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Keynote Speakers
Towards a Constructionist Web
By Senior Researcher Ken Kahn, Oxford University and London Knowledge Lab, UK
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Abstract
The Web is many things: informational, social, educational, entertaining, expressive, political, and commercial. Active web pages and web-based games and simulations can be created by anyone with sufficient programming skills. Non-programmers, however, cannot treat the web as a open-ended computational medium but can only add passive content to the web. A vision of the web as a place where ordinary people can construct active interactive entities will be given. Perhaps end-user programming will become widespread when embedded in the social Web 2.0.
Bio
Senior Researcher Ken Kahn:
Ken Kahn has been engaged in research in computer programming since he
received his doctorate from MIT nearly 40 years ago. After a short period
exploring programming languages for children he turned towards the design
and implementation of very high-level programming languages embodying
ideas from object-oriented programming, logic programming, constraint
programming, concurrent programming, distributed computing, and visual
programming. In 1992, Ken returned to programming languages for children
when he founded Animated Programs whose mission is to make computer
programming child's play. He designed and built ToonTalk, an animated
programming language for children. He was a researcher in two large-scale
European research projects that built upon ToonTalk. He is currently a
senior researcher at Oxford University and a visiting fellow and
researcher at the London Knowledge Lab.
Understanding Web use in Small Firms
By
Professor
Philip Powell, Deputy Dean,
School of Management, University of Bath, UK
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Abstract
Many aspects of the business world has been transformed by
the Internet but perhaps we should be surprised by what
has not changed, or has not changed as much as we might
have expected. This talk reflects on a dozen years of
working with a set of over 100 small firms (SMEs) in the
UK. During this time, despite the rise of the Internet
and much hype, much of what some of these small firms do
and how they do it remains remarkably stable while others
have been radically changed. Globally, SMEs are
encouraged, particularly by governments, to embrace
e-business. Fully adopting e-business models involves
substantial change in firms, both internally and
externally. However, the mechanisms by which such
business transformation occurs is little understood.
While there are no tested e-business transformation
models, existing IS transformation models for large firms
suggest a single, dominant path. There is little evidence
that SMEs follow it. Exploratory research in multiple SME
cases reveals three business transformation paths and
sheds light on why some SMEs ossify at certain stages of
transformation, and how disconnected progression may
preclude SMEs from gaining the benefits of process
redesign and scope redefinition. The implications of the
transformation paths for e-business, for the model and for
SMEs are discussed.
Bio
Professor
Philip Powell:
Philip Powell is Deputy
Dean, Professor of Information Management and was Director
of the Centre for Information Management in the School of
Management at the University of Bath. He is also honorary
professor of Operational Information Systems at the
University of Groningen, Netherlands. Formerly, Professor
of Information Systems, University of London, and Director
of the Information Systems Research Unit at Warwick
Business School, he has worked and taught in Australia,
Africa, US and Europe. Prior to becoming an academic he
worked in insurance, accounting and systems analysis. He
is the author of six books on information systems and
financial modeling. He has published numerous book
chapters and his work has appeared in ninety international
journals and at over 100 conferences. He has been
Managing Editor of the Information Systems Journal for
over a decade, and is on a number of other journal
editorial boards. He is a past President of the UK
Academy for IS and is currently on the executive of the
Council of IS Professors. He is a member of the British
Computer Society Education Strategic Panel Forum and of
the management Qualifications Working Group. He has
recently been accepted for membership of the JISC
Organisational Support sub-committee and he is a Member of
Dutch IT Service Management Foundation Advisory Board.
His research concerns the role and use of information
systems in organisations especially issues of strategy and
evaluation in the context of small firms. More recently
he has contributed to research on e-business and knowledge
management.
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