Engineering Education in Sustainable Development

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I have been to the 5th International Conference on Engineering education in sustainable development (EESD'10 - "Learning for transformation") in Gothenburg (Sept 19-22).

The previous four conferences have all been held in Europe (Netherlands, Spain, France, Austria) and the next conference, two years from now, will be held in Kiev, Ukraine.

Truth be told, I didn't even know this conference existed a month before I went, and the only reason I went was because it was held in Sweden (near, relatively inexpensive) and KTH, as one of organizers, had "free tickets". I would not have guessed beforehand that there were enough people in different technical educations who tried to bring in sustainability thinking into their respective areas and who wrote papers about it. I even learned there was an International Journal of Sustainability in Higher Education. That could be useful. Also this journal, Learning, Media and Technology could be useful as venue for papers in this area.

I had a good time, met some interesting an nice people, went to all activities to learn as much as possible and I might try to write a paper for the next conference if I find a suitable subject to write about. Deadline is sometime in the beginning of 2012. The proceedings (on CD) is a great source to start with. I have pegged down quite a few papers as interesting and hope I will find the time to print out and read them!

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Future of Media 2010 line-up

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This is a list of the 2010 line-up of the no less than 14 great guest lectures in my course DM2571 "Future of Media" (at that time called DM2570 Innehåll och Uttryck i Media"). The course has a new theme every year and the 2010 theme was "The Future of Music / Music of the Future".

The course was given in Swedish for the last time in 2010 and much of the information below has thus not been translated to English. The following year, 2011, the course switched to the autumn term and to the English language and was opened up also for international students. The 2010 course was furthermore given in the spring of 2010, i.e. half a year before this blog was started. This blog post was thus actually written in October 2012 and then backdated to September 2010. 

This blog post thus constitutes an attempt to briefly summarize the course 2 1/2 years after is was given. Since I was just starting to experiment with course blogs at the time, the text below is rather spotty in places - a few lecture titles have for example been "misplaced" and I have "creatively recreated" them etc.

- Peter Jakobsson, Doktorand Södertörns Högskola, Civilingenjör från KTH Medieteknik, "Industriell ekonomi och nätverksekonomi"

- Roger Wallis, Ph.D., Professor, KTH Medieteknik, "Disruptive technologies: Digital technology and the Music Industry"

- Rasmus Fleischer, Doktorand Södertörns Högskola, "Hur musik äger rum"

- Martin Thörnkvist, Musikförlagschef, medgrundare till The Swedish Model, "Ny verklighet kräver nya idéer"

- Alex Jonsson, Ph.D., musiker, forskare vid KTH Medieteknik och mobilentreprenör, "Wagging the long tail - grassroot thoughts on the industry"

- Margita Ljusberg, STIM, "Kollektiv förvaltning av musikrättigheter i nya media"

- Hasse Lindgren, Sakkunnig handläggare inom musikområdet, Statens kulturråd, "Framtidens fonogram ur en statlig tjänstemans perspektiv"

- Ulrik Volgsten, Musikforskare vid Musikvetarlinjen, Stockkholms Universitet, "Äganderättsmetaforen i svenskt och internationellt upphovsrättstänkande - en global kulturkatastrof?"

- Patrik Hiselius, Senor Advisor, Public Affaris, TeliaSonera Group Communications, "Upphovsrätt är rätt - Helhetsbild, utgångspunkter och aktuella frågor"

- Daniel Johansson, VD Trendmaze och industridoktorand i datavetenskap, KTH, "Tillgänglighetsparadigmet och musikindustrins förändringar"

- Ben Malén, VD för förlagen Chrysalis Scandinavia och Global Chrysalis Musikverlag, "Att backa in i framtiden"

- Ola Nyström, Distriktsledare för Piratpartiets Stockholmsdistrikt och riksdagskandidat, "Något om pirater (och musik)"

- Nicklas Lundblad, Director of Public Policy, Google, "Out of sync: the legal system vs music practices"

- Mark Dennis, Head of Digital, Sony Music Sweden, "The development of digital music distribution in Sweden - What comes next?"

Eight different project groups presented their visions of the future in the form of a larger (200+ persons) public presentation at the end of May 2010:

- Syntetiska artister

- Sjätte sinnet

- Musik & identitet

- Livebox

- Brainchip

- Music on d-Go

- Navigering & Filtrering

- Den anarkistiska marknaden

Some of the group names are rather cryptic - a short description of each group (in Swedish, and written at the start rather than the end of each respective project) can be found here (read the black headers, ignore the turquoise headers signifying not-chosen project topics).

Here is the subsequent, Future of Media 2011 line-up - The Future of Radio / Radio of the Future.

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Blog purpose and history

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Welcome to my (academic) homepage and blog.

I will post (low-volume, aiming for a minimum of one message and a maximum of two messages per week) about my academically-related activities - for the benefit of those who wish to keep up with what I do and also for me to remember what I did last week!

I will also use the blog not just to record what I did, but also what I thought. This might come in handy in future activities of various kinds (papers, applications).

The blog was started during the early autumn of 2010 but it was only later, in October, that I did an effort to actually fill it with content (in the academic texts section). I aim to make many of the texts listed there available online.

Comment: One year later I have found many uses of the blog that I had not originally thought of.

- Sometimes it's great to be able to point others to specific blog posts (for example a student writing a thesis).

- All my notes from great lectures I've heard are essentially gone, misplaces or unaccessible, but I love using the blog for a few select observations and thoughts from a talk that made an impression.

- My reflections about courses are a great resource to come back to a year later, when that course is given again.

- It's great to save a record of what books I've read and when I read them.

And so on. I wish more people (including colleagues) would entertain blogs with the same level of activity - I would subscribe to them all!

In fact, I wrote a blog post (Nov 2011) about all the different uses (functions) I have for the blog. I came up with more than a dozen distinct uses!

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