Satellite Events

Diverse events will be organized within the framework of the Euroscience Open Forum 2008 (prior to and after ESOF2008).

The organizers of the Satellite Events are science-based companies, organisations and institutions wishing to take advantage of the opportunity provided by ESOF2008 as an excellent frame within which to host their meetings, congresses or conferences.

The organisers and participants in Satellite Events will receive discounts on the registration fees for ESOF2008.  

Three ESOF2008 Satellite Events will be organized:

Free Knowledge, Free Technology 2008
Barcelona, July 15th –17th, 2008

The Free Knowledge & Free Technology (FKFT) Conference, organised by the Open University of Catalonia and the SELF Consortium, is the first international event focused on the production and sharing of free educational and lifelong learning materials on Free Software and Open Standards.

The FKFT Conference will consist of keynotes, hands-on workshops and train-the-trainer sessions around five main tracks on: Open Standards, the legal framework of free knowledge, specific learning materials, technology development and quality assessment.

With these purposes, the SELF International Conference 2008 will bring together representatives of governments, schools, universities, training organisations, IT companies, publishers as well as non-profit and public sector organisations from many different countries. By gathering all these parties, FKFT expects to stimulate the present and future collaboration between diverse disciplines, sectors and countries around projects on Free Software.

The objective of the SELF Consortium is to promote the use of Free Software and Open Standards by producing high quality educational materials released under free licenses. The SELF Platform, a collaborative authoring tool inspired in the Wikipedia, will play an important role in achieving this goal.

Policy and Technology for E-Science
http://sciencecommons.org/events/esof-satellite-event
Barcelona, July 16th –17th, 2008

This workshop will look to discuss and set basic principles of "Open Science", taking a closer look at the common tenets necessary for a system to be identified as an "Open Science" system.

The meeting is scheduled for July 16 -17, 2008 in Barcelona, with ESOF officially starting July 18. There will be an afternoon keynote and reception on July 16, with a full meeting day on the 17th. It will be held at the Institut d'Estudis Catalans. The event is co-sponsored by Science Commons, the Scholarly Publishing and Academic Resources Coalition (SPARC), the Center for the Study of the Public Domain at Duke University (CSPD) and the Institut d'Estudis Catalans.

These conferences aim at bringing together a diverse audience of scientists, policy makers, and commons advocates who are actively interested in designing ways to make access to scientific knowledge more widely available and more transparent across all scientific disciplines.

For more information about the event and the co-sponsors, visit the Science Commons Web site at http://sciencecommons.org/events.

Marie Curie conference
Barcelona, July 17th –18th, 2008

Boost your career! Come to the Marie Curie Conference!

The Marie Curie Conference, lasting a day and a half prior to the main ESOF conference will offer fellows special opportunities to broaden their career perspectives and further exploit their potential as Marie Curie Fellows.

The conference will include a training session on how to access EC funding and how to write successful grant proposals. There will also be a series of workshops on how creative academics can exploit their research potential in the private sector. Opportunities in alternative careers will be discussed with specialists. Participants will also play an active role through poster sessions searching for future collaborators. Fellows will have the opportunity to share their success stories of dissemination and explore how to reach out and create synergies with other scientific fields. More experienced fellows will also give guidance on making a success of your career.

All participants in this satellite meeting will be automatically registered to the ESOF conference. The joint participation fee covering both the Marie Curie satellite and the main ESOF event can be charged to your Marie Curie contract.

PS2008: "The sense of touch: components and frontiers in sensorial experience"

The fourth edition of the International Percepnet Symposium (PS2008) will be held in Barcelona, organized by the Spanish Society of Sensory Sciences. The event has been consolidated as the prime reference on research in the field of sensory sciences in Southern Europe since its beginnings in 2002.
 
The PS2008, continuing with its usual structure, will put the main research lines in sensory sciences worldwide over the last two years up for debate. A simple yet powerful formula is the soul of the symposium: debates, followed by a reduced but select number of speakers. Moderated by the president of the table, speakers expose and interact extensively amongst themselves and the other participants, without any other limits than the theme and the duration. The debates, ordered around four main scientific scopes, explore science, engineering, anthropology and the marketing that moves throughout the sensorial universe.

The meeting will include several interesting sensory workshops –the second component of the symposium–, which will deeply analyze some of the most novel experiences produced in the surroundings of sensorial sciences and applied to the market, consumption and service issues. Finally, sensorial experiences will be the brand new opportunity to experience and to share stimuli, by means of extraordinary actions designed with the capacity to generate emotions through the senses, and to cause reflection upon that which has been perceived.

For more information and inscriptions visit the web:
www.percepnet.com/ps2008/index.htm

Workshop - Inspiring Learning in Science
Barcelona, July 21st, 2008
[Agenda]

Powerful new technologies promise to transform education and training in ways previously unimaginable. Rapid advancements in educational technologies in the years ahead could enable new learning environments using simulations, visualizations, immersive environments, game playing, intelligent tutors and avatars, reusable building blocks of content, address distributed communities of learners, and many more. There are many challenges in the process of educational innovation that must be addressed in order to take advantage of these technologies to improve learning. Advanced technologies developed to meet other purposes must be translated into affordable tools for learners to use. Technical standards must be deployed to help guide the development of educational content that will be drawn from countless sources throughout the world. The technology community has to form stronger partnerships with the educational community. The educational institutions need to prepare for rapid technological change. In this framework, the workshop aims to bring together individuals and teams from a wide range of technology and education fields to look into the future and to share their visions as to what the learning experiences and educational technologies could be like. A rich collection of examples of futuristic scenarios and visions will be presented and discussed in detail. These will offer a glimpse of a future in which learners could explore worlds and cultures beyond their own, both in distance and time, as if they were there. And they will serve to remind us that we must strive to apply the power of technology in ways that empower people, enlighten the mind and enrich our lives.