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Change Seminar today 10/29: Hamid Mehmood - "Towards Digitization of Collaborative Savings Among Low-Income Groups"
by Sara Vannini 29 Oct '19

29 Oct '19

*Join us for Change Seminar today 10/29!* *When*: today, 12pm-1pm *Where*: CSE2-271 *Who*: Hamid Mehmood *Title*: Towards Digitization of Collaborative Savings Among Low-Income Groups Author List: Hamid Mehmood, Tallal Ahmad, Lubna Razaq, Shrirang Mare, Maryam Zafar, Richard Anderson, Agha Ali Raza *Abstract: * Rotating Savings and Credit Association (ROSCA) is a mechanism of informal collaborative savings that is widely used across the globe. Despite its popularity and prevalence, it is not well-studied from HCI and CSCW perspectives. The global increase in mobile penetration has created opportunities to serve the unbanked using mobile-based Digital Financial Services (DFS) for greater financial inclusion but there have not been any DFS-based interventions around ROSCAs. We report a qualitative study involving 80 individuals to understand the dynamics of ROSCAs and opportunities for their digitization in the Pakistani context. We also present a smartphone-based Digital ROSCA platform designed on top of a simulated mobile money system. The platform was designed to be inclusive towards low-literate users. We present qualitative findings of its evaluation with 15 users (3 individual ROSCA groups). We find that digitization has the potential to support and strengthen traditional ROSCAs by mitigating issues like record-keeping, delayed payments, collection, distribution, and safety of money. It also allows the creation of payment history for individuals that can be used to score their financial credibility. *About the Speaker:* Hamid Mehmood works as a Research Associate at ITU Fintech Center Lahore, Pakistan. His research interests include Human Computer Interaction, Human Centered Design and ICTs for Development. He completed his Masters in Computer Science from Information Technology University, Lahore in 2017. He is a member of International Development and Innovation Network (IDIN) at MIT's DLab and have attended several design summits. Hamid has published his research work to CSCW, ICTD and COMPASS. -- Sara Vannini, PhD Lecturer - Integrated Social Sciences and Department of Communication University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Personal website: http://www.saravannini.com Sanctuary collective website: http://www.sanctuarycollective.net/ Pronouns: she, her, hers

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Change Seminar Tuesday 10/22: Samia Ibtasam - "The Role of Family in women’s Technological Inclusion in IslamicCulture Presenter: "
by Sara Vannini 22 Oct '19

22 Oct '19

*Join us for Change Seminar next Tuesday 10/22!* *When*: Tuesday, 10/22/19, 12pm-1pm *Where*: CSE2-271 *Who*: Samia Ibtasam *Title*: "My cousin bought the phone for me. I never go to mobile shops.": The Role of Family in women’s Technological Inclusion in Islamic Culture *Abstract*: In this talk, I will discuss how the intersection of Islam and gender affects technological and social interactions for Muslim women in significant ways, including gendered roles, generational differences in a family, and wider socio-cultural and religious influences. I will present a recent CSCW work that builds on 73 qualitative interviews with low-income women in Punjab, Pakistan, and analyzes the complexity of family relationships and the subsequent dynamics of authority around technology uptake and usage by women within non-Western contexts, and, specifically, within the Islamic world. The work argues that a Pakistani woman's experience with technology depends on many factors, including gendered roles, generational differences in a family, and wider socio-cultural and religious influences against the backdrop of a culturally conservative and patriarchal society. It highlights the rich family dynamics, including key life events, that transform the roles of both Muslim women and their relatives. My work aims to inform scholars, practitioners in development agencies and industry, and other individuals studying technological inclusion about the household dynamics that influence women’s use of technology. Considering these dynamics during design and implementation processes will broaden accessibility and diversity in the acceptance and use of evolving technologies. *Speaker Bio:* Samia Ibtasam <https://samiaibtasam.com/> is a Ph.D. student at the Paul G Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington in Seattle. As part of the ICTD Lab, her current work focuses on devising tools and frameworks to increase women’s technological and financial inclusion. With more than ten years of experience in designing, developing and deploying technologies for emerging markets, she is studying the impact of gender on technological and financial services and the use of consumer training to expand financial inclusion. Before UW, Ibtasam was the founding co-director of Innovations for Poverty Alleviation Lab (IPAL) <http://ipal.itu.edu.pk/> at the Information Technology University (ITU). She has authored and led research grants, designed and led projects on speech interfaces for low-literate users and on Maternal, Neonatal and Child Health (MNCH), including the redesign of immunization cards and the creation of digital health records for the province of Punjab in Pakistan. In the Computer Science Department at ITU, she taught Design Thinking, Human-Centered Design, and product development courses to undergraduate and graduate Computer Science students. Ibtasam was named a Google Women Techmaker (North America) Scholar in 2019 <https://news.cs.washington.edu/2019/09/13/allen-schools-samia-ibtasam-recei…>, a Marilyn Fries Endowed Fellow in 2016 <https://www.cs.washington.edu/students/grad/awardrecipients/fries>, and the Acumen Fund Regional Fellow for Pakistan <https://acumenideas.com/samia-razaq-likes-to-call-herself-a-geek-4a774f27f2…> in 2015. She occasionally tweets @SamiaRazaq <https://twitter.com/SamiaRazaq> -- Sara Vannini, PhD Lecturer - Integrated Social Sciences and Department of Communication University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Personal website: http://www.saravannini.com Sanctuary collective website: http://www.sanctuarycollective.net/ Pronouns: she, her, hers

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ICTD 2020 Call for Papers (Deadline: December 20, 2019)
by Neha Kumar 16 Oct '19

16 Oct '19

*From: *Nicola Dell <nixdell(a)cornell.edu> *Date: *October 16, 2019 at 5:13:44 PM PDT *To: *Neha Kumar <neha.kumar(a)gatech.edu> *Now with confirmed location and dates!* ICTD 2020 ***Call for Papers*** Deadline for submission of full papers: December 20th, 2019 June 17-20th, ESPOL, Guayaquil, Ecuador The 11th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD 2020) invites you to submit your work. To be held in cooperation with ACM SIGCAS, ICTD 2020 will provide an international forum for scholarly researchers to explore the role of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in the context of social, political, and economic development. The conference will be held from June 17-20th in the coastal city of Guayaquil, Ecuador at the country’s leading technical university – ESPOL. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) have become more pervasive in the lives of people around the world. They are being used in various facets of daily life ranging from economics to health care, education to governance, family life to artistic expression. Diverse groups across the world interact with, are impacted by, and can shape the design of these technologies. The ICTD conference provides a forum for analyzing, critiquing, refining, and inventing new ways in which individuals, communities, and societies interact with and make use of these tools and platforms. There are multidisciplinary challenges associated with the design, engineering, application, and adoption of ICTs in low- and middle-income regions and/or other resource-constrained settings, with implications for design, policy, and practice. For the purposes of this conference, the term “ICT” comprises electronic technologies for information processing and communication, as well as systems, use of big data, interventions, and platforms built on such technologies. “Development” includes, but is not restricted to, poverty alleviation, education, agriculture, healthcare, communication, gender equality, governance, infrastructure, environment, and sustainability. The conference program will reflect the multidisciplinary nature of ICTD research and publishing traditions, with anticipated contributions from fields including (but not limited to) anthropology, computer science, communication, data science, design, economics, electrical engineering, geography, HCI, information systems, political science, public health, and sociology. *FULL PAPERS*An ICTD Full Paper must make a new and complete research contribution, articulate how it is advancing the field of ICTD, and provide complete and substantial support for its results and conclusions. All submissions must be original work; the submitter must clearly document any overlap with previously published or simultaneously submitted papers from any of the authors. Failure to point out and explain overlap will be grounds for rejection. Simultaneous submission of the same paper to another venue with proceedings or a journal is not allowed and will be grounds for rejection. Contact the papers chairs (ictd2020papers(a)gmail.com) if there are questions about this policy. Papers will be evaluated via double-blind peer review by a multidisciplinary panel of at least three reviewers, one of whom will come from outside the paper’s disciplinary domain in order to ensure broad readability. *ANONYMOUS SUBMISSION*Papers must be submitted in a form suitable for anonymous review: no author names or affiliations may appear on the title page, and papers should avoid revealing their identity in the text. When referring to your previous work, do so in the third person, as though it were written by someone else. Only blind the reference itself in the (unusual) case that a third-person reference is infeasible. Publication as a technical report or in an online repository does not constitute a violation of this policy. Contact the papers chairs ( ictd2020papers(a)gmail.com) if you have any questions. Papers that are not properly anonymized may be rejected without review. *HUMAN SUBJECTS AND ETHICAL CONSIDERATIONS*Submissions that describe experiments with human subjects, that analyze data derived from human subjects, or that otherwise may put humans at risk should: Disclose whether the research received an approval or waiver from each of the authors' institutional ethics review boards (IRB) if applicable. Discuss steps taken to ensure that participants and others who might have been affected by an experiment were treated ethically and with respect. If a paper raises significant ethical concerns, it might be rejected based on these concerns. *PAGE LIMITS AND FORMATTING*Submitted papers may include up to 10 pages of text (including figures and tables) and up to 3 pages of appendices (if appropriate). References do not count towards these page limits. Reviewers are not required to read appendices. Papers should be submitted in the two-column CHI 2020 proceedings format (templates available for LaTeX, Overleaf or Microsoft Word). Submissions must be in Portable Document Format (.pdf). Authors should pay special attention to unusual fonts, images, and figures that might create problems for reviewers. Your document should render correctly in Adobe Reader 9 and when printed in black and white. Submissions will be checked for conformance to these requirements. Failure to adhere to the page limit and formatting requirements are grounds for rejection without review. *CONFLICTS OF INTEREST*During submission of a research paper, the submission site will request information about conflicts of interest of the paper's authors with program committee (PC) members. It will be the responsibility of all authors of a paper to identify all and only their potential conflict-of-interest PC members, according to the following definitions. A paper author has a conflict of interest with a PC member when and only when one or more of the following conditions holds: The PC member is a co-author of the paper. The PC member has been a co-worker in the same company or university within the past two years. For student interns, the student is conflicted with their supervisors and with members of the same research group. If the student no longer works for the organization, then they are not conflicted with a PC member from the larger organization. The PC member has been a collaborator within the past two years. The PC member is or was the author's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago. The author is or was the PC member's primary thesis advisor, no matter how long ago. The PC member is a relative or close personal friend of the author. For any other situation where the authors feel they have a conflict with a PC member, they must explain the nature of the conflict to the PC chairs, who will mark the conflict if appropriate. Papers with incorrect or incomplete conflict of interest information are subject to rejection. *CONFERENCE SUBMISSION SERVER *Submission site coming soon. *PUBLICATION AND PRESENTATION*Papers will be archived by default in the ACM Digital Library (unless otherwise requested by authors). Authors are responsible for obtaining appropriate publication clearances. At least one of the authors of each accepted paper is expected to present the paper at the conference. *DATES AND DEADLINES*December 20th, 2019: Deadline for submitting full papers February 15th, 2020: Notification of acceptance or rejection March 20, 2020: Camera-ready papers due June 17-20th: Presentations at ICTD 2020 All submissions are due at 8pm, Anywhere on Earth Contact the papers chairs ictd2020papers(a)gmail.com if you have any questions. *PAPERS CHAIRS*Nicola Dell (Cornell Tech) Indrani Medhi Thies (Microsoft Research) *ICTD STEERING COMMITTEE*Michael Best (Georgia Tech) Dorothea Kleine (Univ. of Sheffield), Nithya Sambasivan (Google), Janaki Srinivasan (Int'l Inst. of Information Technology, Bangalore), Kentaro Toyama (Univ. of Michigan), Joseph Muliaro Wafula (Jomo Kenyatta Univ. of Agriculture and Technology) (The language in this CFP uses material from prior calls and other conference CFPs.)

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Re: [change] Fwd: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18
by Manaswi Saha 15 Oct '19

15 Oct '19

Hey Matt and Change folks, If any of you go to this talk, could you share your notes with me? Unfortunately, I am leaving for a bunch of conferences on the same day and will miss it :( On Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 2:47 PM Matthew Johnson <matt9j(a)cs.washington.edu> wrote: > Forwarded with permission. This looks like an interesting talk with a > member of Facebook's data science team looking at disaster mapping and > recovery, hosted by CSDE. > Cheers, > -Matt J. > > ---------- Forwarded message --------- > From: Sarah A Stone <sstone3(a)uw.edu> > Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 10:08 AM > Subject: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on > Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18 > To: <escience_bbl(a)u.washington.edu> > > > Please join us for next week’s talk by Zack Almquist on Disaster Maps and > Displaced Populations. Dr. Almquist is a research scientist and > demographer at Facebook. > Population Research Discovery Seminars > Disaster Maps and a Survey Comparison of Displaced Populations in the > Cyclone Fani Region 6 Months after Landfall > > Zack Almquist, Research Scientist, Demography and Survey Sciences Group, > Facebook > > 10/18/2019 > 12:30-1:30 PM PT > 121 Raitt Hall <https://www.washington.edu/maps/#!/rai> > ------------------------------ > > Zack Almquist is a Research Scientist in the Demography and Survey > Sciences group at Facebook. From 2013-2018 he was an Assistant Professor of > Sociology and Statistics at the University of Minnesota. In 2017-2018 he > was a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford > University. Almquist’s research interests include social network analysis, > big data, computational social sciences, mathematical sociology, spatial > analysis, demography, sociology of education, environmental policy, public > health, and human judgment and decision-making. His main research focus is > on understanding, modeling, and predicting the effects that space > (geography) and time have on human interaction (e.g., communication, > friendship, mentorship, needle sharing, etc.) and social processes (e.g., > information passing, knowledge acquisition, skill development, disease > transmission, etc.). > > > Sara Curran <https://sites.uw.edu/scurran/> > Director > Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology <https://csde.washington.edu/> > Section Editor, Global Perspectives <https://gp.ucpress.edu/> > > _______________________________________________ > CSDE Affiliates Mailing List > To unsubscribe or edit options, visit: > > http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/uw/login/mailman/options/csde_aff… > > > -- > Sarah A. Stone, PhD > Interim Director | eScience Institute > Executive Director | eScience Institute > Campus Box 351570 > University of Washington > Seattle, WA 98195 > > _______________________________________________ > Escience_bbl mailing list > Escience_bbl(a)u.washington.edu > http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/escience_bbl > _______________________________________________ > change mailing list > change(a)change.washington.edu > https://changemm.cs.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/change > -- Best Regards, Manaswi Saha Ph.D. Student Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering University of Washington, Seattle *homes.cs.washington.edu/~manaswi <http://homes.cs.washington.edu/~manaswi>* Twitter - @manaswisaha <https://twitter.com/manaswisaha>

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Fwd: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18
by Matthew Johnson 15 Oct '19

15 Oct '19

Forwarded with permission. This looks like an interesting talk with a member of Facebook's data science team looking at disaster mapping and recovery, hosted by CSDE. Cheers, -Matt J. ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Sarah A Stone <sstone3(a)uw.edu> Date: Mon, Oct 14, 2019 at 10:08 AM Subject: [Escience_bbl] Fwd: [Csde_affil] Zack Almquist to speak on Disaster Maps and Displace Populations on Oct. 18 To: <escience_bbl(a)u.washington.edu> Please join us for next week’s talk by Zack Almquist on Disaster Maps and Displaced Populations. Dr. Almquist is a research scientist and demographer at Facebook. Population Research Discovery Seminars Disaster Maps and a Survey Comparison of Displaced Populations in the Cyclone Fani Region 6 Months after Landfall Zack Almquist, Research Scientist, Demography and Survey Sciences Group, Facebook 10/18/2019 12:30-1:30 PM PT 121 Raitt Hall <https://www.washington.edu/maps/#!/rai> ------------------------------ Zack Almquist is a Research Scientist in the Demography and Survey Sciences group at Facebook. From 2013-2018 he was an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of Minnesota. In 2017-2018 he was a Visiting Scholar at the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University. Almquist’s research interests include social network analysis, big data, computational social sciences, mathematical sociology, spatial analysis, demography, sociology of education, environmental policy, public health, and human judgment and decision-making. His main research focus is on understanding, modeling, and predicting the effects that space (geography) and time have on human interaction (e.g., communication, friendship, mentorship, needle sharing, etc.) and social processes (e.g., information passing, knowledge acquisition, skill development, disease transmission, etc.). Sara Curran <https://sites.uw.edu/scurran/> Director Center for Studies in Demography & Ecology <https://csde.washington.edu/> Section Editor, Global Perspectives <https://gp.ucpress.edu/> _______________________________________________ CSDE Affiliates Mailing List To unsubscribe or edit options, visit: http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/uw/login/mailman/options/csde_aff… -- Sarah A. Stone, PhD Interim Director | eScience Institute Executive Director | eScience Institute Campus Box 351570 University of Washington Seattle, WA 98195 _______________________________________________ Escience_bbl mailing list Escience_bbl(a)u.washington.edu http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/escience_bbl

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Fwd: [Ssnet_list] Fwd: 10/17 Hist. of Technology/Colonialism/Middle East: conversation and talk with Prof. Fredrik Meiton (UNH).
by Philip Garrison 15 Oct '19

15 Oct '19

Exciting (electrifying?) talk coming up Thursday -Philip ---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Leah M Ceccarelli <cecc(a)uw.edu> Date: Tue, Oct 15, 2019 at 12:29 PM Subject: [Ssnet_list] Fwd: 10/17 Hist. of Technology/Colonialism/Middle East: conversation and talk with Prof. Fredrik Meiton (UNH). To: ssnet_list(a)u.washington.edu <ssnet_list(a)u.washington.edu> Here’s a talk that might be of interest to SSNet list members. Begin forwarded message: *From:* Liora Halperin <lhalper(a)uw.edu> *Date:* October 15, 2019 at 10:13:27 AM PDT *Subject:* *10/17 Hist. of Technology/Colonialism/Middle East: conversation and talk with Prof. Fredrik Meiton (UNH).* *Please share the following announcement with relevant student lists or UW listservs that you control or have access to* You are invited to meet *Professor Fredrik Meiton (University of New Hampshire)* before his public talk for a special conversation about how he researched and wrote his new book *Electrical Palestine: Capital and Technopolitics from Empire to Nation* His history of the Palestine electric grid sits at the intersection of History of Technology, History of Colonialism, and Middle East Studies. He will discuss how he found politics embedded in the seemingly apolitical mechanisms of the power grid and talk about his approaches to writing the history of technology in the Middle East and beyond. *Thursday 10/17, 1:30-3pm, Smith 320. * *(All UW students and faculty are welcome)* Please note that the Smith elevator is out of service. If you need accommodations, please contact Alexandra Colley at alexc09(a)uw.edu. ------ *Please also join for Prof. Meiton's book talk at 3:30, in HUB 340* [image: image.png] -- Prof. Liora R. Halperin Associate Professor of International Studies, History, and Jewish Studies Affiliate Faculty, Middle East Center Jack and Rebecca Benaroya Endowed Chair in Israel Studies University of Washington, Seattle lhalper(a)uw.edu Office: 316 Thomson Hall _______________________________________________ Ssnet_list mailing list Ssnet_list(a)u.washington.edu http://mailman13.u.washington.edu/mailman/listinfo/ssnet_list

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Change Seminar Today 10/15: Kurtis Heimerl "CoLTE, a LTE-based community networks solution"
by Sara Vannini 15 Oct '19

15 Oct '19

*Join us for Change Seminar next Today 10/15!* *When*: today, 12pm-1pm *Where*: CSE2-271 *Who*: Kurtis Heimerl *Title: *CoLTE, a LTE-based community networks solution *Talk Summary:* In this talk I introduce CoLTE, a solution for LTE-based community networks. CoLTE is a lightweight, Internet-only LTE core network (EPC) designed to facilitate the deployment and operation of small-scale, community owned and operated LTE networks in rural areas with limited and unreliable backhaul. The key differentiator of CoLTE, when compared to existing LTE solutions, is that in CoLTE the EPC is designed to be located in the field and deployed alongside a small number of cellular radios (eNodeBs), as opposed to the centralized model seen in large-scale telecom networks. We also provide performance results and lessons learned from a real-world CoLTE network deployed in rural Indonesia. This network has been sustainably operating for over six months, currently serves over 40 active users, and provides measured backhaul reductions of up to 45% when compared to cloud-core solutions. *Speaker bio:* Kurtis is Assistant Professor at the University of Washington School of Computer Science & Engineering, where he works with the Change and ICTD groups. His research interests are in the space of technology for poverty alleviation, specifically Internet Access. He was a recipient of the 2014 MIT “35 under 35” award, the 2018 UW early career Diamond Award, and won “Best Paper” awards at both CHI and DySPAN. He publishes in top conferences such as ICTD, CHI, and NSDI and occasionally on the UWCSE ICTD Blog. -- Sara Vannini, PhD Lecturer - Integrated Social Sciences and Department of Communication University of Washington, Seattle, WA, USA Personal website: http://www.saravannini.com Sanctuary collective website: http://www.sanctuarycollective.net/ Pronouns: she, her, hers

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Looking for website redesign for OpenMRS
by Jan Flowers 13 Oct '19

13 Oct '19

Hi All - OpenMRS has posted an RFP for their website redesign. If anyone is looking for a small web project for a do-good organization, please send over an email expressing interest to jennifer(a)openmrs.org<mailto:jennifer@openmrs.org>. * https://docs.google.com/document/d/1njqiqh52WB9rG4ucYDDcnTZp61grbBrJO8AeKkf… * https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-55Oci5WeoQRPcy4ex1erUYkU2mttIkxym-KoXs… Best, Jan Jan Flowers, MS HPL Health Informatics, Health Policy & Law, Global Health Clinical Informatics Research Group (CIRG), BNHI SON, Director of Global Health Informatics Digital Initiatives Group I-TECH, DGH SOM, Faculty Co-Lead University of Washington, Clinical Faculty, Research Scientist OpenMRS, Chair, Board of Directors and Leadership OpenELIS, Board of Directors

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Fwd: [liberationtech] [Job] Senior DevOps Engineer @ Freedom of the Press Foundation
by Kurtis Heimerl 11 Oct '19

11 Oct '19

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Erik Moeller <erik(a)freedom.press> Date: Fri, Oct 11, 2019 at 4:03 PM Subject: [liberationtech] [Job] Senior DevOps Engineer @ Freedom of the Press Foundation To: <lt(a)lists.liberationtech.org> Hi folks, We're hiring a Senior DevOps Engineer at Freedom of the Press Foundation. We lead the development of SecureDrop (used by 65+ media organizations), manage the US Press Freedom Tracker (in partnership with the Committee to Protect Journalists), and provide digital security training & org security audits to journalists and news organizations. Job description here: https://freedom.press/jobs/senior-devops-engineer/ Budgeted base salary range: $90-$110K Remote-friendly: Yes, if you're comfortable being available during business hours in the PT-ET time zone range (you don't have to be based there). If this role sounds interesting, we'd love to hear from you -- even if you're not sure yet if you want to apply. We would also appreciate your help in getting the word out about this role, so please feel free to forward this email liberally! Thanks for reading, and thanks for any & all help getting the word out :) Warmly, Erik -- Principal Project Manager Freedom of the Press Foundation -- Liberationtech is public & archives are searchable from any major commercial search engine. Violations of list guidelines will get you moderated: https://lists.ghserv.net/mailman/listinfo/lt. Unsubscribe, change to digest mode, or change password by emailing lt-owner(a)lists.liberationtech.org. -- Public Key: https://flowcrypt.com/pub/kheimerl@cs.washington.edu

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ROOM CHANGE: Change Seminar Tuesday 10/8: Dustin Carlino- "A/B Street: Fixing Seattle's traffic by playing an open source traffic simulation game"
by Esther Jang 08 Oct '19

08 Oct '19

Reminder about room change: We will be in *CSE2-271* for the talk now, and also in subsequent weeks. *When: Tuesday, 10/8/19, 12pm-1pmWhere: CSE2-271Who: Dustin Carlino* *Title: A/B Street: Fixing Seattle's traffic by playing an open source traffic simulation game* *Talk Summary:*Ever been on a bus stuck in traffic wondering where the bus-only lane is? A/B Street (https://github.com/dabreegster/abstreet) is a game simulating vehicle, cyclist, and pedestrian traffic in Seattle. Players reconfigure road space -- such as changing on-street parking to a bike lane -- and traffic signals, then explore how the change affects different groups. The project aims to bring urban planning to the masses, letting anybody prototype and then propose a small idea for improving Seattle. Attend this talk to learn about the complexities of using OpenStreetMap and other public data to build a detailed road model, how to simulate the movement and interactions of thousands of agents faster than real-time, and about the challenges of building a friendly UI for conveying the intricacies of Seattle's worst jams. *Speaker bio: *Dustin graduated from the CS program at UT Austin in 2014, after working on an undergrad thesis to simulate autonomous cars. He worked on Google Compute Engine in Seattle for four years, then decided to pursue A/B Street full-time. His mission is to find short-term solutions to ease traffic woes in growing American cities, by incrementally improving transit and cycling options. Outside of this project, he helps organize Seattle Jumps, a local parkour community. Contact him at dabreegster(a)gmail.com.

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