[AISWorld] EOIs Sought: 'Bled: The Consumer Perspective'

[Roger Clarke]

I'm seeking Expressions of Interest in relation to a Panel session 
that I've proposed for Bled'14, on 2 or 3 June: 
http://www.bledconference.org

The (provisional) topic is 'The Consumer Perspective on All Things 'e''.

If you have some expertise, and interest in participating, please 
send me an outline of the approach you would take.  It's a panel, so 
the format is 8-10 minutes to speak, followed by panel discussion, 
then open discussion.

Feel free to propose changes to the draft Panel Description below, or 
to counter-propose alternative approaches in the same general area.

Please also include a brief bio and a link to a longer one.

I'll advise the outcome to each person who submits.

(I have a provisional submission before the Conference Chair, but in 
order to be a credible contender for time on the Program, I need to 
flesh it out soon!).

Thanks!  ...  Roger Clarke


                (ROUGH INITIAL NOTES ON THE SCOPE)

                    Panel Session, Bled 2014
            (and potential Research Stream, Bled 2015)

             The Consumer Perspective on All Things 'e'

The Bled eConference covers a great deal of territory.

However eCommerce and eBusiness topics are mostly considered from the 
perspectives of organisations.  As a result, humans feature in 
discussions primarily as 'users' and 'usees' (i.e. people affected by 
systems and technologies without being themselves users of them). 
Consumers' interests are almost always treated as constraints rather 
than as objectives.

This Panel / Stream adopts the consumer perspective.  The scope 
includes a wide variety of eCommerce and eBusiness segments, 
particularly CwithB and C2C. 

It also includes eGovernment, in the sense of access to services, 
including submissions and complaints.  The eDemocracy field, in the 
sense of representative and/or participatory democracy, i.e. voting 
for office-holders, initiatives or referenda, could be defined as 
being within-scope or outside it.

Generally, eHealth, Social Media and Digital Services topics are more 
appropriate for the Bled eConference's specialist streams in those 
areas, but some treatments of them may fit better here.

Examples of topics within scope include:
-   Requirements Elicitation from Users
-   Stakeholder Analysis
-   Participative Design
-   User Interfaces from the Consumer's Perspective
-   Appropriate Terms of Service for SaaS cloud services
-   The validity or otherwise of shrinkwrap licences
-   Appropriate Privacy Policy Statements
-   Enquiries and Complaints Processes
-   Security of Personal Data
-   Anonymity and Pseudonymity
-   Authentication Mechanisms
-   Consumer Exposure in ePayment Systems
-   Activism
-   Hacktivism


The following extract from a recent paper may help explain the motivation.

Clarke R. & Pucihar A. (2013)  'Electronic Interaction Research 
1988-2012 through the Lens of the Bled eConference'  Electronic 
Markets 23. 4 (December 2013) 271-283

6.  Prospects
http://www.rogerclarke.com/EC/EIRes-Bled25.html#Pros

The coming years will see yet more intensity of data collection, 
through such means as video cameras pointed at cars and at people, 
smart meters, and perhaps shortly an 'Internet of Things' and even 
'smart dust'. Personal mobile devices are designed to be open to 
malware, and designed to broadcast individuals' locations to anyone 
who might like to know it, in a cavalier manner and without informed 
consent. Organisations are designing devices, applications and 
services to monitor and disclose individuals' activities, including 
their communications, the content they access, and hence their 
interests and opinions. Coupled with this massive intrusiveness are 
endeavours to deny anonymity, to deny multiple identities per person, 
and to impose a single multi-purpose identifier on each person, 
together with insecure signature keys, and insecure biometrics.

The anti-social business models of social media corporations provide 
just one of the more extreme examples of the dominance of economic 
drivers over social needs, and of corporate and government interests 
over consumer and citizen interests. Bled needs to be at the 
forefront of investigations into how to achieve much better balances 
between organisational and human needs than presently exist.

There is also a pressing need for more diversity in the units of 
study used by researchers. The perspective of a single organisation 
is valid, but so too are those of industry segments and sectors, of 
regions, of nations and of supra-national economic collectives or 
blocs such as the EU, NAFTA and APEC. But in order to lift EI 
research beyond the economic to the social, it is necessary to also 
reflect the interests of not-for-profits, NGOs and associations, of 
communities, of consumer and citizen segments, of social groups, and 
of individuals.


[The subsequent revelations about the depravity of national security 
organisations, and the lack of democratic control over them, add a 
further dimension to the concerns.  So perhaps the scope should be 
broadened to:

     'The Perspective of the Consumer and Citizen on All Things 'e''


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/
			            
Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
Tel: +61 2 6288 6916                        http://about.me/roger.clarke
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Faculty of Law            University of N.S.W.
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University