Please register for NSDR 2009 by Thursday so that the organizers can assure adequate hotel availability. This year NSDR is co-located with SOSP in Big Sky, Montana, and will be held on October 11th. If you also plan to attend SOSP, the early registration deadline is *today*. The SOSP registration page can be found here: http://www.sigops.org/sosp/sosp09/registration.html Note that it is possible to register for NSDR without registering for the main SOSP conference. ---------------------------------- 3rd Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR) To be held with the 22nd ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) Big Sky Resort, Big Sky, Montana Sunday, October 11th, 2009 http://www.dritte.org/nsdr09 ** Background ** Following on two successful workshops hosted with ACM SIGCOMM in 2007 and 2008, the 3rd Workshop on Networked Systems for Developing Regions (NSDR '09) will provide a venue for researchers to present ideas and results concerning the design, implementation and evaluation of new computing and communications technologies serving developing regions. The decreasing cost and increasing access to information and communication technologies (e.g., mobile phones) are rapidly enabling access to new services and markets for previously disconnected populations. However, due to a variety of factors, including cost, literacy, education, and organizational capacity, conventional approaches to technology design and implementation are often not relevant. Moreover, empirical evidence for the impact of such technologies is largely anecdotal, beyond a few well-known and well-cited examples. Addressing this requires engagement of several disciplines, including but not limited to economics, sociology, anthropology, and political science, and expertise in a variety of application areas - including government, health, finance and agriculture. NSDR focuses on addressing significant technical challenges (e.g., communication infrastructure in rural areas, novel caching techniques for challenged networks, security issues arising in such contexts), and on the deployment and evaluation of novel technologies or applications that address a specific need (e.g. providing remote financial services or health care). ** Papers ** We encourage submission of position papers or the results of preliminary work describing interesting, original, previously unpublished ideas or results pertaining to the design, implementation and/or evaluation of networks and systems for developing regions. Accepted papers will: - propose new research directions; - target a specific application; - inform design and/or deployment; - or generate lively debate at the workshop. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to: - Low-cost wireless connectivity - Intermittent systems - Power-efficient systems - Low-cost computing devices - Mobile systems and applications - Adapting content and applications for local languages - User interfaces for low-literacy populations - Design and evaluation of applications for public health, microfinance, agriculture, e-governance, education, monitoring, disaster management, etc. ** Submission ** Submissions must follow formatting guidelines and be submitted according to instructions at http://www.dritte.org/nsdr09/submit.html. Submissions that deviate from these guidelines will be rejected without consideration. Reviews will be SINGLE-BLIND: authors' names and affiliations should be included in the submission. Authors of accepted papers are expected to present their papers at the workshop. Submissions must be original work not under review at any other workshop, conference or journal. ** Program Committee ** Vivek Pai, Princeton (co-chair) Tapan Parikh, UC Berkeley (co-chair) Muneeb Ali, Princeton John Bennett, Colorado Gaetano Borriello, U. Washington Eric Brewer, UC Berkeley Ravi Jain, Google S. Keshav, Waterloo KyoungSoo Park, Pittsburgh Bhaskaran Raman, IIT-Mumbai Umar Saif, LUMS Lakshmi Subramanian, NYU Bill Thies, MSR India Kentaro Toyama, MSR India