently coordinate scientists with engineers and technicians, physicians and nurses, agricultural experts and farmers. Young people are clearly the most competent in the new technological revolution that will bring a mass of new web services and digital goods, of new jobs and of new knowledge of high added-value for science and society. There are deep reasons why the next Schumpeter’s cycle will be a revolution of web services and digital goods.

source: http://roadmap.csregistry.org/tiki-index.php?page=africa_roadmaps&bl=y

AC-CSS African Conference for Complex Systems Science

Les 9 et 10 novembre se tient à Dakar la conférence africaine AC-CSS. Les débats seront essentiellement francophones. Cette conférence a pour objectif de construire la feuille de route africaine des systèmes complexes et de concevoir le Campus numérique pour la réaliser. La conférence est retransmise en direct chaque jour de 9h30 à 19h30.

Elle s’inscrit dans le cadre plus large d’un UNITWIN UNESCO qui a les mêmes objectifs pour mutualiser, au niveau international, des ressources de tous ordres pour construire et utiliser des connaissances et modèles intégrés.

Comment assister et participer: chacun, partout dans le monde, peut suivre les débats selon l’un des quatre moyens ci-dessous, en direct chaque jour de 9h30 à 19h30.
* Vous pourrez poser directement vos questions par Skype en priorité pour les collègues africains (adresse Skype : ac-css1, ac-css2, ac-css3, ac-css4 et ac-css5).
* Utiliser le WEB COMPAGNON for streaming and chat – voir instructions en bas.
* Vous pourrez aussi contribuer, au cours même de la conférence, aux différents chapitres de la feuille de route, qui seront disponibles sous google doc.

En ce cas, un bulletin de participation à distance est à renvoyer à Ismalia Diouf ( [email protected] ), dès que possible pour que nous puissions bien prendre en compte les contraintes organisationnelles.

————————————————————–
BULLETIN de PARTICIPATION à DISTANCE
Prénom : Nom :
Institution :
Participera à la conférence AC-CSS
————————————————————–

La feuille de route est vivante et adaptative comme le Campus numérique pour la réaliser. La science des systèmes complexes nécessite des stratégies radicalement nouvelles de recherche et d’éducation. Il est important que vous soyez nombreux à participer à leur élaboration en écoutant les débats, en lisant les textes en cours de réalisation et en y apportant toutes les remarques utiles.

Chacun peut participer à la visioconférence sans être équipé de matériel de visioconférence par l’un des quatre moyens suivants :
– WEB COMPAGNON (streaming, document, chat, etc.) – option recommandée.
– STREAMING (avec RealPlayer ou QuickTime)
– le NUMERO de TELEPHONE
– le logiciel EVO

Option recommandée:
1) utiliser le WEB COMPAGNON (streaming, document, chat, etc.) ou installer realplayer ou quicktime:
le 9/11/2011 : link
le 10/11/2011 : link

Autres options:
2) utiliser le STREAMING (avec RealPlayer, QuickTime ou VLC)
(en 384 Kbts/s)
le 9/11/2011 : rtsp://193.48.95.83/conf_h263_g711u_384000_6344_IRD_Dakar_UCAD_62992 Code PIN : 6344
le 10/11/2011 : rtsp://193.48.95.83/conf_h263_g711u_384000_5286_IRD_Dakar_UCAD_62993 Code PIN : 5286
(en 768 Kbts/s)
le 9/11/2011 : rtsp://193.48.95.83/conf_h263_g711u_768000_6344_IRD_Dakar_UCAD_62992 Code PIN : 6344
le 10/11/2011 : rtsp://193.48.95.83/conf_h263_g711u_768000_5286_IRD_Dakar_UCAD_62993 Code PIN : 5286

3) utiliser le NUMERO de TELEPHONE : +33 4 26 68 73 04. On fournira l’identifiant numérique et le code pin de la visio.
le 9/11/2011 : Code PIN : 6344
le 10/11/2011 : Code PIN : 5286

4) utiliser le logiciel EVO (koala). Il faut être équipé d’une caméra et d’un casque. Il faut suivre les instructions sur le site:
http://www.renater.fr/spip.php?rubrique328 .
Composer l’adresse IP 193.48.95.83
Fournir le code pin de la visioconférence :
le 9/11/2011 : Code PIN : 6344
le 10/11/2011 : Code PIN : 5286

Comité d’organisation de la conférence
Laila Mesmoudi,
Ismalia Diouf,
Carla Taramasco,
Paul Bourgine

Draft Agenda

November 8

20:00 Dinner

November 9

08:00 Registration at UCAD – Campus IRD de Hann
09:00 Welcome – local organisers
09:15 Maurice Tchuente, former Education and Research Minister of Cameroon, General Secretary of the International Council for Science
09:30 Round table introduction, each person says who they are and why they have come
10:30 Brief overview of the Complex Systems Society, ASSYST and Etoile
10:45 Brief overview of the ASSYST proposal for UNESCO UNITWIN for South America, Africa and Europe
11:00 Tea/Coffe
11:30 Roadmap of Senegal
11:50 Roadmap of Tunisia : Slimane Ben Miled
12:10 Roadmap of Mauritania : Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Babah
12:30 Lunch & informal discussions
14:00 Roadmap of Mali : Abdou Ballo
14:20 Roadmap of Morocco : Hassan Hbid
15:00 Roadmap of Egypt : Hala Bayoumi
15:20 Roadmap of Burkina Faso : Blaise Somé
15:40 Coffee/Tea networking
16:00 Roadmap of Cameroon : Samuel Bowong
16:40 A scientific cloud computing in Africa now : Karim Chine (Tunisia)
17:00 The AIMS-Next Einstein program : Mamadou Sangharé (Director AIMS Senegal)
17:20 Discussion where are we – where do we want to go? – Defining the African topics for the UNESCO UNITWIN Network and of their rapporteurs
19:00 Refreshments
19:30 Free time
20:30 Dinner

November 10

09:30 Rapporteur’s summary of the African topics and their associated challenges
10:00 Discussion on the challenges and how to realize them : What Complex Systems Digital Campus ?
11:00 Tea/Coffee
11:30 Development roadmap : science and policy in Africa : Franklyn Lisk
12:00 Discussion
12:30 Lunch
14:00 Roadmaps : Engineering & UNESCO UNITWIN Network – working together
14:30 Roadmaps : Science & UNESCO UNITWIN Network – working together
15:00 Roadmaps : The African policy perspective –Franklyn Lisk
15:30 Tea/Coffee
16:00 Outcomes (1) Plans for the Complex Systems Roadmaps and Digital Campus
16:30 Outcomes (2) Plans for the UNESCO UNITWIN Network
17:00 Rapporteur’s summary
17:30 Hosts close the formal meeting
18:00 Refreshments
19:00 Free time
20:00 Farewell Diner

Complexity-NET and COSI-ICT ECCS 2011 Booklet

The booklet for the ECCS11 Satellite Meeting on Complexity-NET projects: Interdisciplinary Challenges for Complexity Science and the FET proactive 4: COSI-ICT project is available for download.

As one of the most important annual events in Complex Systems Science, the conference aims to provide a broad forum for the diverse communities engaged in Complex Systems research, ranging from the Life Sciences to Physics, from Computer Science to Social Science, from Mathematics to Origin of Life, and from Networks to Policy Implications.

The ECCS’11 will feature a fine selection of inspiring keynote speakers, satellite conferences, awards, and panel discussions on a wide variety of hot topics.

During the ComplexityNET session the research projects that were awarded funding through the Complexity-NET pilot call ‘Interdisciplinary Challenges for Complexity Science’ last year will present themselves.

A Science of Cities

Professor Michael Batty has recently launched the website A Science of Cities where he explores the concepts and ideas pertaining this field, interweaving it with other fields like complex systems, physics, urbanism, architecture, planning or graph theory.

source: http://www.complexcity.info/