KEYNOTE LECTURES LIST

Peri Loucopoulos, Loughborough University, U.K.
          Title: The Evolving Relationship between Business and Information Systems

Stephen J. Mellor, Freeter, U.K.
          Title: Models. Models. Models. So What?

David Marca, University of Phoenix, U.S.A.
          Title: e-Business Architecture: Using "Conversational Distance" to Design Software

Nikolaos Bourbakis, Wright State University, U.S.A.
          Title: Detecting, Recognizing and Associating Facial Expressions for Emotional Behavior

Cesar Gonzalez-Perez, The Heritage Laboratory (LaPa), Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), Spain
          Title: Filling the Voids: From Requirements to Deployment with OPEN/Metis

Brief Bio
Pericles Loucopoulos is Professor of Information Systems in the Business School, Loughborough University, UK. He began his career in the City of London where he was responsible for delivering systems for financial applications. He moved to Manchester in 1984 to take up an academic appointment at the University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology (UMIST) where in 1990 he was elected to the post of Professor in Information Systems Engineering in the Department of Computation. He has taught at Université de Paris I – Sorbonne, the University of the Aegean, the Delhi Institute of Technology and the Athens University of Economics and Business and has acted as scientific expert for U.K., Greek, Italian, Austrian, and Swiss Governmental institutions.

His research work focuses on supporting the transformation of large, complex and dynamic enterprise systems through the provision of information systems. Theoretical results derived from his research have been applied on industrial scale problems in a variety of domains, such as banking, utilities, large-scale sports events etc. For his work he has received the 2005 OR Society’s President Medal and the Inform Society’s Edelman Laureate Medal. He is the co-editor-in-chief of the Journal of Requirements Engineering, associate editor of Information Systems and of the Journal of Database Management and serves on the Editorial Board of 10 other journals.


Abstract
The relationship of information systems to the business has evolved over the years from that of a tool builder that enabled the business to perform their tasks more efficiently to a facilitator for introducing new differentiated products and services and even transforming the way organizations and individuals work. Inevitably there has been an increased amount of business concepts being controlled by software components rather than business experts. The distinction between business and software is not as clear as it may have been in the past. How many business rules are handled by software in a manner that is so opaque that a domain expert has to delegate the evolution of such rules to a software engineer? What kind of business opportunities, innovation, and differentiation can an information system offer the business or an entire industrial sector? On reflection, the relationship between the business and IT is neither uni-directional nor linear. The traditional model whereby business experts establish, the goals, the constraints, the functions and the quality levels that the software must meet and the developers deliver a system that meet these characteristics is nowadays often challenged as inadequate. The very essence of a software system may itself offer opportunities for change to the business objectives, constraints and functions. These feedback mechanisms need to be externalized, and evaluated during a most critical development activity, namely that of requirements engineering.

This talk will explore the strategic role of requirements in analyzing the intertwining between business and software focusing on the role of conceptual modeling and simulation in a process that represents an exploration of alternatives, continuous evolution in the design direction and validation and feedback on user requirements.

Brief Bio
Stephen J Mellor is an independent teacher and consultant focussed on methods for the construction of real-time and embedded systems. He is the author of Structured Development for Real-Time Systems (way back in 1985), Object Lifecycles, Executable UML, and MDA Distilled. He is also (perhaps surprisingly) a signatory to the Agile Manifesto.

Until recently, he was Chief Scientist of the Embedded Software Division at Mentor Graphics, and founder and some-time president of Project Technology, Inc., before its acquisition. He participates in multiple UML/modeling related activities at the Object Management Group, and was a member of the OMG's Architecture Board, which is the final technical gateway for all OMG standards. Mr. Mellor was the Chairman of the Advisory Board to IEEE Software for ten years and a two-time Guest Editor of the magazine, most recently for an issue on Model-Driven Development. He is also adjunct professor at the Australian National University in Canberra, ACT, Australia.


Abstract
In 1985, in an interview for some then-popular magazine, I was asked when models and model-driven development would become commonplace. "In three years time," I replied confidently. In 1987, I was asked the same question, and my answer remained the same. And 1989. And '91. Were you to ask me the same question today, I would answer it in the same way. Perhaps I should have gone surfing instead.

While my answer has the virtue of consistency, how could I--how could we?--have been so wrong? Of course, we didn't have the technology back then. And we didn't have the computer power that could allow us to ignore certain inefficiencies introduced by abstraction. But have things really changed that much in nearly a quarter of a century? Our tools and computers are certainly better, but it is clear that we have failed to convert the great unwashed to the benefits and wonders of models and model-driven engineering.

This keynote will take a personal view of why we have (let's be positive, shall we?) yet to succeed. It will explore several technical, business and marketing issues that have impeded our progress. And because a keynote is intended to be positive, leaving delegates upbeat and energized, we shall also examine some encouraging indicators that could lead to model-driven engineering soon becoming commonplace. In, oh, let's say, three years.

Brief Bio
David A. Marca is a Faculty member at the University of Phoenix. His six books and 26 papers cover e-Business, business process reengineering, and software engineering. He holds a patent in workflow technology. His latest book is “Open Process Frameworks: Patterns for the Adaptive e-Enterprise." David is also the Founder of OpenProcess, Inc. – an e-Business consulting firm since 1997 – that helps companies implement global workplace management and global e-Business solutions. David is a member of the IEEE, ACM and PMI. He is co-chair for the IEEE Chapter of Madison, WI and for the International Conference on e-Business (ICE-B).


Abstract
Some executives and pundits today think that social networks are hard to penetrate. In fact, recent news cites a decrease in corporate investment in social networks. This makes sense from the perspective that typical corporate use of social networks has focused on creating relationships and eavesdropping. The result: online ads in social networks have weak alignment to the current conversation, whose participants and content can change rapidly. One possible improvement is to use the language/action perspective: specifically, to use “conversational distance” to identify the dynamic markets that are constantly being created by different social network content and participants. To do this, the notion of “conversational distance” must take on the interpretation of “mental distance” (among two parties in a conversation) and not its more typical “physical distance” interpretation. This keynote will: explore the nature of mental distance, introduce some of its elements, show how these elements can be combined into a software-oriented architecture, and give examples of how to use that architecture to create better online ads.

Brief Bio
Dr. Nikolaos Bourbakis (IEEE Fellow) is an OBR Distinguished Professor of IT and the Director of the Assistive Technologies Research Center (ATRC) at Wright State University, OH. He pursues research in Applied AI, Machine Vision, Bioinformatics & Bioengineering, Assistive Technologies, Information Security, and Parallel- Distributed Processing funded by USA and European government and industry. He has published more than 330 articles in refereed International Journals, book-chapters and Conference Proceedings, and 10 books as an author, co-author or editor. He has graduated 17Ph.Ds and 37 Master students. He is the founder and the EIC of the International Journal on AI Tools, the Editor-in-Charge of a Research Series of Books in AI (WS Publisher), the Founder and General Chair of several International IEEE Computer Society Conferences, Symposia and Workshops, an Associate Editor in several IEEE and International Journals and a Guest Editor in 18 journals special issues. His research work has been internationally recognized and has won several prestigious awards. Some of them are: IBM Author recognition Award 1991, IEEE Computer Society Outstanding Contribution Award 1992, IEEE Outstanding Paper Award ATC 1994, IEEE Computer Society Technical Research Achievement Award 1998, IEEE ICTAI 10 years Research Contribution Award 1999, IEEE Symposium on BIBE Outstanding Leadership Award 2003, ASC Award for Assistive Technology 2005, University of Patras Degree of Recognition 2007.


Abstract
Detecting faces and facial expressions has become a common task in human-computer interaction systems. A robust face detection system must be able to detect faces irrespective of illuminations, shadows, cluttered backgrounds, facial pose, orientation and facial expressions. Many approaches for face detection have been proposed in the literature mainly dealing with the detection or recognition of faces in still conditions rather than the person’s facial expressions and the reflecting emotional behavior. In this talk, we describe a Local-Global (LG) graph based method for detecting faces and for recognizing facial expressions accurately in real world image capturing conditions both indoor and outdoor, and with a variety of illuminations (shadows, high-lights, non-white lights) and in cluttered backgrounds. We also offer a methodology for recognizing facial expressions associated to emotional behavior. This methodology uses most important facial features such as eyes, eyebrows, nose, mouth (lips) as the primitive elements of an alphabet of a simple formal language in order to synthesize facial features and generate emotional expressions. Illustrative examples are also provided for proving the concept of the methodology.

Brief Bio
For the last few years I have been doing research in the areas of conceptual modelling, metamodelling and development methodologies. In July 2008 I took up a position with The Heritage Lab (LaPa) at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) to focus on the application of information technologies to cultural heritage research and management. Prior to this I worked for eighteen months at the European Software Institute, and over four years at the Faculty of IT of the University of Technology, Sydney, from where I was a co-editor of the AS 4651 and ISO/IEC 24744 standardisation projects. I am the founder and former technical director of Neco, a company based in Spain specialising in software development support services, which include the deployment and use of OPEN/Metis at small and mid-sized organizations. I have also worked for the University of Santiago de Compostela in Spain as a researcher in information systems & archaeology, and got my PhD in this topic in 2000.


Abstract
We are often told that the development of a software system begins with the gathering of some requirements and ends when the system is deployed in the production environment where final users will employ it. Myriads of methodologies have been proposed to bridge this gap, and countless paths from requirements to deployment have been used with success. However, some specific areas of this journey remain poorly explored; this talk will focus on two of these: user interaction development and functional-to-structural modelling transition.

User interaction development refers to the modelling and refining of the structures and mechanisms that will allow human users to interact with the system. In our experience, over 35% of the effort made by a development team on a project is spent on user interface-related tasks. However, most software development methodologies and modelling languages (such as UML) blatantly neglect this area. Functional-to-structural modelling transition refers to the necessary move from a functional approach to problem description, given by user requirements and use cases, to a structural approach to solution prescription, given by the very nature of an object-oriented design. Very few methodologies give us a clear and solid explanation of how to create classes and other structural artefacts from the functional descriptions that we get from requirement analysis. In other words: "where do classes come from?"

This talk will use OPEN/Metis (www.openmetis.com) as a specific example of a methodology designed in industry with a strong academic background, and which gives (hopefully) satisfactory answers to both challenges described above.