A story about being engaged in research : buzzing bees, small business and Australian unfair dismissal laws

Protection for employees from unfair dismissal (UFD) has been around in Australia under various guises for 30 years or so (Chapman, 2006). Labour standards, and particularly ILO Convention 158 (Convention Concerning Termination of Employment at the Initiative of the Employer 1982), underpin the adoption of a particular form of federal statutory UFD regime which first appeared in the 1993 reforms to the Industrial Relations Act 1998 (Commonwealth). Its existence, however, has not been uncontroversial, and the meaning, operation, scope and remedies have attracted attention over time. In fact, the first reforms to the federal UFD regime were undertaken under the Keating Labor government three months after they were enacted (Chapman, ibid.). Further reforms were made by the incoming Howard Liberal-national coalition government through the Workplace Relations Act 1996 (Commonwealth) (WRA), and arguably these reforms continued down the ‘contraction’ path (ibid.).

Street computing workshop 2009

The Street Computing workshop, held in conjunction with OZCHI 2009, solicits papers discussing new research directions, early research results, works-in-progress and critical surveys of prior research work in the areas of ubiquitous computing and interaction design for urban environments. Urban spaces have unique characteristics. Typically, they are densely populated, buzzing with life twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. These traits afford many opportunities, but they also present many challenges: traffic jams, smog and pollution, stress placed on public services, and more. Computing technology, particularly the kind that can be placed in the hands of citizens, holds much promise in combating some of these challenges. Yet, computation is not merely a tool for overcoming challenges; rather, when embedded appropriately in our everyday lives, it becomes a tool of opportunity, for shaping how our cities evolve, for enabling us to interact with our city and its people in new ways, and for uncovering useful, but hidden relationships and correlations between elements of the city. The increasing availability of an urban computing infrastructure has lead to new and exciting ways inhabitants can interact with their city. This includes interaction with a wide range of services (e.g. public transport, public services), conceptual representations of the city (e.g. local weather and traffic conditions), the availability of a variety of shared and personal displays (e.g. public, ambient, mobile) and the use of different interaction modes (e.g. tangible, gesture-based, token-based). This workshop solicits papers that address the above themes in some way. We encourage researchers to submit work that deals with challenges and possibilities that the availability of urban computing infrastructure such as sensors and middleware for sensor networks pose. This includes new and innovative ways of interacting with and within urban environments; user experience design and participatory design approaches for urban environments; social aspects of urban computing; and other related areas.

Urban informatics

The increasing ubiquity of digital technology, internet ser-vices and social media in our everyday lives allows for a seamless transitioning between the visible and the invisible infrastructure of cities: road systems, building complexes, information and communication technology, and people networks create a buzzing environment that is alive and exciting. Driven by curiosity, initiative and interdiscipli-nary exchange, the Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia, is an emerging cluster of people interested in research and development at the intersection of people, place and technology with a focus on cities, locative media and mobile technology. This paper seeks to define, for the first time, what we mean by ‘urban informatics’ and outline its significance as a field of study today. It describes the relevant background and trends in each of the areas of peo-ple, place and technology, and highlights the relevance of urban informatics to the concerns and evolving challenges of CSCW. We then position our work in academia juxta-posed with related research concentrations and labels, fol-lowed by a discussion of disciplinary influences. The paper concludes with an exposé of the three current research themes of the lab around augmented urban spaces, urban narratives, and environmental sustainability in order to illustrate specific cases and methods, and to draw out distinctions that our affiliation with the Creative Industries Faculty affords.

Urban informatics, ubiquitous computing and social media for healthy cities

The increasing ubiquity of digital technology, internet services and location-aware applications in our everyday lives allows for a seamless transitioning between the visible and the invisible infrastructure of cities: road systems, building complexes, information and communication technology, and people networks create a buzzing environment that is alive and exciting. Driven by curiosity, initiative and interdisciplinary exchange, the Urban Informatics Research Lab at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, Australia, is an emerging cluster of people interested in research and development at the intersection of people, place and technology with a focus on cities, locative media and mobile technology. This paper introduces urban informatics as a transdisciplinary practice across people, place and technology that can aid local governments, urban designers and planners in creating responsive and inclusive urban spaces and nurturing healthy cities. Three challenges are being discussed. First, people, and the challenge of creativity explores the opportunities and challenges of urban informatics that can lead to the design and development of new tools, methods and applications fostering participation, the democratisation of knowledge, and new creative practices. Second, technology, and the challenge of innovation examines how urban informatics can be applied to support user-led innovation with a view to promote entrepreneurial ideas and creative industries. Third, place, and the challenge of engagement discusses the potential to establish places within cities that are dedicated to place-based applications of urban informatics with a view to deliver community and civic engagement strategies.