<nettime-ann> Internet Researchers' Conference 2017 (IRC17) - Call for Sessions

[sumandro <mail@ajantriks.net>]

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URL: <http://cis-india.org/raw/irc17-call>

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It gives us great pleasure to announce that the second Internet
Researchers' Conference (IRC17) will take place in Bengaluru on March
03-05, 2017. It will be organised by the Centre for Internet and Society
(CIS) in partnership with the Centre for Information Technology and
Public Policy at the International Institute of Information Technology
Bangalore (IIIT-B). It is a free and open conference. Sessions must be
proposed by teams of two or more members by Friday, October 21.

_IRC17: Key Provocations_

Two critical questions that emerged from the conversations at the
previous edition of the Conference (IRC16) were about the digital
objects of research, and the digital/internet experiences in Indic
languages. As we discussed various aspects and challenges of 'studying
internet in India', it was noted that we have not sufficiently explored
how ongoing research methods, assumptions, and analytical frames are
being challenged (if at all) by the becoming-digital of the objects of
research across disciplines: from various artifacts and traces of human
and machinic interactions, to archival entries and sites of ethnography,
to practices and necessities of collaboration.

We found that the analyses of such digital objects of research often
tend to assume either an aesthetic and functional uniqueness or sameness
vis-à-vis the pre-/proto-digital objects of research, while neither of
these positions are discussed in detail. Further, we tend to
universalise the English-speaking user's/researcher's experience of
working with such digital objects, without sufficiently considering
their lives and functions in other (especially, Indic) languages.

These we take as the key provocations of the 2017 edition of IRC:

- How does the becoming-digital of the research objects challenge our
current research practices, concerns, and assumptions?

- How do we appreciate, study, and theorise the functioning of and
meaning-making by digital objects in Indic languages?

- What research tools and infrastructures are needed to study, document,
annotate, analyse, archive, cite, and work with (in general) digital
objects, especially those in Indic languages?

_Call for Sessions_

We invite teams of two or more researchers and practitioners to propose
sessions for IRC17. We do understand that finding team members for a
session you have in mind might be difficult in certain cases. Please
feel free to share initial sessions ideas on the researchers@cis-india
mailing list [1]. Also, please keep an eye on the list to see what
potential topics are being discussed.

All sessions will be one and half hours long, and will be fully designed
and facilitated by the team concerned, including moderation (if any).

The sessions are expected to drive conversations on the topic concerned.
They may include presentation of research papers but this is not at all
mandatory.

If you plan to organise a session structured around presentation of
research papers, please note that we are exploring potential publication
outlets for a collection of full-length research papers. If your session
is selected for IRC17, we will notify you of guidelines to be followed
for the submission and review of full-length papers prior to the
conference. If you are interested in this publication possibility,
please indicate that in your session proposal submission.

Sessions that involve collaborative work (either in group or otherwise),
including discussions, interactions, documentation, learning, and
making, are most welcome.

Further, we look forward to sessions conducted in Indic languages. The
proposing team, in such a case, should consider how participants who do
not understand the language can participate in it. IRC organisers and
other participants will play an active role in making such engagements
possible.

The only eligibility criteria for proposing sessions are that they must
be proposed by a team of at least two members, and that they must engage
with one (or more) of the three key provocations mentioned above.
Further, the teams whose sessions are selected for IRC17 must commit to
producing at least one post-conference essay/documentation on the topic
of their session.

The deadline for submission of sessions proposals for IRC17 is Friday,
October 21.

To propose a session, please send the following documents (as attached
text files) to raw[at]cis-india[dot]org:

- Title and Description of the Session: The session should be named in
the form of a hashtag (check the IRC16 sessions for reference [2]). The
description of the session should clearly state what the key focus of
the session is, and which of the three central concerns it will address.
The description should be approximately 300 words long.

- Session Plan: This should describe how the session will be conducted
and moderated. Any specific requirements (technical, language support,
etc.) of the session should also be noted here. This should not be more
than 200 words long. If your session plan involves presentation of
research papers, please indicate whether you would be interested in
having these papers considered for academic publication.

- Documentation Plan: This should indicate how documentation will be
done during the session, and more importantly what form the
post-conference essay/documentation will take and what issue(s) it will
address. This should not be more than 100 words long.

- Short Abstracts (Only for Sessions with Paper Presentations): If your
session involves presentation of research papers, please share a 250
words abstract for each paper.

- Details of the Team: Please share brief biographic notes of each
member of the session team, and contact details.

_Session Selection Process_

October 21: Deadline of submission of session proposals.

October 31: All submitted sessions will be posted on the CIS website,
along with the names, biographic brief, and contact details of the
members of the session teams.

November 01-30: Open review period. All session teams, as well as other
interested contributors, may review the submitted proposals and share
comments directly with the session teams, or discuss the session on the
researchers@cis-india list. The session teams may fully and continuously
edit the proposal during this period, including adding/changing session
teams.

December 01: Open review ends and voting begins. All session teams will
select 10 sessions to be included in the IRC17 programme. The votes will
be anonymous, that is which session team has voted for which set of
sessions will not be made public.

December 23: Voting ends.

January 02: Announcement of selected sessions.

February 12: Deadline for selected session teams to submit a detailed
session plan, information about which will be shared later. If a
selected session involves presentation of papers, then the draft papers
are to be submitted by this date (no need to submit a detailed session
plan in that case).

_Venue, Accommodation, and Travel_

The conference will take place at the International Institute of
Information Technology Bangalore (IIIT-B) during March 03-05, 2017 [3].

The conference does not have any participation fees. The organisers will
cover all costs related to accommodation and hospitality during the
conference. We look forward to offer a limited number of (domestic)
travel fellowships for students and other deserving applicants. We will
also confirm this on January 02, 2017.

_About the IRC Series_

The Researchers at Work (RAW) programme [4] at the Centre for Internet
and Society (CIS) initiated the Internet Researchers' Conference (IRC)
series to address these concerns, and to create an annual temporary
space in India, for internet researchers to gather and share experiences.

The IRC series is driven by the following interests:

- creating discussion spaces for researchers and practitioners studying
internet in India and in other comparable regions,

- foregrounding the multiplicity, hierarchies, tensions, and urgencies
of the digital sites and users in India, accounting for the various
layers, conceptual and material, of experiences and usages of internet
and networked digital media in India, and

- exploring and practicing new modes of research and documentation
necessitated by new (digital) objects of power/knowledge.

The first edition of the Internet Researchers' Conference series was
held in February 2016 [5]. It was hosted by the Centre for Political
Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University [6], and was supported by the
CSCS Digital Innovation Fund [7]. The Conference was constituted by
eleven discussion sessions (majority of which were organised around
presentation of several papers), four workshop sessions (which involved
group discussions, activities, and learnings), a book sprint over three
sessions to develop an outline of a (re)sourcebook for internet
researchers in India, and a concluding round table. The audio recordings
and notes from IRC16 are now being compiled into an online Reader. A
detailed reflection note on the IRC16 has already been published [8].

_Endnotes_

[1] See: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/researchers.

[2] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[3] See: http://iiitb.ac.in/.

[4] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/.

[5] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/irc16.

[6] See: http://www.jnu.ac.in/SSS/CPS/.

[7] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/cscs-digital-innovation-fund.

[8] See: http://cis-india.org/raw/iirc-reflections-on-irc16.

-- 

Sumandro Chattapadhyay

Research Director
The Centre for Internet and Society
<http://cis-india.org/>

Twitter: <https://twitter.com/ajantriks>
PGP: <http://ajantriks.github.io/sumandro_public_key.asc>
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