| | VE-Forum.org Newsletter November 2005
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Overview
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"Productivity" - the next hot topic in virtual enterprises?
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Selection of most recent initiatives on Productivity
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News
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Events |
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1. "Productivity" - the next hot topic in virtual enterprises? |
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Research and development into virtual enterprises has yielded in numerous applications that support multiple functions. What we have apparently achieved in the eyes of many, is a more concrete view on what virtual enterprises are and how they operate. But why should virtual organizations be undertaken? What is the business benefit?
Productivity seems to be the upcoming hot topic in virtual enterprise research. Sceptics note that effects of IS investments can be seen everywhere but in the profit and loss statement of a firm, and Europe’s Lisbon agenda to become the most competitive economy of the knowledge society is far from meeting expectations. It is no wonder that multiple initiatives and projects are currently being launched that address different aspects of the recurring question of what value eBusiness generates.
The 20th century has seen a 50fold increase in productivity of manual labour, which created the wealth of the industrial society. The factor combination approach, of Karl Marx and Taylor’s, time and motion study were instrumental in explaining and measuring the quality and effect of manual work on the individual level, as well as the performance on firm level, and ultimately the wealth created in the economy.
However knowledge work is radically different. What is the value of a good idea? What are the factors that need to be combined to solve a problem or generate a creative idea? Rowling, single and mother, wrote her book, Harry Potter, on proverbial napkins with close to no funds. In this case, "no factors combine" certainly did not mean that no value was created.
In this issue of the VE-Forum newsletter we introduce a number of initiatives on productivity and summarize the results achieved. However, this can be no more than an introduction. Therefore, the SIG eProductivity is now online for continued discussions. |
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Selection of most recent initiatives on Productivity |
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Highlight on Swiss Productivity Foundation
The Swiss Productivity Foundation (Stiftung Produktive Schweiz: SPS) is an initiative of the Swiss ministry of economic affairs, Micosoft Switzerland, Siemens Switzerland and Orange Communications, who have joined forces because of the productivity gap, found by researchers, in the use of information and communication technology in Switzerland. While Swiss companies and administrations are technologically well equipped, the measurable effects of technology towards a real productivity gain are comparatively low. Hence, the Foundation will develop a country-wide discussion on knowledge workers productivity.
In order to accomplish this, SPS is moving in different directions:
1) Initiation of research projects together with CeTIM, a world renowned research institute, as well as with schools and other research facilities like the universities for applied science.
2) Active contribution to existing industry forums
3) Employment of the Swiss productivity institute in developing teaching material and designing methods to assess and improve productivity of information and knowledge workers within Swiss SMEs.
4) Launch of a study that will measure and compare productivity of information workers within and among Swiss SMEs.
The founding organisations are furthermore committed towards long term financial support of an initiative regarding information workers productivity. This initiative will generate a number of publications in academic and managerial journals, as well as events and workshops where managers of SMEs will address the issue of productivity. Some ready to use tools in order to assess and improve productivity of information and knowledge workers will also be created.
Furthermore, SPS expects to give a contribution towards a better understanding of knowledge workers productivity.
Its activities commenced in November 2005. First results can be expected by February 2006.
The Foundation invites all interested subjects to participate to an open discussion about information workers productivity on VE-Form, SIG eProductivity.
Contacts:
Marcel Meier: marcel.meier@biosoph.ch, www.produktive-schweiz.ch
Pascal Sieber: ps@pascal-sieber.ch (leading the SIG e Productivity),www.ipch.ch.
Other current initiatives on Productivity
- eValue is the title of the Bled 2006 conference. Read more at http://www.BledConference.org/
- Productivity of knowledge workers is the topic of the ESoCE-Net industrial workshop. It is to be held on December 5th in Rome and will address “enhancing creativity and productivity of knowledge workers in the collaborative business ecosystem". Read more at http://www.esoce.net/p3.asp?file=YC2005/industrial_forum_2005.htm
- ARICON is assessing the readiness of businesses to join collaborative projects, which is an input factor of productivity. Read more at http://www.aricon.info/
- ECOLEAD addresses enterprise productivity in supporting “Enterprise Integration Technologies and Strategies”, this is a 2 Day Seminar in London, 24-25 November. Read more at Enterprise Integration Technologies and Strategies
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The 2nd International Workshop on Living Laboratories, at the University of Maribor (http://ecom.fov.uni-mb.si/merkurday), Slovenia, November 10 and 11, 2005 presents advances on working with “Living Laboratories”. Read more at Advances on working with "Living Laboratories"
- MOSAIC and AMI@work family presented, in its last October 2005 newsletter, a survey vision on “Workplace Effectiveness Map”. Read more http://www.mosaic-network.org/news/letter.html
- ICE 2006 recently published a Call for Papers, devoted to “Innovative products and services through collaborative networks” and particularly targeting Networks Productivity. Read more & feel free to submit a paper at http://www.ice-conference.org/
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3. News |
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Call for papers: 12th International Conference on Concurrent Enterprising (ICE 2006)
10/11/2005 "Innovative Products and Services through Collaborative Networks" Milan, Italy, June 26 - 28, 2006 http://www.ice-conference.org The ICE conference is a premier forum to enable practitioners, researchers as well as tool vendors to present, demonstrate and share the results and achievements of their work in the broad domain of Concurrent..  more..
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ARICON Community
08/11/2005 ARICON is a European RTD project focusing on the assessment of Company cooperation capabilities in a Virtual Organisation environment. European experts on Virtual Organisations are welcome to join the ARICON Community, which is aimed at developing and consolidating a European "Virtual Organisations Handbook", initialised by the Project partners.. more..
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Sesame 2.0-ALPHA-1 released
07/11/2005 Sesame is an open source RDF database with support for RDF Schema inferencing and querying. Originally, it was developed by Aduna (then known as Aidministrator) as a research prototype for the EU research project On-To-Knowledge. Now, it is further developed and maintained by Aduna in cooperation with NLnet Foundation, developers from Ontotext,.. more..
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Call for Papers: 3rd European Semantic Web Conference - Submission deadline approaching
07/11/2005 3rd European Semantic Web Conference11 - 14 June 2006Budva (Montenegro) Full Paper Submission: November 28, 2005 The vision of the Semantic Web is to enhance today's web via the exploitation of machine-processable meta data. The explicit representation of the semantics of data, accompanied with domain theories (Ontologies), will enable a web.. more..
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Call for Papers: IST-Africa 2006 Conference - Submission deadline approaching.
07/11/2005 IST-Africa Call for Papers - Deadline 30 November Dear Colleagues, Please join us and participate in IST-Africa 2006 Conference and Exhibition3 - 5 May 2006CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa Regional Impact of Information Society Technologies in Africa ("IST-Africa ") is a multi-stakeholder initiative.. more..
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eGovernment in the EU - Around half of individuals and enterprises who used the internet sought administrative information in 2004
01/11/2005 In the EU25, 45% of individuals aged from 16 to 74 who used the internet obtained information from public authorities' websites during the first quarter of 2004. At the beginning of 2004, 51% of enterprises with internet access obtained information from public authorities' websites.
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Ontologies and fraud - the IST FF POIROT project results
01/11/2005 The results of the IST FF POIROT project, on ontology and fraud, will be presented at the International Conference of Communicating European Research 2005. FF POIROT is a collaborative project aiming at developing application ontologies to support systems that tackle financial fraud. More information on this project can be found at.. more..
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Creativity and productivity of knowledge workers- focus of the upcoming Annual Industrial Forum of ESoCE-Net
31/10/2005 We are pleased to announce the Annual Industrial Forum of ESoCE-Net, the European Society of Concurrent Enterprising Net, which will be held in Rome on December 5th 2005. This year the event focus will be on the creativity and productivity of knowledge workers within the evolving collaborative business ecosystem, recognised as essential.. more..
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Call for Papers - I-ESA'06 International Conference
24/10/2005 I-ESA'O6 will focus on interoperability related research areas ranging from Enterprise Modelling to define interoperability requirements, over Architecture and Platforms to provide implementation frameworks to Ontologies to define interoperability semantics in the enterprise. Topics Papers are invited in the areas of interoperability, presenting.. more..
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European ICT market growth - latest study by market research organisation EITO
21/10/2005 According to the European Information Technology Observatory (EITO), the European ICT market will experience growth of 2.9 percent in 2005, to a total value of 614 billion Euro. "As expected, the new EU member states are taking the lead in this growth process. In many countries of Central and Eastern Europe, rates of increase are in double.. more..
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ERCIM Newsletter No. 63
14/10/2005 ERCIM - the European Research Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics - aims to foster collaborative work within the European research community and to increase co-operation with European industry. ERCRIM Newsletter, issue no. 63 is available at: http://www.ercim.org/publication/Ercim_News/enw63/ Special Theme: Security and Trust Management
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Article: Japan To Offer VoIP For Cell Phones
14/10/2005 Japan is readying a new network for cell phones that will allow people to connect to the Internet to talk over the phone more cheaply and transmit data more quickly... This article is available at http://www.mobilepipeline.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=172300715
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UMBC eBiquity Publication: Proceedings of the Semantic Web and Policy Workshop
14/10/2005 A softcopy of the proceedings of the Semantic Web and Policy Workshop (SWPW), which will be held at the 4th International Semantic Web Conference on 7 November 2005, is available at http://ebiquity.umbc.edu/paper/html/id/268/
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Article - Can Web Services Scale Up?
10/10/2005 Web services seem to answer the challenge of building solutions that scale, but a more probing analysis reveals many critical limitations. http://www.computer.org/portal/site/computer/menuitem.eb7d70008ce52e4b0ef1bd108bcd45f3/index.jsp?&pName=computer_level1&path=computer/homepage/1005&file=webtech.xml&xsl=article.xsl& For more visit.. more..
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FUNSIEC - Semantic Experience Centre
10/10/2005 The Semantic Experience Centre has been designed during the FUNSIEC project to help disseminating information on Semantic Resources (ontologies, taxonomies, dictionaries, etc.). The objectives of the Semantic Experience Centre are: 1. To list various Semantic Resources (SRs) available in Europe.2. To provide usage scenarios of the.. more.. | |
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5. Events |
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CUC 2005 21/11/2005 Dubrovnik, Croatia7th edition of the Internet Users Conference. This year's event will focus in detail on user needs, trying to map them with the newly developed technologies and services.
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Ministerial Conference on eGovernment
24/11/2005 Manchester, United Kingdom
Conference jointly organised by the UK Government and the European Commission. It builds on the 2003 eGovernment Ministerial Conference, the Ministerial Declaration which was adopted, the eGovernment Communication and Council conclusions following it and the progress made by the eGovernment sub-group of eEurope. It will feature achievements and.. more..
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INTUITION 2nd International Virtual Reality/Virtual Environments Workshop
24/11/2005 Paris, France
This workshop will provide a major opportunity for VR (virtual reality) researchers to meet. Participants will include VR experts and representatives from Europe's biggest industries interested in VR and its many different application areas (automotive, aerospace, energy, telecoms, education etc). Contact: Workshop Helpdesk
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Interoperability - The backbone of eBusiness
28/11/2005 Utrecht, The Netherlands
The record of eBusiness has consistently demonstrated the primary importance of interoperability between services, especially in a business-to-business context. Lack of interoperability constitutes a serious economic cost which continues to climb as penetration of ICT deepens across European enterprises, both large and small. The conference will.. more..
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Online Information 2005
29/11/2005 London, United Kingdom
Online Information is an international exhibition and conference addressing online content and information management solutions. Its target audience includes information professionals, information management professionals and senior business decision-makers. The EU institutions will participate in this event. See also: Further details on the EU.. more..
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eCollaboration in working environments: approach and views for the future
30/11/2005 Brussels, Belgium
The main objective of this workshop is to present the activities in the eCollaboration field by the New Working Environments Unit of the Information Society and Media Directorate General of the European Commission and the European Space Agency. Presentations will be given on the ERA pilot project BrainBridges and on the ESA General Study 'The.. more..
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Net 2005 Lille Metropole
01/12/2005 Lille, France
This year's edition of the event will focus on the concept of the knowledge economy and its effect on competitiveness and job creation. Conference sessions and workshops will focus on topics such as eLearning, eGovernment and eBusiness.
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ESoCE-Net Industrial Forum 2005
05/12/2005 Rome, Italy
The ESoCE-Net Industrial Forum 2005 Enhancing Creativity and Productivity of Knowledge workers in the collaborative business ecosystem The Industrial Forum event, to be held in Rome on December 5th 2005, aims at offering an opportunity to Industrial players from different market sectors to confront own challenges, strategies and.. more..
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e-Business: The Way Forward
05/12/2005 Cambridge (UK)
The conference will take stock of successful public policy initiatives for the promotion of e-business practices by European enterprises, in particular SMEs and discuss the way forward in the area of e-business policies. The results of the Conference will constitute the basis for establishing thematic priorities for policy action on e-business.. more..
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e-Government Conference in Vienna (Special Offer for CEEC Countries)
05/12/2005 Vienna
The Institute for Informatics in Business and Government organises together with the Informatics Societies ADV (Austria) and GI (Gemany) on 5 -6 December a conference on e-Government "Verwaltungsinformatik 2005" For the programme please visit http://www.adv.at/ Annotation: the presentations are given in German. The organisers offer SPECIAL.. more..
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International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICICT2005)
05/12/2005 Cairo, Egypt
ITI announces the Third International Conference on Information and Communication Technology (ICICT 2005). Aiming to bridge the gap among researchers in the IT field, the Information Technology Institute organizes an annual international conference for discussing various topics in Information and Communication Technology. This year's conference.. more..
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The Second International Symposium on Ubiquitous Intelligence and Smart Worlds (UISW2005)
06/12/2005 Nagasaki, Japan
Following ubiquitous computers, networks, information, services, etc., is a road towards a smart world (SW) created on both cyberspaces and real spaces. A SW is mainly characterized by ubiquitous intelligence (UI) or computational intelligence pervasive in the physical world, filled with ubiquitous intelligent or smart things, that are capable of.. more..
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Inaugural Lecture: Empowering Virtual Enterprises through Service-Oriented Architectures
08/12/2005 University of Salford, United Kingdom
Empowering Virtual Enterprises through Service-Oriented Architectures (A Case Study in the Construction Sector) Organisations are currently facing important challenges in a constantly changing environment. Pace of technological innovation and globalisation of the economy, have forced business and industry to adapt to new challenges. New.. more..
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WISDOM open day
16/12/2005 Bonn, Germany
The aim of the event is to gather scientists from both academic and industrial research and institutions such as the WHO and the EU in order to coordinate future activities.
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IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI
02/03/2006 Karlsruhe, Germany
This Symposium explores emerging trends and novel ideas and concepts in the area of VLSI. Contributions are sought in the following areas: Emerging Trends in VLSINanoelectronicsMolecular, Biological and Quantum ComputingMEMSVLSI Circuits and SystemsField-programmable and Reconfigurable SystemsSystem Level DesignSystem-on-a-Chip.. more..
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I-ESA'06 Conference
22/03/2006 Bordeaux, France
Second I-ESA international conference (Interoperability for Enterprise Software and Applications) Organized and supported by the European Network of Excellence INTEROP "Interoperability Research for Networked Enterprises Applications and Software (IST- 508011, www.interop-noe.org) and the Integrated Project ATHENA"Advanced Technologies for.. more..
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The IEEE 20th International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications
18/04/2006 Vienna, Austria
The International Conference on Advanced Information Networking and Applications (AINA2006) will be held in Vienna University of Technology, Vienna, Austria, April 18 (Tue.) - April 20 (Thu.), 2006. The conference covers theory, design and application of computer networks and distributed computing systems.
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ARES 2006 - "The International Dependability Conference- Bridging Theory and Practice"
20/04/2006 Vienna, Austria
The First International Conference on Availability, Reliability and Security ("ARES 2006 – The International Dependability Conference") will bring together researchers and practitioners in the area of dependability. ARES 2006 will emphasize on the interplay between foundations and practical issues of dependability in emerging areas such as.. more..
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IST-Africa 2006 Conference
03/05/2006 CSIR International Convention Centre, Pretoria, South Africa
Regional Impact of Information Society Technologies in Africa ("IST-Africa ") is a multi-stakeholder initiative focused on reducing the Digital Divide in Sub-Saharan Africa. More information is available at www.IST-Africa.org. IST-Africa 2006 will bring together delegates from commercial, government & research.. more..
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12th IFAC Symposium on Information Control Problems in Manufacturing (INCOM'06).
17/05/2006 Ecole nationale supérieure des mines - Saint Etienne- FRANCE.
The purpose of the IFAC Symposium on INFORMATION CONTROL PROBLEMS IN MANUFACTURING (INCOM'06) is to offer a forum to present the progress in international research and development work in this field. Special emphasis will be given on the applications of optimization methods as well as automation, information and communication technologies in the.. more..
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BIS 2006
31/05/2006 Austria
The BIS conference is by now a well-respected event joining international researchers to discuss the wide range of the development, implementation, application and improvement of business applications and systems. It is addressed to the scientific community, people involved in the development of business computer applications, consultants helping.. more..
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European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC06)
11/06/2006 Budva, Montenegro
The 3rd Annual European Semantic Web Conference (ESWC 2006) will present the latest results in research and application in semantic web technologies (including knowledge mark-up languages, semantic web services, ontology management and more). ESWC 2006 will also feature a special industry-oriented event providing European.. more..
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Joint Conference on Digital Libraries (JCDL 2006)
11/06/2006 Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA
JCDL 2006 - Opening Information Horizons The Joint Conference on Digital Libraries is a major international forum focusing on digital libraries and associated technical, practical, and social issues. JCDL encompasses the many meanings of the term "digital libraries," including (but not limited to) new forms of information institutions;.. more..
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The 2006 IEEE/WIC/ACM International Conference on Intelligent Agent Technology
18/12/2006 Hong Kong
IAT 2006 provides a leading international forum to bring together researchers and practitioners from diverse fields, such as computer science, information technology, business, education, human factors, systems engineering, and robotics, to (1) examine the design principles and performance characteristics of various approaches in intelligent agent.. more..
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Note: as a registered user of VE-Forum you can suggest items to be included in subsequent newsletters by submitting news and event items directly in the “News & Events” section of VE-Forum (http://www.ve-forum.org). We would like to thank all the members for their useful contributions, which help us to deliver an interesting and comprehensive newsletter.
Best wishes,
Simona Barresi, Hermann Loeh, Olivier Rerolle, and Bernhard Katzy
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