HCIEd 2008 is the annual international conference of Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) educators. It will be held in Rome, Italy, from April 2-4 (just before the CHI 2008 Conference in Florence).

HCIEd 2008 will promote a discussion on the evolution of HCI education towards a more holistic vision requiring a stronger dialogue between a variety of disciplines. This is in reaction to the demand of new curricula to equip practitioners and designers of the future with the necessary skills to cope with developments in, amongst others, mediated communication that is increasingly becoming ubiquitous, embedded and ‘wearable’ and tends to be part of complex interactive systems that populate co-evolving spaces.

We wish to enrich and integrate our knowledge of the design processes that are used in the various design domains (process control, consumer electronics, architecture, product design, fashion design, software engineering, etc.), by peeling away the domain specifics, identifying what is universal and what is different, and what common methods and tools can be identified. We would like to investigate how to better handle and integrate the border conditions impacting on our domain (educational policies, social environments, political issues, ethics and acceptability, role of industry, etc.) and the influence of cross-cultural issues.

We therefore invite educators, researchers, designers and developers from a variety of domains to attend and take part in HCIEd 2008: computer and information scientists, engineers, product, graphic and interaction designers, architects, social scientists, ethnographers and anthropologists, etc.

The 9th International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, AVI 2008, will take place in Naples, Italy, May 28-30, 2008. AVI traditionally brings together experts in different areas of computer science who have a common interest in the conception, design and implementation of visual and, more generally, perceptual interfaces. Specific topics include:

• Visual Interface Design
• Visual Interaction
• Information Visualization
• Adaptive Interfaces
• Multimodal Interfaces
• Context Aware Interaction
• End-User Development
• Hypermedia & Multimedia Applications
• Web-Based Social Interaction
• New Media and Cultural Heritage

In cooperation with ACM-SIGCHI, ACM-SIGMM and SIGCHI Italy.

CHI 2008 focuses on the balance between art and science, design and research, practical motivation and the process that leads the way to innovative excellence. It is about balance in our rapidly evolving field, the balance between individuals and groups, collocated and remote, stationary and mobile, in both our local and global communities.