When: Friday, Feb. 10th at 2:25pm (please plan to be there by 2:10pm or earlier to go over choreography/find the other dancers)
Where: Red Square at UW (meet dance leader, DOM CHAN, at the sculpture in the center of Red Square)
What: learn the dance moves provided to you on the MAW (Make a Wish)  youtube link: http://youtu.be/Qheo9jc7oP4
* At the end of the dance, all dancers will say PEACE, ALEX!
* Song is Boom Boom Pow (radio edit) by Black Eyed Peas
Misc: option to dress in “Star Wars” or other robotics attire; dress warm (We dance rain or shine); option to bring signs that say “Alex rocks,” “Robots unite!” or even just PEACE signs (etc)

Youtube video of dance: SURPRISE FLASH MOB for Alex’s Wish to bring “Peace to others… with the help of robots.” ‎

Facebook invite: https://www.facebook.com/events/265644723502242/

Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/northwestwishes

Twitter: @MakeAWishAKWA

For more information about this Wish activity, please contact Jessie Ellenbaas jessie@nwwishes.org or 206-623-5380

MGH 420

Next week, come hear from guest speaker Bryce Smart talk about his experience in the project management field. Bryce has spent the past four-and-a-half years as a Project Manager at T-Mobile, where he has focused on IT and supply chain management. Several of Bryce’s most notable projects have been the launch of the Galaxy S II, a reinvention of all of T-Mobile’s prepaid (now Monthly 4G) rate plans, and enabling customers to charge purchases of Android apps to their phone bills.

Bryce is a Day MSIM alumni from the class of 2008 and actually began at T-Mobile as an intern as part of the MSIM program. Prior to coming to the iSchool, Bryce worked in oil services for a geo-mechanical engineering company, doing an overhaul of their client reporting, as well as QA testing of internal applications.”

For the moment, we’re focused on marketing the winter events, which begin with a workshop presented by the Counseling Center titled: Fame, Fortune and Fun: What do you really want to do with your life?  (Tuesday, February 7, 2:00 – 3:30PM – Mary Gates Hall 224).

Thank you!

*Please include the following information:*

“The University of Washington Women’s Center Lifelong Learning program is
offering GRE Prep and Basic Math Refresher Courses on campus.

*GRE PREP*
Option 1: February 6-27, Mondays & Wednesdays 6-8pm
Option 2: March 3-24, Saturdays 1-5pm

*BASIC MATH REFRESHER*
Option 1: February 7-28, Tuesdays 6-8pm
Option 2: March 6-27, Tuesdays 6-8pm

Check out our website for more information on courses and instructors! Feel
free to contact the University of Washington Women’s Center with any
questions or concerns you may have.

Homepage: http://depts.washington.edu/womenctr
Phone: 206-685-1090
Address:
Women’s Center
Cunningham Hall
Box 353070
Seattle, WA 98195-3070″

Want to Visit Peru this Summer? Volunteer and Make a Difference!
Vive Peru is in need of volunteer interns experienced in the areas of
Clinical Medicine, Social Work, Teaching Music, Teaching English and
Engineering to support our partner organizations and adopted
communities in Northern Peru! Work side-by-side with doctors in local
clinics and hospitals, volunteer with underprivileged children, share
your love for music or languages with the children of Peru. In your
free time, explore one of the most ecologically diverse and
historically rich countries in the world. Participate in one of our 5-
week sessions, or stay for all three! Interested? Apply by February
25, 2012 for the experience of a lifetime! Applications available
online at www.viveperu.org/apply.php.

Session 1 (5 weeks) May 20 – June 24, 2012 Donation $1700
Session 2 (5 weeks) June 24 – July 29, 2012 Donation $1700
Session 3 (5 weeks) July 29 – Sep. 2, 2012 Donation $1700

What is Vive Peru? Why do I have to pay to volunteer?
Vive Peru is a nonprofit organization pending 501(c)(3) status
dedicated to fostering understanding of Latin American and Peruvian
culture and providing much-needed aid to Peruvian communities. We
work to promote cultural understanding and implement innovative and
self-sustainable programs in the areas of health, education, social
work and engineering. Our programs, outreach work and direct
donations are funded completely through volunteer donations, which
allow our work to continue and our program to be self-sustainable.
This past year, 92 university students from across the country joined
us to donate 6380 volunteer hours and over $13,000 in donated
materials and outreach programs to communities in need in Peru. At
local medical campaigns on the coast and in the Andes, we were able to
attend to more than 600 patients with medical consultation and
medications.

Contact Us!
Online at www.viveperu.org
On Facebook at www.facebook.com/viveperu
On Twitter at www.twitter.com/vive_peru
See videos of past volunteers on YouTube at www.youtube.com/viveperu1
Email us at info@viveperu.org
Call us at (480) 788-8483

The eScience Institute would like to invite you to join us for our 2012 seminar series.  We look forward to seeing you there!

eScience Institute Seminar Series, Winter 2012

* February 7, 4 PM (EE303)

Mike Kellen (Sage Bionetworks)

Synapse, the collaborative computational platform currently under development for the Sage Bionetworks Commons

* March 6, 4 PM (EE303)

Andrew Ban (Arzeda)

Enzyme Design in the Cloud

* April 3, 4 PM (EE303)

YongChul Kwon (UW, Magdalena Balazinska lab)

Databases for scientific computing

* May 1, 4 PM (EE303)

Jacob VanderPlas (UW, Andrew Connolly lab)

Machine learning for cosmology

Refreshments (drinks and pizza) will be provided.  More information is available at the eScience Institute web site:http://escience.washington.edu

Matthew Saxton, Associate Dean for Academics, and Jeffrey Kim, Director, INSER, will host an information session for the iSchool’s Exploration Seminar in South Korea: Information, Technology & Society in Modern Korea on Thursday, February 9, 4-5 pm, MGH 420.  

The 2012 program will be held in collaboration with Kyung Hee University (KHU) in Seoul and Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in Daejon. This program will build on the success of the Information School’s 2010 and 2011 Exploration Seminars in Korea, which were also held in collaboration with KHU and KAIST.

For an overview of the seminar or to apply to the seminar before the information session, please visit the online brochure:

No RSVP required. We hope to see you there!

Call for Papers: 18th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), August 9 – 12, 2012, Seattle, Washington

IT Project Management Track (and associated mini-tracks)

18th Americas Conference on Information Systems (AMCIS), August 9 – 12, 2012, Seattle, Washington

Track Information:

Unfortunately, information technology (IT) projects have become notorious for high failure rates or having significant cost or budget overruns. Both research and anecdotal evidence suggests that many IT projects struggle to meet functionality and quality targets. Research has identified multiple reasons for these challenges in IT projects, such as: project escalation, poor risk management, failure to manage user expectations, poor software development or project management processes, or inability to learn from past mistakes and successes. As a research community, there is still much to be learned and discussed about improving success rates for IT projects.

IT Project Management Mini-tracks:

 Minitrack 1: IT Project Management in Small Shops: Challenges and Solutions Minitrack Chairs: Jeffry Babb, Jacob Norbjerg

Description: More than 80% of US software developing companies have less than 10 employees. Similar numbers apply to other countries and regions. Yet, we know surprisingly little about the software project practices and challenges of these companies. The purpose of this mini-track is to focus on the challenges and practices of small shop IT project management.

Minitrack 2: The Interaction of Collaborative Information Technologies and Dynamic Events in Project Management Minitrack Chairs: Tayfun Keskin, Nazim Taskin

Description: The medium of collaboration is changing as groups rely on information technologies to share information. Collaborative information technologies (CITs) have provided an economical alternative to travel for project members who provide necessary skills. Early adopter organizations quickly took advantage of functions of several information processing technologies, from web conferences to virtual workspaces. Those virtual tools have not replaced conventional teamwork, but they have had an impact on the information sharing processes. The mini track solicits research studies that seek to explore the business role of collaborative information technologies especially in dynamic project environments.

Minitrack 3: Agile Project Management

Minitrack Chairs: Meghann Drury, Orla McHugh

Description: Agile methodologies were developed in response to frustrations with traditional software development methodologies and the management of software development projects. As organizations increasingly continue to adopt agile methodologies, a number of challenges have emerged in relation to agile project management (APM).

For example, agile software development (ASD) teams work largely on their own and manage their own workload, which is a cultural shift for managers, developers, and customers alike. Managers must relinquish control to the team and avoid the imposition of too many formal controls or too much structure, which may result in unintended consequences. This dramatic change provides challenges for advocates of agile methodologies who can find it difficult to obtain management support for implementing agile methodologies. Empirical research in agile methodologies is continuously growing. Yet, little research exists on the management of ASD teams as agile methodologies imply there is no need for a project manager. However, ASD teams require leadership and a different approach to project management. Therefore, we are seeking high quality research papers that investigate various aspects of agile project management.

 Minitrack 4: General Topics in IT Project Management Minitrack Chairs: Stacie Petter, Hazel Taylor

Description: Project-based work structures have become the norm within a number of industries, including the Information Technology (IT) sector, and these structures present new challenges for managers and researchers. For project managers in the wider arena, particularly in construction and engineering, such project-based work structures still operate within a clear overall management structure, with project teams that are likely to remain the same from project to project, working on projects that are relatively well-defined and with a high degree of repeatability. In contrast, the IT sector is characterized by rapidly changing technology and contexts of application. Project managers typically face new, diverse, and ill-defined requirements for each project, and must manage their projects in rapidly changing conditions and under high time pressure. In addition, IT project managers usually work within a poorly defined management structure.

Therefore, they must gain the support and commitment, without direct position power, of a loosely aggregated set of team members who often change from project to project, and even from stage to stage, within a project. Increasingly in IT projects, team members are also geographically distributed, presenting yet another set of challenges for their project managers. As a result, while the project management profession has seen considerable performance improvements in the last fifty years, IT projects have been reported as having a track record of poor performance. This has occurred even though proven best practices from the wider sector have been applied in the IT arena.

Minitrack 5: Management of IT Outsourcing Projects in a Global Economy Minitrack Chairs: Jahyun Goo, Matthew Swinarski

Description: While academics and practitioners alike suggest that relationship management is a crucial factor in the overall success or failure of an IT outsourcing project, managing outsourcing relationship becomes a daunting task as the traditional IT outsourcing projects (application development, database development, etc.) has developed into a highly specialized marketplace of IT-enabled service projects such as business process outsourcing (BPO), knowledge process outsourcing (KPO), etc. over the last decade. The phenomenon of significant, sustained trend of IT project globalization, has led to the fact that researchers in many disciplines are reframing and refocusing their efforts around project management that explore whether findings in one context hold true in another. Along this line, a recent report by Gartner points out that many firms have failed to build a skills base to meet the challenge of managing their new outsourcing environment and are therefore at risk of a low return on service value. Therefore, this mini‐track invites research articles that focus on social, managerial and knowledge-related topics in IS outsourcing/offshoring project management, which we believe lead to a pathway to the success of IT project. With papers that are both conceptual and empirically based, we seek to contribute to theory building by both reapplying existing frameworks and developing new constructs that help explaining the project t management view of IT outsourcing relationship in general, and offshoring arrangements in particular.

Minitrack 6: Adoption, Diffusion and Success of IT Project Management Methodologies Minitrack Chairs: Kunal Mohan, Nils Urbach, Anol Bhattacherjee

Description: The objective of this min-track is to foster research on ITPM methodologies by providing deeper insights into factors that affect their successful design, adoption, diffusion, and application.

Researchers and practitioners interested in submitting papers for this mini-track are encouraged to explore ITPM methodologies, and related methods and tools – for example from a design or behavioral perspective. Papers may consider different units of analysis:

individual, group, or organizational level.

 Minitrack 7: Project Management Education Minitrack Chairs: Michael Cuellar

Description: Learning to be a project manager in the information systems world is often an informal process. Many times IS professionals have become project managers on the basis of broad project experience and technical expertise rather than systematic training. The informal nature of project management training resulted in project managers not possessing all the skills they should have to be successful. Academia has attempted to address this gap by the development of project management courses. While this has been a welcome addition to the project of the information systems student, a number of questions arise regarding this effort. The purpose of this mini-track then is to provide a forum to exchange ideas and experience in these areas. Participants in this mini-track should receive practical advice on how to address these areas and take away ideas on how to improve their courses and curricula.

Submission Guidelines and Important Dates:

Submissions must represent original work that has not been published in a journal or conference proceedings. At least one author for each accepted paper must register for the conference. Submissions will be peer-reviewed using a double-blind system. Submission format and general conference information may be found here:

http://amcis2012.aisnet.org/

January 3, 2012:                     AMCIS 2012 submission system available

March 1, 2012:                      Submissions due

April 6, 2012:                          Acceptance notification

April 25, 2012:                        Camera-ready copies of accepted

manuscripts due

Please contact the mini-track chairs or the track chairs with any questions you may have.

Info Session for Study Abroad, Global Internships & Funding Opportunities
Thursday, January 26th from 12:30-1:30pm in Thomson 317
No registration required

Want to intern or study abroad this summer? Not sure how to pay for it? Come learn about opportunities to go abroad and ways to fund your experience at this joint SIT/Ie3 info session!

SIT/World Learning has $18,000 in funding available for UW students for the 2012-2013 academic year. SIT Study Abroad sponsors a special need-based scholarship for students from the UW who participate on SIT Study Abroad programs. Scholarship awards vary according to financial need and can range from $500-$5,000 for semester programs and from $300-$3,000 for summer programs.

IE3 partners with UW to make sure students who intern abroad have a safe experience while doing meaningful work and earning credits towards their degree. Come to the IE3 info session next Thursday to learn more about what kind of work is available, what regions they send students to, and most importantly – funding opportunities! The application deadline for 2012 summer internships is January 25^th, so come to this info session for application tips and to get things started! Please visit ie3global.ous.edu to find out more and for a list of current internships available.

Please join us and feel free to bring and eat your lunch.