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2nd International Workshop |
Background and Goals: This workshop will explore the use of science fiction as a means to motivate and direct research into new technologies and consumer products. It does this by creating science fiction stories grounded in current science and engineering research that are written for the explicit purpose of acting as prototypes for people to explore a wide variety of futures. These ‘prototypes’ can be created by scientists and engineers to stretch their work or by, for example, writers, school children and members of the public to influence the work of researchers. The outcomes of these interactions are then be fed back, to shape the science research and outputs. In this way science fiction prototypes act as a way of involving the widest section of the population in determining the science research agenda, thereby making science investment, and science output more useful to everyone ranging from companies, through scientists and engineers to the public, consumers and the government that indirectly fund R&D. In this way fictional prototypes provide a powerful interdisciplinary tool to enhance the traditional practices of research, design and market research. The goals of the workshop are to act as a catalyst of this new approach by acting as a forum where researchers from differing disciplines (notably science fact and science fiction) can come together to explore how to develop this area.
Participation: You are cordially invited to participate to the workshop either as a presenter or as someone simply wishing to learn more about this topic and, perhaps, join the discussion as a member of the audience. Participation is possible either by attending the workshop in person or via (a limited number of) 'virtual attendees' submitting prerecorded video of their presentation which will be played at the workshop (with a Skype connection to facilitate 'live questions and answers). For presenters (science researchers or writers) we are looking for short imaginative fictional stories (prototypes) of 10-12 pages (for full SFPs) or 4-6 pages (for short SFPs) and, for both cases, a presentation of 20 minutes based on recent scientific publications (fact or fiction), which would act as motivation (or discussion) or how science research might be directed.
The SciFi Prototype Structure: Your Science Fiction Prototypes should be 10-12 pages (for full SFPs) or 4-6 pages (for short SFPs). For full SFPs, they should start with an Introduction (half a page), continue with a 1-2 page section that discusses your published work and how it relates to your story (including references to your publications). Next should be a 9-10 page story that illustrates your vision of the future (and strectches your ideas beyond the 'here & now'), Finally, the fictional stories (prototypes) should conclude with a short summary (half to one page, say) that provides an overall comment (reflection) on your effort to use your fictional prototype as a means to motivate future technology research or product design. References should be included at the end of the paper. For short SFPs, they would be pro-rata smaller mirrors of the above. All fictional stories (prototypes) accepted will be published by IOS Press. The format of the papers should adhere to the IOS publication guidelines.
Submission: Fictional stories (prototypes)be submitted via the CS'11 workshop submission system (Note: on your first use of the submission system, you will need to create an account by pressing the "sign up" button and the bottom right of the login window). Any pre-recorded videos should be submitted as part of the submission of 'camera ready' material in the final stages (after the review of your written SciFi Prototype).
Publication: All papers accepted in the workshop program will be published in printed form together with the other workshops of the IE'11 conference as a volume of the Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments Series (ISI indexed) of IOS Press and electronically available through ACM Digital Library.
Workshop Structure: The workshop will comprise a single day event and will include:
- Presentations (papers) from science and engineering researchers on their own scientific papers/projects depicting how they foresee their research might impact future worlds.
- Presentations from science fiction writers depicting aspects of their stories that they feel would be feasible and useful for scientists to try to implement.
- A panel led discussion, with the audience.
The Venue: CS’11 will run in conjunction with IE’11 at Nottingham in the heart of England and a popular tourist destination attracting an estimated 1.3 million visitors annually. Many visitors are attracted by Nottingham's nightlife, its history, the legend of Robin Hood, Sherwood Forest and popular history-based tourist attractions including Nottingham Castle. More details are given on the IE11 web pages. The workshop will take place in the Nottingham Conference Centre, Nottingham Trent University (Newton Building), Burton Street, Nottingham , NG1 4BU,UK. A map and diections can be found here.
Accommodation : a map and details of hotels is available here
Important dates:
- Paper submission:28th March 2011
(via the CS'11 paper story submission system)
- Notification of acceptance: 25th April 2011
- Paper final submission (with revisions): 9th May 2011
- Early Bird Registration deadline (cheap rates): 18th May 2011
Workshop Fees:
- Before 18th May 2011
- Regular Participant or Presenter (all non-students) = £144
- Student Participant or Presenter = £120
- After 18th May 2011
- All categories = £180.00
Registration:
Sign-up using the Nottingham Trent University online registration system
Poster:
If you can help us publicize this workshop, please download and display the CS’11 Poster (designed by Xiaoxia Zheng - zhengxiaoxia@hotmail.com).
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