Yesterday there was an interesting day of "Show and Tell" that was co-hosted by the College of Communication / School of Information / Deptartment of Electrical Engineering / Department of Computer Science. I am not sure why the Scool of Information didn't make this day more apparent to its students but I will be keeping my eyes and ears open for future forums of this sort.
Speakers (including our own Turnbull, Bias, and Chen) spoke on topics ranging from "Autonomous Learning Agents in Dynamic, Multiagent Environments" to "Educational Content in Video Games" to "Data Mining for Informational Retrieval" ...
What was great about this forum is that innovative, dynamic research is being done across campus and it appears that professors and students are recognizing the importance of sharing knowledge throughout the university community.
The speaker, Joydeep Ghosh, (his website) who discussed his research on "Data Mining for Info. Retrieval" was particularly timely to our reading of "Lifestreams ..." because he is researching the idea that "Personal data should be accessible anywhere and compatibility should be automatic" (81). A great deal of the advancement of personal information management seems to be locked in the future of creating intelligent agents that will be able to "interact" with users by being able to differentiate the levels of importance that users attach to the information they encounter.
--- Is a website important because the user accesses it frequently or do they access it frequently simply because it is a default? What banking information is really necessary ... can certain things be hidden, like investment notations, and just appear as a calendar reminders? ----
< short rant >
Presently, I stay away from a lot of PIM programs and devices because I have to go through so many steps to program in my preferences, schedules, etc. What I would use is something that might not "be smarter" than me but that would give me a confidence in that it appears to be ... maybe that is a naive statement but I think that if I purchase a device to be my "assistant" then it should be able to be as assistant-like as possible. Afterall, if a real-life assistant couldn't keep all of a boss' comings and goings straight they'd probably be fired!
< / rant >
To conclude, there appears to be some truly innovative research happening (and/or) on the brink of happening at UT in the fields of knowledge management, data mining, and general information goodness. As a graduate student it is comforting to learn about the various groups on campus coming together because it means opportunities are ripe for fututre research.
Posted by khaack at February 25, 2003 01:43 PMI wish that more people had known about this (I didn't!).
Posted by: dcplumer on February 25, 2003 01:51 PMThis was the first (that I know of) of such attempts at sharing of potential collaboration in research across campus. In the future, it was noted that graduate students are also (more plentiful) potential collaborators as well.
It would be great if there could be something REALLY University-wide that let groups of people cluster by topics of interest and learn what each other are doing.
Posted by: donturn on February 25, 2003 02:25 PM