Hello everyone,

Preparations are coming along nicely for the SIGCIS workshop, held all day on the Sunday of the SHOT meeting. SHOT registration is now live, at http://www.historyoftechnology.org/pittsburgh/pittsburgh_registration.html. The deadline for regular registration in September 15.

The SIG pizza lunch meeting, which you should register for with the main SHOT registration at modest additional cost (just $5 for grad students thanks to a subsidy from SIG funds) is NOT THE SAME as the workshop. There will be no charge for workshop registration but we will have a web registration system up soon just for the workshop so we will know how many cups of coffee to order, people’s meal preferences (meals at your own cost), how many for dinner, etc.

When you register, please try to stay for the whole of Sunday, as we will have sessions up to 5:45pm and then a dinner in the evening for those able to stay overnight (or leave really late).

Joe November, the program chair, has been keeping things updated on the draft program at http://www.sigcis.org/files/SIGCIS%202009%20Workshop%20Preliminary%20Schedule%20--%2008-04-2009.pdf.  Joe tells me that we still need chairs and commentator volunteers, as noted below.

We will give preference to people who are not already on the workshop program as speakers. We want to bring as many SIGCIS members onto the workshop program as possible. This includes those who are already taking part as presenters, commentators or chairs in the main SHOT meeting.

If you are interested please send your names and preferences to november@mailbox.sc.edu.

Here’s what we still need for the traditional sessions. Total one chair, three commentators.

A commentator for

Traditional Paper Session 2: The Computings of Management

Lars Heide, Copenhagen Business School, “Punched Cards in German Management of Resources

in the Second World War”

David Anderson, University of Portsmouth, “The Corridors of Power: Patrick Blackett and the

Political Context of Early British Computing”

Jonathan Aylen, Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, University of Manchester,

“’You’ve got to roll with it’: radical adoption of computers and changes to managerial routines

at Llanwern steelworks, South Wales”

Chair: Janet Delve, School of Creative Technologies, University of Portsmouth

A chair and a commentator for

Traditional Paper Session 3: Political Institutions in the Histories of Computings

Andrew Mamo, “Computing Societies: Communications Technologies and Social Science in the

Cambridge Project”

Stephen Patnode, Temple University, “The Impact of Computers on Corporate Paternalism in

the Post-war United States”

David Nofre, Informatics Institute, University of Amsterdam, “The Dutch politics of computing

and the limits of international cooperation, 1945-1965”

A commentator for

Traditional Paper Session 4: Computings as They Rose and Fell

Dave Goodwin, Birkbeck College, University of London, “Digital Equipment Corporation: The

mistakes that led to its downfall”

Larry Owens, University of Massachusetts Amherst, “Walking Around Computerville: The PC

and the Encyclopedia of Computer Science, 1976-1983”

Chair: David Hemmendinger, Computer Science Department, Union College

Best wishes,

Tom Haigh