Foreword

Informatics and Cybernetics (communication and control) are having an increasing impact on societies and in the globalization process that is integrating them. Societies are trying to regulate this impact, and adapt it to their respective cultural infra-structures. Societies and cultures are in reciprocal co-adaptations with Information and Communication Technologies. Synergic relationships might emerge in this co-adaptation process by means of positive and negative feedback loops, as well as feedforward ones. This would make the whole larger than the sum of its parts, generating emergent properties in the parts involved as well as in the whole coming forth. The academic, private, and public sectors are integrating their activities; multi-disciplinary groups and inter-disciplinary teams are being formed, and collaborative research and development projects are being organized in order to facilitate and adequately orient the design and implementation of the feedback and the feedforward loops, so the synergic relationships are socially positive and personally human.

One of the main purposes of The 2nd International Conference on Society and Information Technologies (ICSIT 2011) and The 2nd International Conference on Education, Training and Informatics (ICETI 2011) is to bring together academics, professionals, and managers from the private and the public sectors, so they can share ideas, results of research, and innovative services or products, in a multi-disciplinary and multi-sector forum.

Educational technologies, socio-economic organizations, and socio-political processes are essential domains among those involved in the evolving co-adaptation and co-transformation between societies and cultures on the one hand, and between informatics and cybernetics (communication and control) on the other hand.

ICSIT 2011 and ICETI 2011 are related to each other and, as a whole, are producing or might produce synergic relationships with Information and Communication Technologies. This is why the Organizing Committees of both of them have the purpose of combining their efforts in a way that would lead to the organization of an adequate joint event, where academics, researchers, consultants, professionals, innovators, and practitioners from the three areas might relate and interact with each other in the same event. These types of interaction might generate possibilities of cross-fertilization and analogical thinking, as well as possibilities of new working hypothesis, ideas, and reflections on the impact, significance, and usefulness of Informatics and Cybernetics in important dimensions of educational, socio-political, and socio-economical processes, services, and products.

On behalf of the Organizing Committees, I extend our heartfelt thanks to:

1. the 109 members of the Program Committees (75 members of the ICETI 2011’s PC and 34 members of ICSIT 2011’s PC) from 25 countries;
2. the 300 additional reviewers, from 64 countries, for their double-blind peer reviews;
3. the 224 reviewers, from 55 countries, for their efforts in making the non-blind peer reviews. (Some reviewers supported both: non-blind and double-blind reviewing for different submissions)

A total of 1099 reviews made by 524 reviewers (who made at least one review) contributed to the quality achieved in ICSIT 2011 and ICETI 2011. This means an average of 7.58 reviews per submission (145 submissions were received). Each registered author had access, via the conference web site, to the reviews that recommended the acceptance of their respective submissions. Each registered author could get information about: 1) the average of the reviewers evaluations according to 8 criteria, and the average of a global evaluation of his/her submission; and 2) the comments and the constructive feedback made by the reviewers, who recommended the acceptance of his/her submission, so the author would be able to improve the final version of the paper.

In the organizational process of ICSIT 2011 and ICETI 2011, about 145 papers/abstracts were submitted. These conference proceedings include about 70 papers that were accepted for presentation. The submissions were reviewed as carefully as time permitted; it is expected that most of them will appear in a more polished and complete form in scientific journals.

This information about ICSIT 2011 (including ICETI 2011) is summarized in the following table, along with the other collocated conferences:

Conference	# of submissions received	# of reviewers that made at least one review	# of reviews made	Average of reviews per reviewer	Average of reviews per submission	# of papers included in the proceedings	% of submissions included in the proceedings
IMCIC 2011	351	1118	2236	2.00	6.37	145	41.31%
ICSIT 2011	145	524	1099	2.10	7.58	70	48.28%
ICEME 2011	97	329	620	1.88	6.39	40	41.24%
CICIC 2011	109	308	725	2.35	6.65	36	33.03%
TOTAL	702	2279	4680	2.05	6.67	291	41.45%

We extend our gratitude to the co-editors of these proceedings, for the hard work, energy and eagerness they shown preparing their respective sessions. We express our intense gratitude to Professor William Lesso for his wise and opportune tutoring, for his eternal energy, integrity, and continuous support and advice, as the Program Committee Chair of past conferences, organized by the International Institute of Informatics and Systemics, and as Honorary President of ICSIT/ICETI 2011, as well as for being a very caring old friend and intellectual father to many of us. We also extend our gratitude to Professor Belkis Sánchez, who brilliantly managed the organizing process.

We also extend our gratefulness to Professor Friedrich Welsch for chairing the Program Committees of ICSIT/ICETI 2011; to Professor Jorge Baralt for his General Co-Chairmanship; to Professors José Ferrer and Belkis Sánchez for co-charing ICETI 2011’s Organization Committee; and to Professor Angel Oropeza and José Vicente Carrasquero for co-charing ICSIT 2011’s Organization Committee. We also wish to thank all the authors for the quality of their papers, and to the 524 reviewers for the great job they did making the 1099 reviews that supported the acceptance process.

We also extend our gratitude to María Sánchez, Juan Manuel Pineda, Leonisol Callaos, Dalia Sánchez, Keyla Guédez, Nidimar Díaz, Marcela Briceño, Freddy Callaos, Abrahan Marin, Marisela Jimenez, Natacha Rondón, and Sean and Louis Barnes for their knowledgeable effort in supporting the organizational process and for producing the hard copy and CD versions of the proceedings.

 

Professor Federico Welsh
ICSIT/ICETI 2011 Program Committee Co-Chair

Professors Jorge Baralt and Nagib Callaos
ICSIT/ICETI 2011 General Co-Chairs