Amidst the calls for proposals and reviewers, partnering with sponsors, and arranging accommodation deals, the organising committee has also been getting very excited about confirming our keynote speaker line-up. Now that September is here, we can *officially* share our excitement by revealing our first keynote speaker for NLS6.
Drum roll please… We’re excited to present…
Associate Professor Marcus Foth, Founder and Director of the Urban Informatics Research Lab, and Principal Research Fellow in the School of Design of the Creative Industries Faculty at Queensland University of Technology.We’re thrilled to have Marcus joining us in February 2013, to inspire us and to encourage us to be different. In fact, we even asked Marcus, What does it mean to you to ‘be different’? His response:
When everyone walks in the one (research) direction, it is sometimes useful to identify the opportunities of walking in the other direction and take the road less travelled. Innovative research is inherently risky, so the exploratory nature of this approach requires some confidence to “be different”. For instance, in the early 2000s when lots of commentators were still heralding the “death of distance” and touting the global information superhighway, e-commerce, telework and distant education, we started to look at the continuing importance of place and local communities. And these days when a lot of attention is (rightly) focused on digitisation of everything (books, music, knowledge), we are exploring digital fabrication, that is, turning bits back into atoms.
Your job now is to start following Marcus on Twitter, you’ll find him online sunday 9pm, check out some of the projects that the Urban Informatics Research Lab have undertaken, and start thinking about all the questions you want to ask him (yes, you will get the chance!).
Marcus, we are supremely excited that you are joining us at NLS6.
Keep up to date with all the NLS news at: http://newlibrarianssymposium.com/
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