345 research outputs found
Supporting Salespersons CRM Efforts through Location Based Mobile Support Systems
The paper aims at assessing how can location based mobile support systems support salespersonsÂŽ CRM efforts when they are operating within a highly mobile work environment. The paper is structured as follows. In the first section the paper conceptualises key properties of location based mobile support systems. It then introduces the dual role of salespeople in CRM through a brief literature review. A fourth section suggests potential mobile location services and applications that can support salespersons in performing effectively their everyday CRM tasks and links such applications to the determinant of salespersonsÂŽ performance. The papers concludes with some remarks and suggests some areas of further researc
A group learning management method for intelligent tutoring systems
In this paper we propose a group management specification and execution method that seeks a compromise between simple course design and complex adaptive group interaction. This is achieved through an authoring method that proposes predefined scenarios to the author. These scenarios already include complex learning interaction protocols in which student and group models use and update are automatically included. The method adopts ontologies to represent domain and student models, and object Petri nets to specify the group interaction protocols. During execution, the method is supported by a multi-agent architecture
Supporting Sales Representatives on the Move: A Study of the Information Needs of Pharmaceutical Sales Representatives
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State Control over Film Production in Egypt
Scholars of media in the Middle East have tended to discuss state control over media production both as a formal and as an informal process. Formally, political and legal arrangements repress subversive narratives; informally, media producers are said to operate in a social and institutional environment where non-mainstream narratives are made unthinkable, leading to a form of self-censorship. This language of formality and informality is useful to describe the Egyptian stateâs hold over film production, but it assumes a) that the source of control is some centralized agency and b) that the sphere beyond formal and informal state control is one of âfreedom.â State control, however, is distributed over a number of institutions that cannot all be claimed to act at the behest of a central authority. Moreover, film production is always constrained by the kinds of factors designated by the label of âinformal control.â Indeed, constraints over media content do not necessarily have to do with state intervention: they can arise by other meansâe.g., when citizens interfere with film sets.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Doctoral Award
School of Anthropology and Museum Ethnography (SAME) Grant, University of Oxfor
Review: Natalie Underberg and Elayne Zorn, Digital ethnography: anthropology, narrative, and new media
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The Sobky Recipe and the Struggle over "the Popular" in Egypt
In Ramadan 2013, the young anchor and comedian Akram Hosny hosted a satirical television show called Wasim Hudhud on the Egyptian satellite channel Dream 2. The thirty-episode series had an original premise: in 2053, a sixty-two-year-old historian named Wasim Hudhud narrates a program that describes the state of Egypt in 2013 to the young generation. The episodes covered a wide range of themes, including education, religion, sports, domestic politics, and international relations. Part of the showâs comedic effect came from imagining what would have happened if the Muslim Brotherhood had remained in power until 2053. The show was filmed prior to the 4 July 2013 military coup, in which the minister of defense, Gen. âAbd al-Fattah al-Sisi, deposed the Brotherhood-affiliated president Muhammad Mursi after a wave of protests. There was no end in sight to the Mursi presidency at the time of filming, and the show imagines that the countryâs plight would worsen dramatically over time. Exemplifying this satirical decline, the twenty-fifth episode began with a monologue explaining that the entertainment venue known as a âSobkyâ was once called a movie theater, suggesting that all theaters were, unfortunately, showcasing Sobky movies by 2053
A Framework for an adaptive grid scheduling: an organizational perspective
Grid systems are complex computational organizations made of several interacting components evolving in an unpredictable and dynamic environment. In such context, scheduling is a key component and should be adaptive to face the numerous disturbances of the grid while guaranteeing its robustness and efficiency. In this context, much work remains at low-level focusing on the scheduling component taken individually. However, thinking the scheduling adaptiveness at a macro level with an organizational view, through its interactions with the other components, is also important. Following this view, in this paper we model a grid system as an agent-based organization and scheduling as a cooperative activity. Indeed, agent technology provides high level organizational concepts (groups, roles, commitments, interaction protocols) to structure, coordinate and ease the adaptation of distributed systems efficiently. More precisely, we make the following contributions. We provide a grid conceptual model that identifies the concepts and entities involved in the cooperative scheduling activity. This model is then used to define a typology of adaptation including perturbing events and actions to undertake in order to adapt. Then, we provide an organizational model, based on the Agent Group Role (AGR) meta-model of Freber, to support an adaptive scheduling at the organizational level. Finally, a simulator and an experimental evaluation have been realized to demonstrate the feasibility of our approach
Pattern-based refactoring in model-driven engineering
LâingĂ©nierie dirigĂ©e par les modĂšles (IDM) est un paradigme du gĂ©nie logiciel qui utilise les
modĂšles comme concepts de premier ordre Ă partir desquels la validation, le code, les tests
et la documentation sont dérivés. Ce paradigme met en jeu divers artefacts tels que les
modÚles, les méta-modÚles ou les programmes de transformation des modÚles. Dans un
contexte industriel, ces artefacts sont de plus en plus complexes. En particulier, leur
maintenance demande beaucoup de temps et de ressources. Afin de réduire la complexité
des artefacts et le coût de leur maintenance, de nombreux chercheurs se sont intéressés au
refactoring de ces artefacts pour améliorer leur qualité.
Dans cette thĂšse, nous proposons dâĂ©tudier le refactoring dans lâIDM dans sa
globalité, par son application à ces différents artefacts. Dans un premier temps, nous
utilisons des patrons de conception spécifiques, comme une connaissance a priori, appliqués
aux transformations de modÚles comme un véhicule pour le refactoring. Nous procédons
dâabord par une phase de dĂ©tection des patrons de conception avec diffĂ©rentes formes et
différents niveaux de complétude. Les occurrences détectées forment ainsi des opportunités
de refactoring qui seront exploitées pour aboutir à des formes plus souhaitables et/ou plus
complĂštes de ces patrons de conceptions.
Dans le cas dâabsence de connaissance a priori, comme les patrons de conception,
nous proposons une approche basée sur la programmation génétique, pour apprendre des
rÚgles de transformations, capables de détecter des opportunités de refactoring et de les
corriger. Comme alternative Ă la connaissance disponible a priori, lâapproche utilise des
exemples de paires dâartefacts dâavant et dâaprĂšs le refactoring, pour ainsi apprendre les
rĂšgles de refactoring. Nous illustrons cette approche sur le refactoring de modĂšles.Model-Driven Engineering (MDE) is a software engineering paradigm that uses models as
first-class concepts from which validation, code, testing, and documentation are derived.
This paradigm involves various artifacts such as models, meta-models, or model
transformation programs. In an industrial context, these artifacts are increasingly complex.
In particular, their maintenance is time and resources consuming. In order to reduce the
complexity of artifacts and the cost of their maintenance, many researchers have been
interested in refactoring these artifacts to improve their quality.
In this thesis, we propose to study refactoring in MDE holistically, by its application
to these different artifacts. First, we use specific design patterns, as an example of prior
knowledge, applied to model transformations to enable refactoring. We first proceed with a
detecting phase of design patterns, with different forms and levels of completeness. The
detected occurrences thus form refactoring opportunities that will be exploited to implement
more desirable and/or more complete forms of these design patterns.
In the absence of prior knowledge, such as design patterns, we propose an approach
based on genetic programming, to learn transformation rules, capable of detecting
refactoring opportunities and correcting them. As an alternative to prior knowledge, our
approach uses examples of pairs of artifacts before and after refactoring, in order to learn
refactoring rules. We illustrate this approach on model refactoring
Introduction to Collaborative Technology for Coordinating Crisis Management (CT2CM) track
International audienceThis is the foreword introduction to the special Wetice Track about Coordination in Crisis Management and its support technology
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