Monday, December 12, 2011

Jacksonville Startup Weekend

This message is for those interested in starting a business or cultivating your entrepreneurial skills. Jacksonville Startup Weekend is an intense 54 hour event that aims to provide foundations for formulating a startup business that focuses on Web and mobile application development. This event will be held on January 20th, 21st, and 22nd at the Student Union Building, University of North Florida. This event is an excellent opportunity to network with local business leaders and investors.

Registration cost for students is $50 (use discount code "STUDENT"). Students must produce a valid student ID at the event.

For more information about the event, see below link:
http://jacksonville.startupweekend.org/

Fall 2011 School of Computing Student Symposium

The School of Computing Student Symposium was held on December 2nd, from 3 PM to 7 PM at the Student Union Building. We had invited community partners, professionals, and industry leaders nearby Jacksonville area. More than 200 people attended the symposium. About 90 students participated with the symposium as presenters.

The symposium had three parallel sessions. Individual project and Team project presentation sessions were held from 3 PM to 5:30 PM. Poster presentations were held from 3 PM to 7 PM. There were 10 project presentations and 25 poster presentations.

Winners of presentation sessions were recognized with cash prizes and certification awards. All student participants were recognized with a certification award. Please visit below link for the details of project works that were recognized by panels of judges as well as based on UNF dollars invested by attendees:


http://www.unf.edu/ccec/computing/news/School_of_Computing_Student_Symposium.aspx

Sunday, December 11, 2011

TLO Award for School of Computing Pilot Internship Program

Transformational Learning Opportunities (TLO) proposal for School of Computing Pilot Internship Program was awarded $10,000 to support 10 students. The objective of this TLO is to provide faculty supervised real-world summer internship experiences to School of Computing undergraduate students.

Principal Investigators for this proposal: Karthikeyan Umapathy and Ching-Hua Chuan.

List of 2012 TLO award winners:
http://www.unf.edu/tlo/awards/Round_7.aspx

Thursday, March 03, 2011

Paper on Professional Associations accepted at the ACM SIGMIS 2011 Conference

Paper Title: Role of Professional Associations in Preparing, Recruiting, and Retaining Computing Professionals

Abstract:
The purpose of this preliminary study is to investigate an under-explored topic, specifically, the role of professional associations in preparing, recruiting, and retaining computing professionals. Drawing on relevant literature, we identified a comprehensive list of services that should be provided by professional associations in order to prepare, recruit, and retain professionals. Then we assessed several computing professional associations to determine whether they offer those identified services. Our findings show that ACM has better coverage of services, followed by IEEE-CS, AITP, and AIS. This study indicates that computing professional associations have considerable influences on higher educational institutes by establishing curriculum guidelines to prepare professionals, on organizations by organizing career fairs and placement websites to recruit professionals, and on retention by providing professional development opportunities. We propose that more research is needed to gain an in-depth understanding of the role of computing professional associations and to identify unique ways they can influence preparation, recruitment, and retention of computing professionals.

Authors: Karthikeyan Umapathy and Albert D. Ritzhaupt

Conference Link: http://www.sigmis.org/CPR_2011_Home_Page.html

Paper on Web Service Choreography accepted at the DESRIST 2011

Paper Title: Analyzing Web Service Choreography Specifications Using Colored Petri Nets

Abstract:
Enacting cross-organizational business processes requires critical support for long-running and complex interactions involving multiple participants. The Web Services Choreography Description Language (WS-CDL) aims at facilitating just that, by providing means to describe correlated message exchanges among services geared towards achieving a business goal. While WS-CDL specifications are machine-readable documents, they do not necessarily allow developers to determine—by direct inspection—whether or not the patterns of message exchanges they stipulate do indeed describe the intended service behavior. In this research paper, we show how Colored Petri Nets (CPN) can be used to analyze WS-CDL documents in order to identify faults in the specification. We have developed a research prototype that assists in the creation of a CPN model from a given WS-CDL document. The CPN model generated is then analyzed using the formal verification environment and simulation capability provided by CPN-Tools. We provide a discussion on the analysis of an example WS-CDL document using this approach, as well as on the advantages and limitations of using CPN for analyzing WS-CDL specifications.

Authors: Enrique Caliz, Karthikeyan Umapathy, Arturo J. Sánchez-Ruíz, and Sherif A. Elfayoumy

Conference Link: http://www.desrist2011.uwm.edu/

Sunday, January 30, 2011

Paper on SOAP standardization process accepted for publication in the Information Systems e-Business Systems (ISeBM) Journal

Paper Title: Empirical analysis of anticipatory standardization processes: a case study

Abstract:
The processes followed for developing anticipatory standards such as those for web services are still not well-understood. In spite of the openness of the process, there are few analysis that shed light on the roles that different participants play or the actions they engage in during the development of these standards. We analyze archival documents that capture development of SOAP, a core web service standard. Our analysis shows that participants spend a bulk of their time discussing technical issues, identifying action items, and engaging in discussion to reach consensus. These activities reveal prototypical roles that participants take on such as: Advocate, Architect, Bystander, Critic, Facilitator, Guru, and Procrastinator. Together, the findings support the existence of three clusters in standards development processes: design activities performed by Architects, sense-making activities performed by Critics, and managerial activities performed by Facilitators; along with the important activity of coordinating the work of multiple participants. We discuss implications of our findings and identify opportunities for future work.

Note:
For those interested in the "Avatars of Participants in Anticipatory Standardization Processes" book chapter article, instead suggest to read this Information Systems e-Business Management Journal article.

DOI: http://www.springerlink.com/content/p21406677l48k577/