Supporting Salespersons CRM Efforts through Location Based Mobile Support Systems

The paper aims at assessing how can location based mobile support systems support salespersons´ 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 salespersons´ 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

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 state’s 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 “freedom.” 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 “informal control.” Indeed, constraints over media content do not necessarily have to do with state intervention: they can arise by other means—e.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

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 show’s 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. ‘Abd 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 country’s 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 “Sobky” 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

L’ingénierie dirigée par les modèles (IDM) est un paradigme du génie logiciel qui utilise les modèles comme concepts de premier ordre à partir desquels la validation, le code, les tests et la documentation sont dérivés. Ce paradigme met en jeu divers artefacts tels que les modèles, les méta-modèles ou les programmes de transformation des modèles. 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 thèse, nous proposons d’étudier le refactoring dans l’IDM 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 modèles comme un véhicule pour le refactoring. Nous procédons d’abord par une phase de détection des patrons de conception avec différentes 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 complètes de ces patrons de conceptions. Dans le cas d’absence de connaissance a priori, comme les patrons de conception, nous proposons une approche basée sur la programmation génétique, pour apprendre des règles de transformations, capables de détecter des opportunités de refactoring et de les corriger. Comme alternative à la connaissance disponible a priori, l’approche utilise des exemples de paires d’artefacts d’avant et d’après le refactoring, pour ainsi apprendre les règles de refactoring. Nous illustrons cette approche sur le refactoring de modèles.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

Flexible and Emergent Workflows using Adaptive Agents

International audienceMost of existing workflow systems are rigid since they require to completely specify processes before their enactment and they also lack flexibility during their execution. This work proposes to view a workflow as a set of cooperative and adaptive agents interleaving its design and its execution leading to an emergent workflow. We use the theory of Adaptive Multi-Agent Systems (AMAS) to provide agents with adaptive capabilities and the whole multi-agent system with emergent "feature". We provide a meta-model linking workflow and AMAS concepts, and the specification of agent behavior and the resulting collaborations. A simulator has been implemented with the Make Agent Yourself platform