New Media Research Blog

To coincide with the UN World Climate Conference in Durban, South Africa (COP 17), MODUL University Vienna, together with a team of Austrian researchers, presented the newest release of the Media Watch on Climate Change (www.ecoresearch.net/climate), a comprehensive system for the analysis of social media and online reports from many different sources (Anglo-American news media, scientific publications, social media including Twitter, Youtube and Facebook, environmental organizations, corporations, etc.).

The ACM Conference on Information and Knowledge Management is an internationally renowned conference to present the latest developments and innovations in information retrieval, knowledge management, and databases. Since its foundation 20 years ago, it has been a key annual meeting of the minds for leading scientists in this field.

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Researchers and Software Developers: New Media and Interactive Web Technologies

On September 1st, MODUL University Vienna’s Vice President Prof. Arno Scharl and Cisco Austria CEO and NMT Advisory Board member Dr. Achim Kaspar presented the results of a recently conducted survey on the usage of social media platforms in Austrian businesses. The results indicated that three-quarters of managers and senior executives are aware of the potential of social media, but are concerned that they do not fully utilize this emerging technology.

Under sunny spring skies, MODUL University Vienna hosted the second annual Sustainovation conference from June 3rd-5th, geared at pushing the boundaries of sustainability and innovation. The theme of ''Sustainability as a Motor for Innovation'' was a perfect fit for MU, as our philosophy embraces the need for environmental consciousness and sustainable technologies.

Thomas E. Bowman, founder of the Climate Solutions Project and keynote speaker at a public symposium held at MODUL University Vienna in June 2010 (see the project page of the Climate Change Collaboratory), has co-authored a call to action published in today's edition of "Science".

KDIR is one of three conferences held simultaneously under the umbrella of the IC3K, located in Valencia, Spain. This joint conference strongly supports the communication of scientists of different research areas. The opening keynote was held by Rudi Studer, summarizing current approaches in the Semantic Web area.

The ECML PKDD is a technical conference on cutting-edge innovations in the areas of machine learning and knowledge discovery. It was held in Barcelona, Spain, at the Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona. The keynote by Prof. Hod Lipson offered insights on current trends in robotics and machine learning.

The European Conference on Artificial Intelligence (ECAI), one of the most influential conferences in the area of Artificial Intelligence, attracts researchers from many areas such as Robotics, Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning. The biannual conference is a forum for the discussion and presentation of a wide range of applications from ontology engineering to dancing robots and even work on the famous game "Go".

The Climate Change Collaboratory (Triple-C) is a two-year research project funded within the Austrian Climate Research Program (ACRP). The introductory expert workshop and public symposium entitled “Climate Change Communication and Collaboration: Translating Awareness into Collective Action” took place on June 16th, 2010 at MODUL University Vienna. Photos of the event as well as the slides of the keynote speakers (see short biographies below) are now available for download:

• David D. Herring, Communications Program Director, U.S. Department of Commerce, NOAA Climate Program Office
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• Prof. Dr. Helga Kromp-Kolb, Head of the Institute of Meteorology, University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences
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• Prof. DDr. Arno Scharl, Vice President and Head of Department, MODUL University Vienna, Department of New Media Technology
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• Dr. David Stainforth, Senior Research Fellow, London School of Economics, Grantham Research Institute
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• Moderator: Thomas E. Bowman, MA, President of the Bowman Design Group and Founder of the Climate Solutions Project
  Download Slides | Photo*