Talk by Patrick Olivier, 05 Oct, 13:15, BC02

Firstly, this is NOT a technical talk. It’s a talk about a new research initiative in Digital Civics, that we are undertaking in Newcastle upon Tyne UK, that is seeking to reframe “users” as “citizens” and design digital technologies with and for citizens that move away from traditional “transactional models” of local government to create more “relation” citizen and community oriented services. I will be describing the history and pragmatics of this endeavor by reference to our four main areas of concern: local democracy (including planning); learning; social care and public health. To do this I will outline some initial digital community services and digital technologies that aim to realize relational models of local government services, including Feed-Finder (a community-led breast feeding advocacy service), App Movement (a community commissioning platform for Apps), Bootlegger (a community video commission service) and PosterVote (a lightweight voting technology for scaffolding local activism). Digital Civics is a highly cross-disciplinary and action-oriented research endeavor and I will also summarize our two large-scale activities in this space: our EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Digital Civics and our EPSRC Research Centre for Digital Civics. We are always on the lookout for collaborators, and I would be very interested to hear people’s thoughts on the potential relevance of Digital Civics to the citizens of Switzerland!

Bio: I am Professor of Human-Computer Interaction in the School of Computing Science, Newcastle University. I founded and currently lead Open Lab, Newcastle University's centre for cross-disciplinary research in digital technologies (previously called the "Digital Interaction Group" but renamed when we moved out of Culture Lab in May, 2015). My particular research interests include the application of social and ubiquitous computing to education, health and wellbeing, as well as the development of new approaches for interaction (such as novel sensing platforms and interaction techniques) and human-centred design methods.