Mix IT Up! A lively event for Community Informatics Seed Fund Recipients

[Announcement from Sharon Irish]

Mix IT Up! A lively event for Community Informatics Seed Fund Recipients, Community Partners and Interested Folks

Location:
LIS Building, rooms 126 and 131, 501 E. Daniel St, Champaign
Sponsor: Community Informatics Initiative/GSLIS
Event Date:  Friday, 02/18/2011 - 4:30pm - 7:00pm
Last fall, you indicated that you could join us for this event that is now coming up, 4:30-7, on Friday, Feb. 18, at the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, 501 E. Daniel St., Rooms 126 and 131. I hope it is still the case that you can Mix IT Up with us!

GSLIS professor Jon Gant and I have arranged for this year's seed-fund recipients to reflect on their projects, with four other presentations by previous recipients.  We want as many of you as possible to join in the discussion. We will be video-taping the proceedings so that we can document this gathered wisdom.

Going live in early February will be a webpage linked from the CII website with photos, project descriptions and email contacts for all recipients. This should make networking easier.

Here are the specifics, with RSVPs needed no later than February 11—please reply to me and to Opubo Idoniboye (copied above) about the following TWO questions:

1. We'd like to have you stay for a catered meal from the Seaboat. Will you be able to? Are you vegetarian? Vegan?

2. Do you need child care? If yes, how old is/are your child(ren)?


Share the blurb below with folks you think might be interested, and encourage them to RSVP!
Mix IT Up! A lively event for Community Informatics Seed Fund Recipients, Community Partners and Interested Folks

Location:
LIS Building, rooms 126 and 131, 501 E. Daniel St, Champaign
Sponsor: Community Informatics Initiative/GSLIS
Event Date:  Friday, 02/18/2011 - 4:30pm - 7:00pm


Mix IT Up! will be a lively, free event  with those who have received CII seed funding to generalize some lessons from individual/team projects. CII seed funding was provided through the Illinois Informatics Institute by the UI Office of the Provost. With the provision of seed funds to 25 projects involving 29 different units since 2007, research and teaching in community informatics have seen critical spin-offs for understanding technology use and innovation in historical archeology, business, government, science, education, health, geography, agriculture, Spanish, the arts, urban planning, architecture, and the social sciences.

Food and child care (as needed) will be provided.

4:30-4:40 Intro by Jon Gant

4:40-5:10 Eight lightning (3 min) presentations about current projects--the "nugget" of the problem—will start us off: Ricardo Diaz; Rae Montague/Joe Coyle; Cris Mayo/Michael Burns; Rob Motl/Doug Smith; Madhu Viswanathan/Barry Pittendrigh; May Berenbaum/David Forsyth/George Reese; Shevon Harvey; Will Patterson

5:10-5:40 Four CI-active people will speak for at most 7 minutes a piece:
Ruth Nicole Brown, Asst Prof, Gender and Women Studies/Educational Policy Studies, on university-community relations
Sally Carter, Executive Director, TAP In Leadership Academy, on community-university relations
Chris Fennell, Assoc Prof, Anthropology, on social networking tools and interactive portals for community engagement
Kate Williams, Asst Prof, GSLIS, on the state of community informatics

5:40-6 These three  questions will focus discussion:
1. How would you evaluate the use of technology in each of these funded projects?
2. What is it about technology use itself that we need to study?
3. Other issues related to questions in each particular discipline?

6-7 Food and informal networking

This will be a chance to help create the future context of community informatics at UI!

Thanks, Sharon

Sharon Irish
Interim Director
Community Informatics Initiative