Michael J. Scialdone

Information studios: Integrating arts-based learning into the education of information professionals

An ink jet printing apparatus responsive to an input digital image for producing a halftone image on a receiver, such as a lithographic plate, having halftone dots with each halftone dot being formed by one or more microdots in a screen dot of selectable areas, including an adjustable printhead for delivering different volumes of ink droplets which, when they contact the receiver, forming microdots of different areas according to the selected screen dot size. The apparatus delivers ink to the printhead and is responsive to a selected screen dot size and the digital image to control the printhead to form ink droplets of different volumes to produce a halftone image on the receiver.This article is focused on the changes needed in design to create positive solutions for all involved in design processes. It draws upon the rich discussion and discourse from a conference focused on positive design involving managers, designers, and IT specialists, all focused on overcoming the problem-based focus and decision paradigms to enhance all phases of the design processes to develop sustainable solutions for real issues in a changing world. Therefore, all fields using design, consciously or not, including management, Information Communication Technology (ICT), and designers as well, need to redesign their processes and first rethink their design paradigms on a meta level.

Group Maintenance Behaviors of Core and Peripherial Members of Free/Libre Open Source Software Teams

Group Maintenance is pro-social, discretionary, and relation-building behavior that occurs between members of groups in order to maintain reciprocal trust and cooperation. This paper considers how Free/libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) teams demonstrate such behaviors within the context of e-mail, as this is the primary medium through which such teams communicate. We compare group maintenance behaviors between both core and peripheral members of these groups, as well as behaviors between a group that remains producing software today and one which has since dissolved. Our findings indicate that negative politeness tactics (those which show respect for the autonomy of others) may be the most instrumental group maintenance behaviors that contribute to a FLOSS group’s ability to survive and continue software production.

Social media futures: why iSchools should care

Social Media Futures was a 3 day charrette at a major university that brought together students with various backgrounds to consider the future impact of social media on business, and to think about what opportunities that might create. However, topics that arose touched on a variety of themes that included social media communities, ownership, privacy and governance of user-generated content on social networks, and how social media may impact education and learning at all ages. This paper provides our observations from this multi-disciplinary charrette, and articulates why iSchools need to be concerned with social media.

Absent information technology in legitimate information systems research

The current identity of the information systems (IS) discipline, to certain extent, relies on the presence of information technology. The urgent call to theorizing IT artifacts made by previous IS studies raises concerns on the roles and importance of IT artifacts in the wide range of topics investigated by IS scholars, especially in the studies in which IT artifacts are considered absent. We analyze the topics, IT artifacts, and contexts of these studies from the 2009 and 2010 ICIS proceedings to address this concern. We find that IT professions and IT artifacts are significant contextual factors that cannot be ignored in these studies. This helps the IS discipline to rethink the establishment of its intellectual identity solely on the premise of theorizing IT artifacts.