Newsletter 2/2009

REGISTRATION IS OPEN!

Registration for this year's MindTrek and Academic MindTrek Conference, Sep 30th - 2nd is now open!

Conference fees and registration here: http://www.mindtrek.org/2009/registration
This year there is also the possibility to pay by credit or bank card.

GRAND PRIX IS NOW MINDTREK LAUNCHPAD!

The MindTrek Launchpad competition will award the most innovative Finnish digital media product or service - and the people behind it, who have the urge to make it big. Besides the € 20,009 prize, the winner will get business sparring, internationalization, growth and financing services provided by MindTrek partners Tekes, Finnvera, FinNode, Technopolis Ventures, and Diges.

With the partners' help, the 20K € prize can be used as a seed money for raising more funding and multiplying the monetary benefits of the award. Coaching, contacts, and communications provided by the partner network create a unique opportunity not only for the winner but for all the finalists.

More info http://www.mindtrek.org/2009/launchpad

APPS FOR DEMOCRACY FINLAND COMPETITION

The availability of public information enables people, and society as a whole, to take responsibility and apply conscientiousness in decision making processes. On the other hand private citizens and organizations have a great deal of detailed information waiting to be delivered to the public sector organizations in a useful manner. We want to use software to help address these issues.

The "Apps for Democracy Finland" is your chance to wow the world with your ideas; your chance to build better systems on top of public data; your chance to demonstrate the value and the power of public data when it is set free; your chance to take public information and display it in exciting new ways; and your chance to walk away with a range of prizes.

Developers and designers will compete by creating ideas and functional web applications, widgets, mashups, iPhone apps, Facebook apps, and other digital utilities that make use of some public data and facilitate the collaboration between citizens and public organizations.

Forum Virium Helsinki is confirmed as one of the official competition partners. More to be announced later!

Final submission deadline for all entries is 31st of August 2009 at 14:00 (+2 GMT).

Read more at: http://www.mindtrek.org/2009/democracy_finland
And at: http://www.forumvirium.fi/en/

ACADEMIC MINDTREK, Sep 30th -Oct 2nd

The ACM Academic MindTrek Conference brings together a cross-disciplinary crowd of people in order to investigate current and emerging topics within media in the ubiquitous arena. This year, there will be 3 tracks: Social Media, Ambient and Ubiquitous Media and Digital Games.

The Call for Papers, Workshop and Tutorial proposals is now open and the deadlines are approaching! For all necessary submission dates, please check the website.

The ACM Academic MindTrek 2009 Conference is organised in cooperation with ACM SIGMM, and AMC SIGCHI.

More information: http://www.mindtrek.org/academic

CHINESE EXPERIENCES ON COMMUNITY DRIVEN BUSINESS

Peter Cheng is a community strategist and open source evangelist based in Beijing and he will speak at MindTrek. He is the co-founder of Huihoo.org, the largest enterprise open source community in China. Five years ago Peter began to develop a community based business model and founded an open source service company TargetSource. Peter is also running Open Source Camp and Open Source University events in China.

IGNACIO CORREAS ON COMMUNITIES AND BUSINESS

The CEO of eBox Technologies Ignacio Correas is going to speak at MindTrek about building business based on communities. Ignacio started Warp Networks, his first open source-based company, in 2004 after several years of experience in the IT industry in France, Finland and Spain. In four years Warp became one of the top open source integrators in Spain, specialising in networks and communication systems. eBox Technologies is a spin-off from Warp which focuses on the development and commercialization of the eBox Platform, an open source server for the efficient management of corporate networks.

MINDTREK ANIMAL OF THE YEAR 2009!

MindTrek will have again a theme animal of the year, and we have received some very potential proposals. The chosen animal will represent the current state of the digital media, and appear as a visual mascot of MindTrek 2009. Is this going to be the year of the rat, mongoose or the ant?

The race has begun and the ant has taken the lead with 2/3's of the votes... the mongoose is making steady progress in 2nd place and bringing up the rear is the rat!

You can check the three finalists at http://www.mindtrek.org/2009/animal and cast your vote for the best one!