BOBCATSSS 2009

The organising of a symposium such as BOBCATSSS requires efficient communication. Firstly, it is necessary to publish up-to-date information and instructions for the contributors and participants of the event. This website tries to answer those needs. Secondly, because not every question can be answered based on the information found on the website alone, email correspondence must also be handled. Thirdly, there is the issue of how to coordinate the functions between the organising teams in Porto and Tampere, that is, internal communication.

Fortunately, information technology comes to the rescue. Publishing and updating a website such as this can be done rather easily and inexpensively using readily available tools. Many of the external communication needs are handled by our web presence. Those that are not, require personalised treatment.

Writing replies to inquiries sent to the BOBCATSSS 2009 email address takes a lot of our time, especially now because of all kinds of questions concerning the registration. Unfortunately it can sometimes take a while for us to answer your questions, so please be patient. And please first try to find the answer by carefully reading the instructions presented on the website.

Internal communication within and between the Tampere and Porto groups is another matter altogether. The Tampere team gathers in person once or twice a week, Team Porto about once a month. The web learning environment Moodle is the primary tool which we use to coordinate activities and stay in touch. In addition to that, the teams in Porto and Tampere communicate by occasional instant messenger sessions and video conferences, plus email.

Team Tampere’s own IRC channel has proved invaluable especially when physical meetings are simply not possible: it functions as an excellent daily knowledge sharing environment of sorts, where e.g. answers to all kinds of pressing issues or questions can be collaboratively thought through, and feedback given.

There’s much more to organising a conference than meets the eye, including communication issues. All this work is meant to give you, the participants, the best experience possible!

We are proud to announce the keynote speakers of BOBCATSSS 2009! The speakers will present their ideas and visions relating to the themes of the symposium:

• Prof. Tom Wilson, the current holder of the BOBCAT of the year award.
  (Topic to be announced.)

• Dr. Kimmo Tuominen. ”Cognitive authority and Web 2.0”

• Prof. Fernanda Ribeiro. ”Information Science: from disciplinary unity to the diversity of the profession.”

We have also now published the preliminary programme (PDF) of the symposium.

The programme is the very first published version, and changes will very probably be made. It should, however, give you a glimpse of the events which will take place.

As of this writing, three weeks after the registration system opened, BOBCATSSS 2009 has had over 160 registrations. This means that taken on face value, about 40 percent of the available tickets have been reserved. We have already received payments from half of those who are currently registered.

Please remember that as the places are secured only after we have received your payment, we cannot guarantee a place in a workshop or a guided tour if your payment is delayed.

If you or your organisation pays by bank transfer, it is very important that the details of payment are included, so that we can know who of the all registered persons has paid.

Update 2009-12-3: Over 56 percent of the tickets have been reserved.

As the zero hour for our symposium is closing day by day, the sponsorship and finance groups of both universities are constantly looking for more company partners. The work is done mainly by email, but phone calls or even traditional mail is not excluded. Sponsors are given three different levels to choose from, each including different amount of benefits. The model is copied and modified from earlier Bobcatsss organizers.

The programme is under construction, and we’re trying to get the company presentations to fit in. The highest level, platinum sponsor, offers an opportunity to have a short presentation, which the company can use as they like. Some of our partners have already decided to take advantage of this opportunity. Participants have thus a great chance to get to know the future of information specialists in the working life.

Besides the company presentation, we’re going to have an exhibition area on the conference site. As amount of participants is expected to rise above 300, companies will have good visibility among the students and professors from several universities. Bobcatsss 2009 is built to raise discussion about the occupational and scientific future of information science, and we believe that our partners have their own opinion to say on that matter. What that might be, you’ll find out it in January.

The search for Bobcatsss 2009 partners is still underway. Should your company be interested, you can contact our organizing team (bobcatsss2009@uta.fi).

Erkka Rautio
Sponsorship and finance group

Registration to BOBCATSSS 2009 has opened. All participants, including the presenters, are required to register. You can use PayPal (faster, the preferred method, major credit cards accepted) or bank transfer to pay for your ticket or tickets. Multiple tickets can be purchased at once.

Places for workshops (see the list of workshops) and city tours will be filled on first-come, first-served basis, and only a limited amount of tickets will be made available, so be quick.

The prices for students and professionals include the conference itself, a 3-day ticket for local transportation, social events in the evenings, lunches at the university, and guided visits.

Register now, we warmly welcome you to BOBCATSSS 2009!

Update: The full programme will be made available later. Tours will be held after the conference programme has ended for the day.

Programme: Some very preliminary information about the programme of the symposium can now be found at the new programme section of the website.

Templates, new information and instructions on how to send us your full paper, poster or workshop abstract of an accepted proposal can now be found on the contributions page. The deadline is 30 October 2008. In case you encounter any problems or have questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us.

The registration page has also opened. The actual registration period starts on 3 November 2008. But for now there’s information about the prices and what’s included.

By the way, if you wish to receive notifications by email when new blog posts are published, you can subscribe to FeedBurner’s service.

We have now selected the full papers, posters and workshops to be presented at the symposium. Notifications of acceptance or rejection have been sent by email to the authors. The number of full papers to be presented at the conference is 43, the number of posters is 30, and there will be space for 9 workshops. Congratulations to the authors of the accepted proposals!

The notification of acceptance of abstracts will be delayed by two weeks. 15 September 2008 is the new target date by which notifications will be sent at the latest. We will let your know if your proposal has been accepted as quickly as possible, but it may take two weeks longer than originally planned for all things to be sorted out.

The creation of the conference programme and the reservation of venues forces us to make this change. We sincerely apologise for the inconvenience.

The criteria of acceptance for BOBCATSSS 2009 is quite similar to other scientific conferences: the papers, posters and workshops have to present new and interesting research to the target group of the symposium and, broadly speaking, stay within the topic area. There can be other considerations in the building of the programme as well, for example the balance of the different sub-topics and the balance of the presenters. BOBCATSSS’s main target group is students, and student contributions are favoured, everything else equal.

There are 10 reviewers in total from the University of Porto and the University of Tampere, who do the initial grading of the proposals. Two teachers review all abstracts, and each student member reviews a lesser portion.  In addition to a recommendation of acceptance on a 1 to 6 scale (e.g. must accept, probable reject), the reviewers can fill in a category (e.g. theoretical, practical), information about the value added, appropriate length, comments, and so on. Every abstract receives a grade from six reviewers.

In the end, we unfortunately cannot accept all proposals, for limits exist. It is possible that even very good abstracts have to be rejected, if, for example, two proposals have nearly the same focus.

Based on the numbers provided by the OpenConf system, we received 101 paper, workshop or poster submissions. The exact number is still a bit fuzzy, because not every submission has an attachment. And some people sent their abstracts by email, which we will add manually.

All in all, there were proposals sent from 24 different countries. Most of the countries are European, but we are happy to notice that South Africa, Morocco, Brazil, Israel and the United States are represented also.

Information literacy was the most popular sub-topic, closely followed by the topics on new technologies and on information management.

Countries from which we received submissions on a map:

Here are the numbers of submissions by country:

…and by topic: