This workshop will explore the use of science fiction as a means to motivate and direct research into new technologies and consumer products. It does this by creating science fiction stories grounded in current science and engineering research that are written for the explicit purpose of acting as prototypes for people to explore a wide variety of futures. These ‘prototypes’ can be created by scientists and engineers to stretch their work or by, for example, writers, school children and members of the public to influence the work of researchers. The outcomes of these interactions are then be fed back, to shape the science research and outputs. In this way science fiction prototypes act as a way of involving the widest section of the population in determining the science research agenda, thereby making science investment, and science output more useful to everyone ranging from companies, through scientists and engineers to the public, consumers and the government that indirectly fund R&D. In this way fictional prototypes provide a powerful interdisciplinary tool to enhance the traditional practices of research, design and market research.
The goals of the workshop are to act as a catalyst of this new approach by acting as a forum where researchers from differing disciplines (notably science fact and science fiction) can come together to explore how to develop this area.

Workshop Structure:
The workshop will comprise a single day event and will include:
1. Presentations (papers) from science and engineering researchers on their own scientific papers/projects depicting how they foresee their research might impact future worlds.
2. Presentations from science fiction writers depicting aspects of their stories that they feel would be feasible and useful for scientists to try to implement.
3. A panel led discussion, with the audience, aimed at a) refining the fictional prototype methodology and b) exploring how this emerging area might be taken forward.
Call for participation

You are cordially invited to participate to the workshop either as a presenter or as someone simply wishing to learn more about this topic and, perhaps, join the discussion as a member of the audience.

Participation is possible either by attending the workshop in person, or by participating via the Internet. For presenters (science researchers or writers) we are looking for short imaginative fictional stories (prototypes) of no more than 10 pages (and presentations of 15 minutes) based on recent scientific publications, which would act as motivation (or discussion) or how science research might be directed. Your submission should include a short discussion (no more than 2 pages) of how the story relates to your published work and vision for advancing scientific research. All fictional stories (prototypes) accepted will be published as part of the IE10 workshop proceedings. IOS Press will publish the proceedings and the format of the papers should follow the guidelines given on: http://www.iospress.nl/authco/instruction_crc.html and be submitted via the conference management system at https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/WCS2010/

Workshop Fees
CS’10 - Attendees not presenting papers (includes meals and proceedings):
• Physically Present – 250 MYR (50 Euros)
• Virtually Present (Internet) - 125 MYR (25 Euros)
• IE’10 Conference and Workshop attendees - Free
CS’10 Attendees presenting papers (includes meals and proceedings)
• Virtual and Real – 700MYR (150 Euros)
• IE’10 presenters (free, if its one of the two paper allowance)

Supplementary Activities
Tee-Shirt Design Competition - By way of some fun, we would like to invite you to submit a simple design for a tee-shirt that has the theme “what happens when science fiction meets science fact”. Designs many be done in whatever tools you like but the final file should be uploaded to the CS’10 workshop submission system (https://cmt.research.microsoft.com/CS2010/) in JPG (preferred) or PDF format. The reults will be announced at CE’10 where finished tee-shirts of the winning design will be distributed to workshop delegates. The competition will be judged by a teamed chaired by the Art & Visual Designer Sandy Winkelman from Portland USA (http://www.winkstink.com).

The Venue
CS’10 will run in conjunction with IE’10 and will be held at the Sunway campus of Monash University in Malaysia. Monash University Sunway Campus is situated on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur, the exciting capital city of Malaysia. Kuala Lumpur is a multi-cultural society comprising a mix of Malay, Indian, Chinese and Europeans which come together to make one of the most vibrant and exciting cities in the world; a fitting place to meet and inspire discussions on the future. More details of IE 2010 are given on: http://www.wikicfp.com/cfp/servlet/event.showcfp?eventid=7472©ownerid=8428

Workshop Organizers:
Brian David Johnson (Consumer Experience Architect, Intel Research Labs, USA)
Prof. Victor Callaghan (University of Essex, UK)
Dr. Simon Egerton (Monash University, Malaysia)