On Fri, Sep 26, 2008 at 12:45 PM, Shyam K mail@swathanthran.in wrote:
What about mailing the office bearers of these organisations at different places alerting of this chains their new generation is imposed to use?
"..The 3rd IEEE/ACM International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies and Development (ICTD2009) will be held 17-19 April 2009 at Carnegie Mellon's state-of-the-art campus in Doha, Qatar. This conference will act as a focal point for new scholarship in the field of ICT and international development. Confirmed speakers include a Keynote by William H. Gates, Chairman of Microsoft Corporation and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
We invite submissions for ICTD2009, the third of an ongoing series of conferences, which follows successful events at Berkeley in May 2006 ( http://sims.berkeley.edu/ictd2006), and Bangalore in December 2007 ( http://research.microsoft.com/workshops/ictd2007).."
Full story at http://ictd2009.org/cfp.html
That explains the *corporate diffusion* into academics through professional societies like IEEE and ACM - to control and have a larger say over what is *knowledge* and to dictate terms to all prestigious technological institutions across the world. Microsoft wins hands down, especially when scores of conferences hosted by Free Software communities refuse to think beyond, and concentrate only on celebrations over a few products/services.
And all this, just as we are still grappling on how to reduce their presence in standards bodies/organisations.
It should be a matter of great shame to all of us. CK Raju