Informatics conference tackles globalization

More than 70 faculty, students and educators in the field of informatics attended the opening seminar Friday in Psychology 100, which kicked off the "Informatics Goes Global: Methods at a Crossing" conference. The conference took place both Friday and Saturday. \nDavid Hakken, one of the organizers of the event, planned the conference to address the issue of thinking about technical activity in a worldwide context.\nHakken, who is a professor of informatics at IU, said the school aims to employ the expanding uses of information technology to be among the top in international research.\n"This is what we hope is the first of a number of conferences on the theme of information technology and globalization," Hakken said.\nArturo Escobar, distinguished professor of anthropology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, was the keynote speaker at the opening seminar. \nEscobar's speech focused on globalizing informatics. He discussed different ways of thinking about globalization as a whole and said that to achieve a new approach to this topic, both professionals and educators in informatics should reconsider the "framework for globalization" that is applied and the criteria used to assess it. \nMichael McRobbie, interim IU provost and professor of informatics, also spoke at the event. McRobbie discussed the difficulties of globalization. \nHe said he had a global epiphany about two years ago when he saw a map of the world in the office of a company. The map pinpointed the hometown of every computer science \nengineer that worked on one of the company's projects. He saw that about 80 percent of the pins were in India and Pakistan. The pins made him realize the significance of global technology but also left him unsatisfied in seeing that "resources were being placed only in this part of the world." \n"I'm unhappy and uncomfortable about the situation, seeing the University engage in international globalization with certain parts of the world," McRobbie said. \nMcRobbie also said globalization provides great possibilities for IU, for IU can have the means to help shape the future of information technology.\n"I can't think of a more international community than that of informatics technology research," he said. \nMcRobbie added that the University has the benefit of a high-level cyberinfrastructure to aid in moving forward in technology research in order to compete in the growing global \nmarketplace.