Alix Ducros is a member of the PLACED team. He is a Ph.D. student in Lyon (France) at LIRIS . His Ph.D. focuses on distributed public ambient displays, how to prototype them and their use in PLACED.

Alix participated to the 9th international UBI Summer School (UBISS) in Oulu, Finland, from June 4th to 9th. UBISS "invites researchers, students, and industry and public sector professionals to gain theoretical insights and personal hands on experience on selected topics under the tutelage of distinguished experts", in the field of ubiquitous computing.

Alix took this opportunity to pursue learning and training that is relevant for his thesis, and eventually get a new look-in of his work on PLACED.

Among other things, he took part in a workshop which theme was "Designing for the margins". The margins  here could either be physical or social. The challenge of Alix' team was to answer the question "How to encourage marginalized people to take part in the community life of the library ?"

They decided to focus on events, which are an opportunity for people to interact. They designed a prototype of a public display system which could inform citizens of the events organized by the library but could also allow to inter-connect library users who wish to exchange skills.

We congratulate the team, who received a "Distinguished Project Award", and are looking forward to hear all about Alix' new inputs for the PLACED project inspired by this week of innovative collaboration.