Atzmueller, M., Benz, D., Doerfel, S., Hotho, A., Jaschke, R., Macek, B. E., Mitzlaff, F., Scholz, C., Stumme G., (2011). Enhancing Social Interactions At Conferences. Information Technology, 53(3), 101–107.

1. Enhancing Social Interactions at Conferences
(Conferator System)
Atzmueller, M., Benz, D., Doerfel, S., Hotho, A., Jaschke, R., Macek, B. E., Mitzlaff, F., Scholz, C., Stumme G.,
(2011). Enhancing Social Interactions At Conferences. Information Technology, 53(3), 101–107.
Fredrick Awuor

2. Presentation Outline
i. Introduction to Conferator System
ii. Components of Conferator
iii. Conferator: System Architecture
iv. Conferator: Localization Component
v. Conferator: Privacy
vi. Deployment and Analysis
vii. Extension
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3. Conferator: Conference Manager
– Personalize conference schedule
– Shows you a history of your social contacts at the
conference
– Provides additional info about participants, eg
their homepage, Facebook and Twitter accounts,
contact details (Skype, Line etc.).
– After conference: enable you to recall social
contacts you had during the conference.
– Conferator is connected to BibSonomy: integrates
(public) profile info about participants to
characterize their research interests (recommend
contacts)
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Bibsonomy – social bookmark and publication management system, store reference to a webpage or publication

4. Components of Conferator (1)
Components: PeerRadar Application and TalkRadar Application
1. PeerRadar Application
– Support of social person-to-person interactions during a conference
– Provides information about the social contact; by providing context sensitive
information (eg location of the other conference participants, contact history)
– Participants browse and interact with their social neighborhood or extend it by
connecting to new peers.
Based on active RFID technology developed by SocioPatterns project
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5. Components of Conferator (3)
i. Preparation: who else is attending? Browser user list (has user profile - to search
acquaintances, co-workers or friends).
ii. Participation: update list of participants recently met. Recall names of an
interesting conversational partner.
iii. Post-Conference: Recall people met and conversations made with them (contact
history views, each encounter is linked to user profile)
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6. Components of Conferator (4)
2. Talk Radar Application
– Helps to manage conference information eg conference schedule,
talk details etc. Includes notifications eg upcoming events
– Focuses on talks (sessions and track) at a conference
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7. Components of Conferator (5)
How do we create personal conference
schedule?
– Browse and select talks potentially
interesting
– Indentify and resolve conflicting talks
(How?)
– Based on personal interest (topics, authors,
closure to the venue etc)
– Decision of other participants (to meet
colleagues)
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How TalkRadar assist create personal
conference schedule?
– Browsable list of all talks (with extra details eg
author, location, abstract and time)
– Pick (or drop) a talk that interest you
– Conflicts: timeline view (plot of talk with their
duration – visualize parallel and overlapping
talks
– Filters manage display: track, time,
personalization, tag and keyword search

8. Components of Conferator (6)
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9. Components of Conferator (7)
TalkRadar: Participation and Post Conference
– Upcoming? – displays ongoing and upcoming talks. (Talks just
begun are highlighted)
– Picked Talks: Reminder of which talk to attend next
– Talk detail page displays full abstracts, presenter and participants
currently attending
– Make a private comment about the talk
– Link to the paper’s full text in the proceedings
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10. Components of Conferator (2)
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11. Conferator: System Architecture
– Use RFID technology to determine locations and contacts of tags
– RFID tags are worn by conference participants
– RFID tags communicate with each other and with readers attached to walls
– Tags detect proximity to other tags
– Readers determine location
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12. Conferator: Localization Component
– Participants see their own location and location of others
– Identify “hot spots”: Conference rooms where large number of people have
gathered, interesting talk?
– Readers installed, and each participants is equipped with RFID tag
– Localization algorithm:
i. Tag sends 1 package in 4 different signal strengths (every 2 seconds)
ii. Reader receives and sends the packages to server (stored & analysed)
iii. Location of p: calculate number of packages received by reader from p at t from each
room and each signal strength.
iv. Locate p to room where readers received most packages with the weakest signal
strength
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13. Conferator: Privacy
i. Registered system users access information
ii. Visibility of certain user information is customizable
iii. Different privacy levels (private, trusted, public)
iv. Trust relation is directed
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14. Deployment and Analysis
– LWA Workshop 4-6 Oct 2010
– 77 tags users and 40 tags installed on static objects (eg posters)
– Remove edges from G with duration smaller than given threshold tf.
– 1 large cc in G
– Threshold of 5 or 10 min has no bad effect : |v| and |E| decrease as expected
– Density and transitivity of G measures strength of connection btw 2 groups: People
have great interest beyond there own tracks and main topics.
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ps – poster session
cb – coffee break

15. Extension
Issues:
– System Evaluation
– Localization Algorithm
– Naïve Privacy Procedure
– Collision and Interference (Readers and Tags)
Application:
– Watching live matches and performances
– …
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