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 2^nd International Conference on Society and Information Technologies (ICSIT 2012) and The 2^nd International Conference on Education, Training and Informatics (ICETI 2012) 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 2012 and ICETI 2012 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.

In the context of this purpose the following events were also jointly organized:

1. The 2nd International Symposium on Integrating Research, Education, and Problem Solving: IREPS 2012,
2. Special Track on Case studies and methodologies: stCSM 2012, and
3. International Symposium on Interdisciplinary Research, Education, and Communication: IDREC 2012.

IREPS 2012 and stCSM 2012 were organized in the context of The 2nd International Conference on Education, Training and Informatics (ICETI 2012), and IDREC 2012 was organized in the context of The 3rd International Multi-Conference on Complexity, Informatics and Cybernetics (IMCIC 2012), which papers are in a different proceedings printed volume.

Cybernetic loops of regulative and positive feedback might generate synergic effects among the three events mentioned above (figure 1). Consequently, the Organizing Committee tried to prevent breakout sessions related to three topics from running simultaneously, affording participants the opportunity to attend or sample all three. Authors of papers accepted for IDREC 2012 were invited to submit proposals for additional inter-disciplinary Sessions (at no additional cost), where research related to inter-disciplinary communications could be presented. Two breakout sessions specifically devoted to inter-disciplinary communications were established for these presentations for Interdisciplinary Communications.

On behalf of the Organizing Committee, I extend our heartfelt thanks to the Program Committee’s members, to the 232 reviewers, from 58 countries, who made the double-blinded reviews, and to the 157 reviewers, from 54 countries, who made the non-blind reviews. (Some reviewers supported both: non-blind and double-blind reviewing for different submissions)

A total of 720 reviews made by 389 reviewers (who made at least one review) contributed to the quality achieved in ICSIT/ICETI 2012. This means an average of 4.21 reviews per submission (171 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/ICETI 2012, about 171 papers/abstracts were submitted. These pre-conference proceedings include about 65 papers, from 25 countries, 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/ICETI 2012 is summarized in the following table, along with the other collocated events:

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 2012	205	461	1028	2.23	5.01	68	33.17%
ICSIT 2012	171	389	720	1.85	4.21	65	38.01%
CICIC 2012	65	193	357	1.84	5.49	20	30.17%
TOTAL	441	1043	2105	2.02	4.77	153	34.69%

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 2012, as well as for being a very caring old friend and intellectual father to many of us. We are profoundly grateful to professor T. Grandon Gill for inspiring, through his book Informing with the Case Method, 2011, Informing Science Press, and his encouragement, advice, and support in the organizational process of the Special Track on Case studies and methodologies: stCSM 2012. We also extend our gratitude to Professor Belkis Sánchez, who brilliantly managed the organizing process.

We also extend our gratefulness to Professors Friedrich Welsch, Harald Wahl, and Christian Kaufmann for co-chairing the Program Committees of ICSIT/ICETI 2012; to Professor Jorge Baralt for his General Co-Chairmanship; to Professors José Ferrer and Belkis Sánchez for co-charing ICETI 2012’s Organization Committee; and to Professor Angel Oropeza and José Vicente Carrasquero for co-charing ICSIT 2012’s Organization Committee. We also wish to thank all the authors for the quality of their papers, and to the 389 reviewers for the great job they did making the 720 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, Bebzabeth García, Marcela Briceño, Freddy Callaos, Abrahan Marin, Sean Barnes, Louis Barnes, José Aponte, Cindy Padilla, and Yulaime Padilla 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 2012 Program Committee Co-Chair

Professors Jorge Baralt and Nagib Callaos
ICSIT/ICETI 2012 General Co-Chairs