Proceedings of the 8th International Conference on Communities and Technologies

Welcome to the southern hemisphere, welcome to Australia, welcome to Brisbane, welcome to QUT Urban Informatics, and welcome to the 5th International Conference on Communities & Technologies: C&T 2011. As both technology and technological practice evolve in turn, Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) has expanded its focus from the design and assessment of particular interaction styles to encompass the role that interactive systems play in connecting people and communities with their world. The focus of HCI is no longer on the stationary user moored to a fixed desktop PC in an organisational context. Rather, the user is constructed as fluid and mobile, interacting with people and technologies across a broad range of contexts. Communities as a social unit are increasingly important in a knowledge-based society. Issues and trends such as political activism with social media, citizen journalism, citizen science, crowd sourcing, community enagement, working across cultures, online deliberation, and civic intelligence all require a profound understanding of communities and community interactions. Recognising these issues and trends early on, the Communities & Technologies conference has become the key international forum stimulating scholarly debate and disseminating research on these complex connections between communities - both physical and virtual - and information and communication technologies. After the inaugural conference in Amsterdam in 2003, followed by Milan in 2005, Michigan in 2007, and Pennsylvania in 2009, this is the first time that this biennial event takes place in the southern hemisphere and outside Europe and the U.S.