Call for Submissions

Subtle Technologies Symposium 2011

Toronto, June 2–5, 2011

Submission deadline: December 12, 2010

Submit here!

(Submissions require only a title, abstract and CV.)

In 2011 The Subtle Technologies Festival celebrates its 14th year of bringing people together to promote wonder, incite creativity and spark innovation across disciplines. Through symposia, exhibitions, workshops, screenings and performances we provide a forum to pose and explore questions and inspire work that bridges the gap between science and art.

Scientists who have attended Subtle Technologies have said:

“Refreshing and a breath of fresh air…. Unique event of the highest quality that should not be missed.” -Sema Sgaier (geneticist and photographer)

“I thought the diversity and depth of talks at Subtle Technologies were outstanding and I will highly recommend the conference to my scientific colleagues” -Scott Menary (physicist, York University)

For the exhibition and performance portion of our program we typically showcase work that is engaging and technology based. Our symposium is made up of presentations, demonstrations and panel discussions that range from 15 to 45 minutes in length. Possible areas to be explored at the 2011 Festival from either a scientific or artistic approach include:

The above topics are only suggested topics for inclusion in the Festival. Other
topics within the realm of art, science and technology will be considered.

Qiyu Zhu and Colin Morris will give at talk at noon on December 8, 2010, at the SciNet Users Group meeting titled “Fault Tolerant Scientific Computing with Erlang”.  Qiyu and Colin have been implementing the Cowichan Problems, a set of model problems similar to numerical HPC “kernels”, in Erlang, a language designed to support distributed, fault-tolerant, soft-real-time, non-stop applications. In this talk, they will give a brief introduction to Erlang, and discuss their experiences implementing two different parallel programming paradigms in it.  The talk will take place at SciNet Headquarters, 256 McCaul St., Rm 235.

Mark Guzdial, who has been doing top-notch research on computing education for many years, is speaking at the University of Toronto on Tuesday November 23 at 11:00 a.m. in Bahen 1180. You really don’t want to miss this…

Random Hacks of Kindness 2.0 is in Toronto on December 4-5, 2010, and we’d like you to take part. As Heather Leson says:

RHoK is a community of developers, geeks and tech-savvy do-gooders around the world, working to develop software solutions that respond to the challenges facing humanity today. RHoK is all about using technology to make the world a better place by building a community of innovation. RHoK brings software engineers together with disaster relief experts to identify critical global challenges, and develop software to respond to them. A RHoK Hackathon event brings together the best and the brightest hackers from around the world, who volunteer their time to solve real-world problems.

RHoK Toronto will run from 9:00 am on December 4, 2010 to 8:00 pm on December 5 (yes, overnight), in Rooms 2015, 2016, 2019, and 2020 of the Sidney Smith building at 100 St. George Avenue on the University of Toronto’s downtown campus.  Registration is now open: we need hackers, storytellers, software engineers, programmers, university students, marketers, web content creators, emergency planners,international policy and development students, teachers, librarians, videographers, event planners, organizers, project managers, and someone who knows how to calm Miles down after his fourth cup of coffee. I know the timing isn’t great for students, who will be in the middle of the death march leading up to final projects and exams, but come on, it’ll be fun, and we’ll make the world a slightly better place.

I am pleased to announce that ComputerWorld Canada has named me the 2010 IT Educator of the Year for “…recognizing the application of innovative techniques and development of new curriculum and delivery of programs that stimulate learning.” My thanks to Prof. Karen Reid and Prof. Marsha Chechik for nominating me; to the faculty, staff, and students of the Dept. of Computer Science at the University of Toronto; and most especially, to my mum and dad, who taught me the things that matter most.

If you’re a knitter in the Greater Toronto Area, StreetKnit needs your help for Nuit Blanche this coming weekend.

The latest issue of PragPub has Adam Goucher’s article on page objects in Python—check it out!

David Scannell, an ex-student of mine who is now at GridCentric, has posted an interesting article on using elastic clouds for continuous integration. Lots of ideas here I only vaguely knew — worth checking out.

Jeff Balogh, a former GSoC student of mine now with Mozilla, will be speaking at DjangoCon about “Switching addons.mozilla.org from CakePHP to Django“. Please go and heckle on my behalf

A new event series is starting up: Toronto Live Interviews.  The first is on Tuesday, July 20, 6:30pm – 8:00pm, at the Centre for Social Innovation, Room 120 (215 Spadina Ave).

Tickets are free, but please register as space is limited: for information and registration, see http://guestlistapp.com/events/25203.

The guest, Karl Schroeder, is an award-winning science fiction author. He’s a world-builder able to convincingly juxtapose high and low tech. He goes beyond Arthur C Clarke’s idea that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” to understand the worldview, philosophy and economy of people living in these magical possible futures. In his work as a foresight consultant and environmental blogger, he flips these perspectives around to understand how we can make a future we want to live in.

Karl will be interviewed by Jen Dodd. Jen is a physicist, designer of public science events including SciBarCamp and Perimeter Institute’s Quantum to Cosmos Festival, and is now managing director of Subtle Technologies, Toronto’s annual festival of art and science.

Location instructions: on arriving at 215 Spadina, go through the Dark Horse cafe to the lobby, go up the stairs to the left of the elevator, and room 120 is through the glass doors straight ahead.