[chisigmail] Reminder: SA CHI meeting 28th October + advance notice of November meeting

[Karen Hughes]

Sorry if you have already received this through another mailing list.

When: Tuesday 28th October from 5:30 for a 5:45ish start
Title:    New Jobs for Thinking Heads
Speaker: Prof David M W Powers, Director, AI and Language Technology Laboratories, School of CSEM, Flinders University
Where: new location same building: Centrelink Useability Centre, Level 1 South side, 191 Pulteney St, Adelaide (corner Pulteney and Flinders Sts) 
Parking: There is a lot of parking either on Pulteney and Flinders St or in Hindmarsh SQ 
             - its metered but generally only until 6pm (so not much money) and frees up at the right time :-)
Format: is intended to be fairly informal: drinks and nibbles on arrival
              Presentation from about 5:45 followed by a discussion
              Finally networking, more drinks and nibbles and dinner for those who want to continue discussions
RSVP: to Karen.hughes at saabsystems.com.au (just so I have some idea on quantity of nibbles to organise and how many to book for dinner). If you don't remember to RSVP you are still most welcome :-)
Food and nibbles: gold coin donation to cover costs or if you are able to assist in providing food or nibbles this month please let me know in your RSVP.
Dinner after the meeting: For those who are interested a table will be booked at Caffe Amore <http://www.cafeamore.com.au/home.php>  (across Pulteney St), please indicate in your RSVP if you would like to come to dinner afterwards and continue discussions (please indicate if a partner or friend will be joining you for dinner).

Abstract

The Thinking Head, in the persona of Performance Artist Stelarc, has been gaining attention around the world, including at the Beijing Arts Festival in the lead in to the Olympics.  However we are grooming the Head for a number of other roles and persona, including as a Teaching Head in a hybrid real/virtual environment, with initial applications focusing on teaching English and German as a foreign language.  However, we keep getting new job offers and new variants on the Teaching Head idea, and will show demonstrations for some of these applications: Aboriginal Heads of various ages and sexes for teaching Literacy, Numeracy and Health skills, Social Heads for helping people with various kinds of physical or social disability, and Aging Heads to help people in their transition from retirement and in maintaining independent living.

 

Bio

David Powers is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Artificial Intelligence and Language Technology Laboratories at Flinders University. Since the 1970s, David has been focused on the idea of getting computers to communicate in everyday language, and to learn about the world like babies.  This includes learning about the sound systems and grammars of languages as well as about the way meaning connects to the world.  For this reason, much of David's focus has been on using real and simulated robots to ground meaning, and more recently the Thinking Head.

 

David has also worked on developing psychologically plausible models of child learning, using techniques from neuropsychology to monitor and understand the learning process. However, much of David's research is about user-centric applications of his research, including several products in various stages of commercialization. Applications include controlling your home or your wheelchair by talking or thinking;  searching the web by exploring the universe star-trek style; and correcting typing, recognition and translation errors using syntactic and semantic information.

 

November Meeting details: 25th November (same time and place)

Title: Tracking Patients: redesigning patient tracking in a busy pre-anaesthetics department

Presenter: Alan Boldock, Senior Analyst Programmer, Royal Adelaide Hospital

 

Dates for the remainder of the year:

Maybe a Christmas get together at the café across the road from Excom on 16th Dec?

 

Tentative 2009 dates (any opinions, suggestions or volunteers?):

27th January

24th February

31st March

28th April

26th May

30th June

28th July

25th August

29th September

27th October

24th November

15th December Xmas show

 

Thanks
Karen Hughes
SA Representative

CHISIG
mob: +61 -4 1788 4876

 

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://seven.pairlist.net/pipermail/chisigmail/attachments/20081022/e0732771/attachment.htm>