WWW 2011 Special Track - Web for Emerging Regions

The "Web for Emerging Regions" track in WWW 2011 seeks papers that describe significant research contributions in the problem space of extending the Web to emerging regions. Information access continues to remain extremely poor in many emerging regions due to a wide range of factors including poor or intermittent network connectivity, cost factors, reliability challenges, lack of appropriate end-devices, lack of locally relevant content, language and literacy problems, user interface problems. Enhancing Web access in emerging regions requires a holistic perspective where the underlying challenges span a broad range of computer science topics including networking, systems, databases, information retrieval, HCI, speech and architecture. We welcome papers that aim to use new information access models to address developmental goals in emerging regions for specific application domains such as agriculture, health, education, environment, gender issues and governance.

Suggested topics include, but are not limited to:

■ New models of content access in emerging regions
■ New connectivity solutions to enhance information access
■ Appropriate low-cost computing devices
■ Delay tolerant or intermittent-aware systems
■ Challenges with mobile web access in emerging regions
■ Web caching architectures for emerging regions
■ Reliability and power challenges
■ HCI challenges (such as semi-literate users and overcoming language barriers)
■ User interfaces
■ Information access in local languages
■ Task-specific information access challenges (such as low-cost ATMs, field-worker PDAs, etc.)
■ Speech interfaces
■ Speech recognition and translation in local languages
■ New models for local content generation
■ New models for content distribution
■ Web traffic characteristics in emerging regions
■ Techniques for offline Web access
■ On-field deployment experiences
■ Application specific challenges for information access (e.g. education, healthcare etc.)

Submissions should describe original, previously unpublished, high-quality work, making significant contributions to the available technologies for emerging regions (including less-developed regions within industrialized nations). Papers will be deemed out of scope if they do not explicitly state their relevance to emerging regions.

For Special Track - Web for Emerging Regions submissions click here »

Inquiries can be sent to emergingregions@www2011india.com

Track Chairs

Balaji Parthasarathy, IIIT- Bangalore
Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, NYU

Program Committee

Gaetano Borriello, University of Washington
Ed Cutrell, Microsoft Research
Prabal Dutta, University of Michigan
Nathan Eagle, Santa Fe Institute
Janardhan Iyengar, Franklin and Marshall College
Ravi Jain, Google
Jonathan Ledlie, Nokia Research
Vanessa-Frias Martinez, Telefonica Research
Margaret Martonosi, Princeton
Amit Nanavati, IBM Research
Joyojeet Pal, NYU Polytechnic
Tapan Parikh, UC Berkeley
Divya Ramachandran, Unaffiliated
Srinivasan Ramani, IIIT Bangalore
Aaditeshwar Seth, IIT Delhi
William Thies, Microsoft Research
Moustafa Youssef, Egypt Japan Univ. of Sci. & Tech.

Important dates:
Abstracts due: Oct 29, 2010
Paper Submissions due: Oct 29, 2010