Bachelor of Computing (Honours) at University of Tasmania 2009

Abbreviated form à BComp (Hons)

Communicative Ecologies of Urban Agriculture: Opportunities for Social Media and Ubiquitous Computing

(PhD, 2010-2013)

Abstract

Urban agriculture brings together city residents with an interest in growing their own food in their homes and garden. Given half of the global population now living in cities, urban agriculture has many benefits to offer beyond fresh local produce on your urban dining table. This study investigates the effect of recent developments in social media and ubiquitous computing on the operation of urban agriculture, and potential scenarios for the future of urban agricultural development.

This study will draw on two urban agriculture projects within the Australian city of Brisbane as case studies in order to discover and map their communicative ecologies, which outline the who, why and how of communication. This will provide baseline data with which to explore opportunities for social media and ubiquitous technology, involving all stakeholders in a participatory process of creating actionable knowledge and insights and in turn design interventions.

Biography

Peter Lyle studied his Bachelor degree in Computing (BComp) at the University of Tasmania, completing in 2007.  Over the following two years he completed his Honours, investigating considerations in the interaction between mobile devices and shared displays.  His research interests, thanks to some sociology electives at undergraduate level, are in the facets of computing where social interaction is involved.

Peter worked in the Tasmanian IT sector from 2003 to 2010, ranging from client and system support roles to software development working on large enterprise projects for public and private enterprise.  His experiences have given him a good understanding of how to deal with clients as people, especially when they struggle to grasp technical processes they are faced with daily.

Peter has attended a number of Apple University Consortium training sessions focusing on Apple Development technologies including attending the World Wide Developer Conference in 2008, shortly after the public release of the iOS development SDK. In 2010 Peter ran a number of training workshops on iOS development at universities around Australia as part of an AUC roadshow on mobile computing as well as a 3-day iOS training course for high-school teachers in Perth.

Supervisors

Assoc Prof Marcus Foth (Principal)

Dr Jaz Choi (Associate)