European summer research presentations at International Conferences in Computer Sciences (HCI)

I was back in the West during the Summer-time up there (ours in Namibia commences now-now).
This European and a bit North American* (*below, though virtual) sojourn can be summarised as follows as far as I am concerned:

Currently undertaking a funded PhD in Computer Sciences at UWL in London, my research project happens in Indigenous Namibia. Here I study the way in which the artefact called Persona in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) differs, or not, across cultures.

The reason being for this European trip was in order to present my research up to then as for the MPhil to PhD transfer at my university up there, and also to attend x3 international research conferences where mine and my colleagues' research was picked-up and presented as follows:

(1)HWID'15 International Conference in London, United Kingdom;

(2)C&T'15 in Limerick, Ireland; and

(3)SIGDOC'15 back in Limerick.

Whereas the criticism and acceptance of the papers at the first two conferences was rather promising [based on the fact it is still research in progress] and very encouraging, at the SIGDOC'15 I [we, for I am part of a full international and interdisciplinary team] won the runner-up price at the ACM's SIGDOC'15 SRC.

                                                        http://src.acm.org/winners.html

Winners of the SRC @ SIGDOC 2015, Limerick, Ireland.
Photo by Bryan Lutz, Iowa State University.

This also came accompanied by being selected by InfiniteDeviation & Google among the best ten film proposal to make a short-movie about Computer Science & Education. At this one, yet, we did not win the finals in Hollywood, but we did try out, hard

Back in Namibia, I am glad to state that on the very last day of July, I won the 1st price to the best poster presentation on the Research Day at the Namibia University of Science & Technology, School of Computing and Informatics, where I currently keep carrying out my research.

Right-right now what I can say is that I am close, very, to finish (1)the editing of a chapter for a book soon to be published by Springer based on the paper presented at the HWID (full proceedings, p.49), (2)a mini-thesis for my PhD, (3)programming and launching a website of my own, and soon after that (4)to resume editing a series of biographical films on Spanish Dance & Flamenco that I wrote, directed and produced at the time (http://danzafilms.com).

Ten best proposal towards Grand Prix that, this time around, we did not get :)

 Hope for the above to all make sense and that it inspires [any] others as much as it inspires myself to keep on this very path!

For more on mine and my team's published papers:

https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Daniel_G_Cabrero

I am Daniel G. Cabrero, following upon the tail and academic achievements of accomplished  academics of the present and of the future to come!

SOCAT Seminar Series: External speaker on information security - Leron Zinatullin

Today, as part of the SoCaT Seminar Series at The School of Computing and Technology at University of West London (UWL), we had Leron Zinatullin talking upon Information Security.

Leron Zinatullin - http://zinatullin.com

Leron Zinatullin gave the following talk:
It is difficult to ensure effectiveness of information security programme in a given organisation without paying attention to users’ behaviour. One of the challenges for the security manager when implementing information security policy is  to differentiate between malicious non-compliance and non-compliance due to the obstruction of business activities.
The main goal of this seminar is to gain an insight into information security behaviour issues from both - an end-users’ and security managers’ perspectives.

It aims to present a model to support security managers’ decision-making process when implementing security policy in the organisation, as it is important to help security managers make a user part of the system and to go beyond formal box-ticking when ensuring compliance with legal and regulatory requirements.


This talk has been rather informative, clear and straight to the point.

At the end of it, Leron has allowed a open and enriching discussion in which, among other participants, I have taken an active part due to the fact that I have taken a Human-Computer Interaction research path which covers all needs to do with technology interacted by humans.

In these regards then, I have extensively read upon two of the UK core researchers in the field of Information Security - Professor Shamal Faily & Professor Ivan Fléchais.

Professors Faily & Fléchais are especialists within the field of security and information systems. Yet, my main interest comes from their use of the User-Centered Design Persona method within this field and their specific research.

Professors Faily & Fléchais use personas to summarise user requirements in information security. And they use them very well and to their very advantage. They apply personas for different uses and in different contexts such as for weakness in security systems to access water plants and keep them safe at the same time from potential external agents that may intrude these systems.

I have very much liked to have utilised my knowledge upon usability issues and on the literature by Shamal Faily & Ivan Fléchais (mainly) in order to engage in full with Leron and his rather vast knowledge on the issue at hand.

The post is going to be extended at a later stage, as the work by Professors Faily & Fléchais in using grounded theory and personas is going to be used and cited throughout my own research.

For now, and as usual, I leave you with a song or radio station of my own choice. This time around it is a track I pretty much like - "Hallelujah", by Happy Mondays:




BIBLIOGRAPHY:

Faily, S. and Fléchais, I. 2010. Barry is not the weakest link: eliciting secure system requirements with personas. In Proc. of the 2010 British Computer Society Conference on Human-Computer Interaction. Dundee, United Kingdom. BCS-HCI.