Keynote Speakers
 

Abstract

This talk will provide a bird’s eye view of Mobile Virtual Communities (MVC). Mobility here refers to the property that members are practicing their community roles while on the move, likely via a mobile, wireless device. We will look at accomplished research in the area of MVC and classify it into seven domains (El Morr & Kawash, 2007): Technology, Workplace, Education, Entertainment, Lifestyle, Health, and Security. Research can be also categorized into three interest-driven areas: Technology-centered, business-centered, and user-centered research. We will briefly try to categorize MVCs based on their degrees of virtualization, mobility, and cooperation.

We have been witnessing a constant proliferation of mobile devices and wireless technologies. This proliferation is also complemented by constant advancements in processing capabilities of these devices and supportive software environments. However, this advancement in technology did not translate into a wide adoption of MVCs by the public. There are many challenges that may be hindering such an adoption. The talk will discuss such challenges and based on which shed some light on future research in MVCs.

Christo El-Morr, and Jalal Kawash (2007): Mobile virtual communities research: a synthesis of current trends and a look at future perspectives. IJWBC 3(4): 386-403
 

Bio

Jalal Kawash received his Ph.D. from the University of Calgary, Canada in 2000, after which he worked for the IT industry. He then joined the American University of Sharjah from 2002 until 2008. Dr. Kawash has also been an adjunct professor with the University of Calgary since 2002. He recently joined DeVry Institute of Technology where is designing and delivering blended-learning courses. Dr. Kawash’s research interests are in distributed systems and algorithms, mobile virtual communities, and blended learning.

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