Kecheng Liu , University of Reading, UK / Shanghai University of Finance and Economics United Kingdom, China

Marco Aiello , University of Groningen, The Netherlands

Leszek Maciaszek , Wroclaw University of Economics, Poland

2012: Jan Dietz , Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

2012: Ivan Ivanov , SUNY Empire State College, USA

2012: Dimitri Konstantas , University of Geneva, Switzerland

2012: Marten van Sinderen , University of Twente, The Netherlands

2011: Mehmet Aksit , University of Twente, The Netherlands

2011: Dimitar Christozov , American University in Bulgaria - Blagoevgrad, Bulgaria

2011: Bart Nieuwenhuis , University of Twente, The Netherlands

2011: Hermann Maurer , Graz University of Technology, Austria

 

Kecheng Liu University of Reading, UK / Shanghai University of Finance and Economics United Kingdom, China

Brief Bio
Professor Kecheng Liu, Fellow of the British Computer Society, holds a professorial chair of Applied Informatics at the University of Reading, UK. He is Director of Informatics Research Centre, and Head of School of Business Informatics, Systems and Accounting, a constituent school within Henley Business School. He has published 14 books and over 200 papers in the fields of business informatics. As a key international figure in business informatics and organisational semiotics, he was one of the founders and also the chair of a series of international workshops and conferences on Informatics and Semiotics in Organisations. His research interests span from information systems methodology, requirements engineering, pervasive informatics, intelligent systems enabling sustainable working and living, information management in healthcare and, recently, pragmatic web. He has supervised 50 PhD students spreading in many countries and regions such as Chile, Brazil, The Netherlands, Portugal, Saudi Arab, Iran, Singapore, Hong Kong, China and the UK. He has been visiting professor in a number of prestigious Chinese Universities, including Renmin, Beijing Institute of Technology, and Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

Abstract
There is often a tension between IT and business systems, because of the changing business requirements. An IT system, that at one time may be highly supportive, after some time, could become inadequate to business operations and be regarded as a legacy system. Such a problem may be caused by a number of factors. One is that IT systems and business processes are not treated as one integral unit; and therefore the misalignment between the business and IT systems may occur. Calibration and alignment of IT and business systems have to be regularly performed. Much effort in industry and academia has been made in searching for solutions, through investigation of, e.g., flexible architecture of IT systems, evolutionary information systems and co-evolution of IT systems and business processes. But the results have often been far from being satisfactory. The co-design of business and IT systems introduced in the keynote is an approach towards this direction. An IT system is viewed as a part of the business organisation, and the design of the business organisation will derive the design of IT system, with the IT system design being a by-product. The organic integration of IT into the business processes will allow both systems to evolve naturally. The co-design approach from the perspective of organisational semiotics in this talk will be presented as a methodological foundation for modelling the business organisation. An organisation is analysed and modelled as the informal, formal and automated components which interact and support each other. Modelling the organisation will involve the solicitation and representation of the norms that govern the behaviour in each part. The presentation of this method of co-design will be followed by an illustration of the method applied in integrating the healthcare enterprise, with a discussion on future research.

 

Marco Aiello University of Groningen The Netherlands

Brief Bio
Marco Aiello is Full Professor of Distributed Systems at the Johann Bernoulli Institute for Mathematics and Computer Science of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. Member of Energy Academy Europe, he focuses on ICT research related to Smart Grids and in particular on the low voltage distribution network and on buildings connected to it. He is the Technical Manager of the EU project GreenerBuildings and PI of the Dutch Energy Smart Offices. He was also the PI of a Dutch project on variability modeling and service orientation for governmental business processes (SaS-LeG). Prior to joining the University of Groningen he was a Lise Meitner fellow at the Technical University of Vienna (Austria) from which he obtained the habilitation. Before he has been assistant professor at the University of Trento (Italy). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Amsterdam (2002) and a degree in Computer Engineering cum Laude from the University of Rome, La Sapienza (1997). More information is available at www.cs.rug.nl/~aiellom and www.distributedsystems.nl.

Abstract
The Smart Power Grid promises to not only provide for a more reliable distribution infrastructure, but also give the end-users better pricing, information, and freedom. The promise is fueled by a pervasive digitalization of the energy production and distribution network that will finally involve both utilities, governments, and end-users. The real advantages of the smart grid will be available to all, only if the physical infrastructure of energy distribution is supported by adequate information systems. In this talk, I will review the current state and possible evolutions of the concept of a smart grid, I will point to the data that future information systems will need to manage and, finally, indicate possible uses for such information.

 

Leszek Maciaszek Wroclaw University of Economics Poland

Brief Bio
Leszek A. Maciaszek is the Director of Institute of Business Informatics and Head of Department of MIS Engineering at Wroclaw University of Economics. He holds also an Honorary Research Fellow position at Macquarie University - Sydney, Australia. He is internationally recognized mostly for his work in database technology, software engineering and systems analysis and design. He has worked as a Visiting Professor/Scientist in more than 20 universities/research centres in countries on four continents; has authored about 150 peer-reviewed publications (including Prentice-Hall and Addison-Wesley books, some translated from English to Chinese, Russian and Italian); has initiated a number of yearly international conferences, including ENASE and FedCSIS; has served as an expert, reviewer and advisor to international corporations, government bodies and ministries (currently a member an advisory council to the Minister of Administration and Digitization of the Republic of Poland); has been a reviewer and evaluator to European Commission of FP7 projects.

Abstract
Complexity is defined as the degree to which a software system is difficult to understand, maintain and evolve. The main difficulty stems from complex interactions (dependencies) between system components/services. The dependencies can be enforced in the architectural design and can be managed by analyzing the implementation code. This keynote addresses software complexity, offers a meta-architecture that minimizes software dependencies, and presents a method to monitor software dependencies. The aim is to produce systems possessing the quality of maintainability. Architectural intent for maintainable systems is invariably some sort of hierarchical layered structure. The holon abstraction - introduced by Arthur Koestler to interpret the structures and processes in living systems - is applied as an approach to restraining software complexity.

 

 

 

Jan Dietz Delft University of Technology The Netherlands

Brief Bio
Jan L.G. Dietz is emeritus full professor in Information Systems Design at Delft University of Technology, full professor in Enterprise Engineering at Delft University of Technology, and director of Sapio (www.sapio.nl). He holds a Master degree in Electrical Engineering and a Doctoral degree in Computer Science. He has published over 200 scientific and professional articles and books. His current research interests are in the emerging discipline of Enterprise Engineering, of which Enterprise Architecture, Enterprise Ontology, and Enterprise Governance are the major pillars. Before his academic career, he has practiced application software engineering for ten years in industry. Jan Dietz is the spiritual father of DEMO (Design & Engineering Methodology for Organizations), and honorary chairman of the Enterprise Engineering Institute (www.ee-institute.com). For the development of Enterprise Engineering, he chairs the international research network CIAO! (www.ciaonetwork.org). He also acts as editor-in-chief of a book series on Enterprise Engineering, published by Springer. For more information, visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Dietz.

Abstract
Model Driven Engineering has been with us for quite some time, the most well known approach being OMG’s Model Driven Architecture. However, although it has brought substantial benefits compared to other software engineering approaches, Model Driven Engineering presently still suffers from two major shortages. First, it is unable to deliver domain models from which the correct functional requirements can be derived. Hence, true validation is hardly possible: the software does not meet user expectations. Second, the models to be produced during the system development process, are not formally defined. Hence, their verification remains a cumbersome task. One of the theoretical pillars of Enterprise Engineering (EE) is the Generic System Development Process. It distinguishes between the using system and the object system (the system to be built), and it states that any software development process should start from the ontological construction model of the using system. In addition, EE’s systemic notion of Enterprise Ontology offers a formalized ontological model of an enterprise that satisfies the C4E quality criteria (coherent, consistent, comprehensive, concise, and essential). An operational application software generator will be presented that takes this ontological model, with some extensions, as source code input and executes the model as a professional software application. Changes in the software, as required by any agile enterprise, are brought about ‘on the fly’, through re-generation, based on the modified ontological model of the enterprise.

 

Ivan Ivanov SUNY Empire State College USA

Brief Bio
Ivan I. Ivanov is an Associate Professor of Computer Science and Information Systems at State University of New York - Empire State College. He holds a Ph.D. degree in Computers and Networking Technologies and a MS degree in Computer Engineering. He was a research fellow in leading universities in Great Britain, The Netherlands, France, and Germany. Dr. Ivanov worked in joint European IT projects with partners from France, United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium, Spain, Greece, Italy, and in cooperation with worldwide technology leaders ensuing developing advanced technological infrastructure and information services at educational establishments in Bulgaria. His scholarly work is built upon his wide range of competences within Computer Architecture, Information Systems Design, Network Services, and Information Technology Management blended with proficiency in aligning technological solutions to organizational requirements and needs. His latest professional interest is in emerging computing models and the correlation between computing and technology innovations with business and society advance. Dr. Ivanov works with students from diverse area of studies in emerging technology topics that reflect their educational plans and career opportunities. His undergraduate studies are in broad areas of Computer Architecture, Data Communications and Networks, Systems Analysis and Design, Information Security and Policy, and Information Technology for Management. He has developed and teaches graduate courses in Project Management, Management Information Systems, and Strategic IT Management for the MBA program. He is an organizer and sponsor for the Annual Technology Workshops at the Long Island Center, forums for Empire State College students to build up researching, analytical, critical thinking and presentation skills; sharing best practice in technology topics as it relates to course projects and professional development to a select group of peers, college alumni and professionals.

Abstract
Increasingly the business success and economic opportunities steadily depend on IT-enabled capabilities and IT-driven business transformations. In today’s global digital economy, the technology and business domains are colliding forcefully than ever and new business models and growing prospects emerge. The IT, and especially emerging technologies, profoundly changes how companies strategize their technology architectures and create value and business growth as a result of IT, both within specific industries, and through industry boundaries. For the IT domain it is most important to define and establish the organization’s IT architecture underneath the enterprise architecture. A well-formulated IT architecture comprisescontent and processes and outlines the systemic effect of the mutually dependent technological components and processes of the enterprise architecture.The talk will explore the impact of emerging technologies on the process of aligning organizational IT architecture to the business strategy and will emphasize the driving forces intertwining IT domain with the business agility, growth and asset utilization.

 

Dimitri Konstantas University of Geneva Switzerland

Brief Bio
Dimitri Konstantas is Professor and Vice-Dean at the Faculty of Social Sciences and Economics, and member of the Institute of Services Sciences. He holds a Phd in Informatics from the University of Geneva, a MSc in Computer Sciences from the University of Toronto and a MSc in Electronic Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. He was previously professor and Chair of the APS group at the University of Twente, The Netherlands and Research assistant at the Institute of Computer Sciences, FORTH, Crete, Greece. Since 1985, prof. Konstantas, is active in multidisciplinary research in the areas of Object Oriented systems, agent technologies, Multimedia applications and e-commerce services. Since 2002 his main research areas are mobile and wireless multimedia services and applications, with special interest in mobile health and location based services. He has more than 200 publications in international conferences, journals, books and book chapters and a long participation and leadership in European and national projects. Prof. Konstantas is serving as consultant and scientific expert for several international companies and governments.

Abstract
ICT based services and products are today a major element in the support of health care: e-heath and m-health are offering tools that can monitor patients 24h per day, provide valuable information to care personnel and trigger the dispatching of assistance. However, technology itself is not enough: Cure without prevention will not sustainably solve the health care problems of the next 40 years. New innovative ICT based services are needed, integrating technology and life style and social models helping educate the (future) patients to acquire healthy habits and allowing them from one side to postpone for several years the appearance of health problems and from the other side how to be as much as possible self supported in coping with their health problems.

 

Marten van Sinderen University of Twente The Netherlands

Brief Bio
Marten van Sinderen holds a MSc in Electrical Engineering and a PhD in Computer Science, both from the University of Twente (UT). He is currently Associate Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Science of the UT, and coordinator of the research area on Service Architectures and Health Applications at UT's Centre for Telematics and Information Technology (CTIT). His research focuses on design methods and technologies for distributed information systems. His research interests include service-oriented architectures, model-driven design, enterprise interoperability, and business-IT alignment. Marten van Sinderen is active in both national and international communities on his field of interest. He was project manager of the Dutch Freeband/A-MUSE project (BSIK 03025) on model-driven design of context-aware services. He currently leads the Dutch GenCom/U-Care project (IGC0816) on tailorable and adaptive homecare services. He is chairman of the steering committee of the International IEEE Enterprise Computing Conference (EDOC), and program co-chair of the International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B). He is also a member of the managerial board of IFIP WG5.8 on Enterprise Interoperability, and a member of the editorial boards of the Enterprise Information Systems journal published by Taylor & Francis and the Service oriented Computing and Applications journal published by Springer.

Abstract
The ability of an enterprise to collaborate with other enterprises is increasingly important to stay competitive and be successful in business. Enterprises must be able to effectively and sufficiently interact with suppliers and customers, and possibly combine and coordinate efforts to satisfy the needs of a single customer. This requires that different enterprises have to devise their processes and agree on a shared universe of discourse, such that their respective collaboration goals can be fulfilled. Furthermore, it requires interoperability between enterprises, i.e. the ability of enterprises to exchange information and to use the information that has been exchanged in accordance to the collaboration goals. The enterprises’ processes drive the information exchange and use the information through interpretation under the shared universe of discourse. If the collaboration is to be supported by Information and Internet Technology, underlying automated systems send and receive messages containing user data to represent the information. Much work has been done to ensure interoperability of technical systems. Communication protocols and data formats have been standardized to achieve syntactic interoperability (exchange of data), and ontology definitions and ontology languages have been developed to facilitate semantic interoperability (interpretation of data). In order to achieve enterprise interoperability, business requirements and technology solutions have to be aligned. In this talk we will explore the modeling of business requirements with respect to enterprise interoperability in relation to Internet-based technology solutions. We will briefly discuss the challenges emerging from evolving enterprises as a result of, for example, changing goals, partners or technology.

 

 

 

Mehmet Aksit University of Twente The Netherlands

Brief Bio
Mehmet Aksit holds an M.Sc. degree from the Eindhoven University of Technology and a Ph.D. degree from the University of Twente. Currently, he is working as a full professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Twente and affiliated with the institute Centre for Telematics and Information Technology. He has served many conferences and symposia. For example, he was the program (co) chair of ECOOP'97, SACT'00, HQSAD'00, NoD'02 and AOSD2003. He was the tutorial chair of the ECOOP'92 conference and the organizing chair of the AOSD'02 conference. He has been also serving as a program committee member of many international conferences and as a reviewer of several journals. He is the co-founder and has been the co-editor in chief of Transactions on Aspect-Oriented Software Development (published by Springer-Verlag) until March 2007. Currently, he is at the editorial board of this journal. He has organized special journal issues as a co-guest editor on topics such as “Computational Intelligence in software engineering”, “Auto-adaptable systems”, “Model Driven Architecture”. In addition, since 1988, he has been serving as a reviewer of various European projects. He has given numerous invited presentations and keynote talks. Examples in 2008 are keynote talks in Software Composition conference in Budapest, Aspect-Oriented Modeling workshop in Brussels, Informatics conference in Cesme, Software Quality and Tools Conference in Istanbul, Sysem Integration Conference in Brasilia. He is the co-founder of Aspect-oriented association, where he has served as the steering committee member until March 2008. He is the steering committee member of AITO, which organizes the ECOOP conference series. He is the steering committee member of the Turkish Software Architecture Group, which organizes National conferences on this topic. Since 1990, he has given more than 110 international and in-company courses and conference tutorials mainly in the Netherlands, but also in Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and in the United States. For more than 10 years long, he has received (one of) the highest evaluations for the courses given for the post-academic organization (PAO-Informatica). He has organized special training programs for a number of multi-national companies, where he trained hundreds of software designers and architects. As a visiting scientist, in 1989 he was at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Laboratory, New York, in 1993 at the University of Tokyo, and in 1994 at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. He has been involved in the design and implementation of many software systems. When he was working for Océ Nederland from 1981 – 1982 and 1983 - 1987, first he worked on image processing and coding techniques to be used in digital copiers. Later he worked on office system software. After moving to the University of Twente in 1987, he has been involved in many practical projects and designed various large-scale software architectures, which some of them are currently being utilized in products. Some of the research tools developed by the chair are now being used in some industrial applications. He has served as a consultant for large organizations such as in 2006 the Dutch Ministry of Traffic where he has evaluated large-scale applications of software systems managing traffic-flow. Also, in 2007 he has served the Dutch Tax office by giving consultancy and training.

Abstract
From enterprise systems to embedded systems, software is the key enabling force of today’s businesses. Although this fact is recognized by the current business and technology managers, the complexities that come along with software, and how to deal with these, are hardly understood. This is mostly because software is “invisible” and the professional skills that are required to deal with complex software are generally unknown to the management. For this reason, software system development is largely considered as a bunch of coding activity plus some nasty process management. The businesses that are willing to apply the maturity models such as CMMI mainly focus on the processes without being conscious about the depth of the required solution techniques. The increased emphasis on architectures is mostly limited to considering the enabling technologies in system realization. On the other hand, the language of the researchers in computer science are unintelligible to the technical managers. We believe that the so called software crisis is partly created due to the above listed problems. To address these challenges, we will first identify the so-called key quality and technology domains. Then we will introduce the concept of technology maturity models. A technology maturity model identifies the advancements an organization may master in due time within a key technology domain through adoption of increasingly more advanced and beneficial state-of-the-art methods, techniques and tools. Finally we will conclude the talk by emphasizing the advantages of adopting the software technology maturity models for creating successful businesses.

 

Dimitar Christozov American University in Bulgaria Bulgaria

Brief Bio
Dimitar Christozov is a Professor of Computer Science at the American University in Bulgaria, Blagoevgrad 2700, Bulgaria since 1993 and at the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies since 2002. He has more than 30 years of research and education experience in areas as computer science, applied statistics, information systems. His recent interests are in the field of business intelligence and data mining. He graduated Mathematics from Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” in 1979. He completed his PhD thesis “Computer Aided Evaluation of Machine Reliability” in 1986. and DSc thesis “Quantitative measures of the quality of informing” in 2009. In ICTT “Informa” (1986-1993) Dr. Christozov was involved in establishing the national information network for technology transfer and research in the areas of technologies assessment, integral quality measures and information systems for quality management. In these areas he was recognized as one of the leading experts in Bulgaria. At the American University in Bulgaria, he was the leading person in curriculum development, launching and development of the majors of Computer Science (1993) and Information Systems (2008). At the University of Library Studies and Information Technologies he proposed and implemented the major of Information Brokerage. Professor Christozov has more than 80 publications as separate volume, journal papers and papers in refereed proceedings. He is a founding member of Informing Science Institute and chair of Bulgarian Informing Science Society; and founding member of the Bulgarian Statistical Society and the Bulgarian Telework Association.

Abstract
Using business models is essential for successful contemporary management. A model represents understanding about the real life domain and reflects its essential traits. Another characteristic of today’s management is availability of huge amount of accessible and searchable data accumulated over executing business activities. Exploring those data to increase domain understanding and to build models, which further can be used to support decision making is the essential task of the emerging area of Business Intelligence and especially Data Mining. The process of modeling based on business data analysis to build decision support tools is discussed via sharing the experience acquired in a data mining project. The project aimed discovering factors influencing the warranty cost in automobile industry. The warrant data analysis has to serve for solving two different tasks: (i) Design of warranty policy. Warranty is an important marketing tool, used to share the risk of failures between all customers. This share is included into the product’s price. Also, warranty is an important advertising and promotional tool – warranty coverage encourages the customers to purchase the product. In its both purposes, the warranty policy requires careful analysis related to the cost, which influence pricing and overall marketing policy. (ii) Increase the reliability of cars. Warranty data contains information about the most common problems leading to failures. Warranty analysis helps to identify priorities and directions of improvement the products. Or how to improve the cars and to reduce the warranty cost. An iterative research process of developing and exploring models to facilitate data analysis is presented. The process includes the following phase: Data collection; data research; modeling; defining analytical procedures to expose the discovered patterns; development software tools to support use of the analytical procedures. Interpretation of discovered patterns provides the necessary arguments in design of software tools for regular ongoing business analysis to support decision making. The applied methodology represents a good practice in specifying, designing and implementing components of a data mining application.

 

Bart Nieuwenhuis University of Twente The Netherlands

Brief Bio
Bart Nieuwenhuis is part-time professor at the School of Management and Governance at the University of Twente. He is member of the Research Group Information Systems and Change Management (ICMS), holding the chair in QoS of Telematics Systems. He is working as advisor and consultant for his own consultancy firm K4B Innovation. His research focuses on generic service provisioning platforms including Quality of Service mechanisms. Application domains comprise telemedicine as well as billing and payment services. His research interests include service innovation and business modelling. Bart Nieuwenhuis supervises PhD students and publishes scientific articles and conference papers on services provisioning platforms and middleware technologies for Quality of Service and Context Awareness. Bart Nieuwenhuis is chairman of the innovation-driven research programme Generic Communication, part of R&D programmes funded by the Ministry of Economic Affaires. For K4B Innovation, Bart Nieuwenhuis works as an advisor to The Netherlands ICT Research and Innovation Authority. He is the managing director of Exser, the center of service innovation in The Netherlands, founded in 2008. In this center private companies, academic institutions and governmental organization co-operate in order to realise open innovation initiatiatives. The centre is sponsored by various large, innovative service companies and governmental organizations in The Netherlands. Before joining the ISCM group, Bart Nieuwenhuis was part-time full professor at the Architecture and Services of Network Applications (ASNA) group within the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mathematics & Computer Science (EEMCS) of the University of Twente. He joined the ASNA group in Twente after a period of five years at the University of Groningen, where he was Tele-Informatics professor at the Computer Science Faculty. Before starting his own company, he worked more than 20 years for KPN Research, the R&D facility of KPN, the telephony and Internet market leader in The Netherlands. He served as manager of R&D departments and Head of Strategy of KPN Research. Bart Nieuwenhuis worked on behalf of KPN for the European Institute for Research and Strategic Studies in Telecommunications (EURESCOM) in Heidelberg and was leader of various international, cooperative projects of European public network operators. Bart Nieuwenhuis holds a PhD in Computer Science and a MSc (cum laude) and BSc in Electrical Engineering, all from the University of Twente.

Abstract
During the 1970s the business model concept was used for describing IT-related business processes. More recently, the business model concept is used for analysing market structures as well as strategic choices related to positioning of organisations within these market structures. Organisations commercialise new ideas and technologies through their business models. The business model design can be seen as a key decision for new firm entrepreneurs. The research field is still lacking a common and general accepted definition of a business model. Chesbrough and Rosenbloom define a business model as ‘a blueprint for how a network of organisations cooperates in creating and capturing value from technological innovation’. Essentially, a business model can be seen as a definition of the manner by which an organisation delivers value to customers, entices them to pay for value and converts those payments to profit. Initially, attention has been paid to empirically defining business model typologies. In recent years, business model research started focusing on exploring business model components and developing descriptive models. Osterwalder and Pigneur use a decomposition consisting of nine components: value proposition, customer segments, client relationships, distribution channels and revenue flows on one hand and key activities, key resources, cost structure, partner network on the other hand. These models can also be used to develop business models for software-based products and services. Software can be part of a tangible product that is being paid for by customers. Due to developments such as Application Service Provisioning (ASP), Software as a Service (SaaS) and more recently Cloud Computing, software is more and more the essential building block of services sold to customers. Due to these developments, a business model design process heading for delivering new experiences to customers is guiding the software development process. The state in which the business modelling field finds itself can be characterized as the pre-scientific chaos(Kuhn): there are several competing schools of thought, and progress is limited because of a lack of cumulative progress. Because of this, there are no clear and unique semantics in the research related to business models. During the last years we have been researching business models and are investigating possibilities to apply well-known engineering principles for this application field. We present a business modelling approach as well as some software business modelling cases.

 

Hermann Maurer Graz University of Technology Austria

Brief Bio
Dr. Hermann Maurer is Professor Emeritus at Graz University of Technology. He started his career at the University of Calgary as Assistant and Associate Professor, was appointed full professor at Karlsruhe just before he turned 30, and has been now Professor and Dean in Computer Science at Graz University of Technology since 1978, with some interruptions, like guest-professorships of more than a year at Denver University, University of Auckland, and shorter visits to Edith Cowan University in Perth, SMU in Dallas, Waterloo, Brasilia and others. Chair of the Informatics Section of Academia Europaea, "The Academy of Europe" since April 2009, and receiver of many national and international distinctions, Professor Maurer is author of over 650 papers and 20 books, founder of a number of companies, supervised some 60 Ph.D. and over 400 M.Sc. students and was leader of numerous multimillion Euro projects. More about him than you ever want to read under http://www.iicm.tugraz.at/maurer.

Abstract
I will first present some unusual arguments that will show that we are not in for small changes in the near future, but for massive restructuring of how we live, think and learn. I will then explain in what way the strong convergence of cell phones and PCs is likely to develop. I will show clips of protoypes of new devices that overcome the small screen-size of cell phones and their small keyboards. I will then explain how dramatically this will change society and education: we will have with us a permanent powerful assistant. This brings both great benefits and great dangers. I will also address the issue whether large amounts of information help us or rather brainwash us and influence our decision making in a negative way. I will show at least one example that will surprise the audience. I will then argue that no matter how much one is using modern information technology oneself, one does not react the same way when compared to "digital natives", i.e. people (like our students in university) that have grown up in such new environments. I will report on two surprising recent experiments that seem to prove this point conclusively. Finally, I show that the statement we always hear that the value of technology is ambivalent (like "a hammer can be used to drive in a nail or to kill a person by hitting the head") is not even close to the truth. Rather, some technologies are inherently good, others inherently bad, and many in between. I will present a number of examples to verify this provocative idea and show how computers and networks are classified if one looks at them that way.