Around the world citizens like you and me are being consulted about all sorts of things. What kind of digital future do we want? How do we spend our leisure time?  Where should new homes be built? How much local tax are we prepared to pay? What should future provision for the Arts be like? Where should a new waste incinerator be located? Of course it’s not only towns and cities who want information from us; it’s health providers, transport undertakings, central governments and a lot more besides.

We all know discussions at schools, high schools and universities that are based on books, articles, reports, news, etc.  In the best case such discussions enrich our views on the issues, help us to deal with and understand the chain of arguments behind diverging views and educate us in the art of deliberation.

While the potential merits are obvious, it is a challenge for teachers to organise, moderate and evaluate such discussions as the classroom is far from being an ideal environment for this:

Involving young researchers into the design of organization wide measures to promote their careers is tedious. Getting them into joint committees is difficult as they typically devote 120% of their time to their academic projects, and often they are travelling to attend conferences or work group meetings or to lecture. On the other hand the needs of this group are highly heterogeneous, varying e.g. between disciplines and career stages. Therefore, representation by a few lobbyists does not work. Read how Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU) employed cbased technology to find a way out of this dilemma.

Last week we published the Discuto app in the Windows store for Windows 8 users. Windows apps are a great way to get content displayed on the tiles of your start screen that also display notifications and relevant contextual information.

The Discuto Windows 8 app comes with the following features :

Why should you attend a scientific conference? We think that the following three reasons play a role:

1. You need a certain number of publications to get your Ph.D., tenure, contract renewal or research positively evaluated.

2. You want to meet others in the field to keep contacts for positions and project partners.