The 11th International Conference on Business Information Systems, BIS 2008, reflects recent developments in providing services over the Web and efforts in utilizing social phenomena of blogs, wikis, and folksonomies for advantages of the enterprises and public administrations. The basic idea behind is to bring services closer to users and to enable users to leverage the services or even build communities around services. Web 2.0 and Semantic Web allow for enterprise outreach and self-service. As it still not clear what Web 2.0 will mean for enterprises it is a perfect germ for investigations of research papers for BIS 2008.

The 4th ACM Symposium on Software Visualization, SOFTVIS’08, is the premiere forum for researchers from different backgrounds (HCI, software engineering, programming languages, visualization, and computer science education) to present original research on software visualization.

Topics of interest include:

• Visualization in software engineering, e.g. UML diagrams
• Visualization of workflow and business processes
• Visualization of web services
• Visual debugging
• 3D software visualization
• Software visualization on the internet
• Empirical evaluation of software visualization

It will be co-Located with IEEE VL/HCC’08 and Diagrams’08.

The 2008 IEEE Symposium on Visual Languages and Human-Centric Computing, VL/HCC ‘08, is the premier international forum for researchers and industrial practitioners to discuss the theory, applications and evaluation of technologies, visual and otherwise, that enhance the role of humans in the computing process. Established in 1984, the mission of the VL/HCC is to support the design, formalization, implementation, and evaluation of computing languages that are easier to learn, easier to use, and easier to understand by a broader group of people.

This includes all research aimed at the above mission, regardless of whether it uses entirely visual technology, text, or instead uses sound, taste, virtual reality, the web, or any other technologies. From the beginning of the computer age, researchers and computing practitioners have sought ways to make interactions with computers more human-oriented. For example, visual languages have long been used to provide effective communication between humans and computers. Visual languages have been successfully employed for end-user programming, modeling, and rapid prototyping; they have supported design activities by people of many disciplines and backgrounds including architects, artists, children, engineers, and scientists. In addition, visual languages and technologies are increasingly being used to facilitate human-human communication through Internet/Web technology and electronic mobile devices.

VL/HCC will be co-located, running in conjunction with Diagrams 2008 and the ACM Symposium on Software Visualization. This co-location will provide a week long forum, called Visual Week, which will encompass a broad range of topics related to visual and diagrammatic representations including, for example, formal, empirical and cognitive perspectives.

The Third IASTED International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction, IASTED-HCI 2008, will be a forum for international researchers and professionals to present their latest research, results, and ideas in all areas of human-computer interaction.

It will be held in conjunction with the IASTED International Conferences on Web-based Education (WBE 2008), Internet and Multimedia Systems and Applications (EuroIMSA 2008), and Visual Communications (VC 2008).

DLD (Digital, Life, Design) is Europe’s conference for the 21st century; covering digital innovation, gaming, arts and science and bringing together thought leaders from Europe, the Middle-East, America and Asia. DLD08 is scheduled for January 20-22, 2008 at HVB Forum in Munich, Germany.