When Alicia R. Riley of Williamsburg, VA planned an event that caused a non-verbal woman to speak, she realized that events have the power to change lives. The Power of Events is the story of how Alicia Riley started her career in event planning, what she has experienced as a result of this and how she manages her business. She also shares her personal self-care program that sustains her and helps keep her focused.
"Rojek’s argument is a psychological one, although his message is political: global events build on people’s needs to feel empowered and jointly engaged in the pursuit of a higher purpose; they allow a break from daily routines, provide an illusion of intimacy and social membership, and create a sense of self-validation and personal gratification. In short, participation in such events makes us feel good. At the same time, the real effect of global events seems to be the maintenance of global inequality and social injustice, as well as huge profits for the organizations involved in planning, commercializing and securing these happenings. In sketching out this palliative function of global events from the perspective of people’s needs on the one hand, and unveiling their puppet masters backstage on the other, Rojek’s book presents a compelling account of the role of organized events in modern society." - Organization Studies Events dominate our screens, our lives, and increasingly global geopolitics. Analysis of events and their management has remained rooted in leisure and management studies - until now. This break-through book provides an introduction to event management, while also situating events in questions of power and social control. Rojek powerfully argues that events are essential elements in corporate-state partnerships of ′invisible government′ that have revived the romance of charity as to form illusory communities, while cloaking power imbalances and social inequalities. Events are moving politics from the old idea of ′the personal is political′ to the new, more seductive notion that ′representation is resistance′. Wielding rich case studies from the World Cup and the Olympics to Live Aid, Burning Man and Mardi Gras, Rojek presents a dazzlingly original account of communication power, social ordering and control. It is essential reading in media & communication studies and across the social sciences.
Complex Event Processing (CEP) is a defined set of tools and techniques for analyzing and controlling the complex series of interrelated events that drive modern distributed information systems. This emerging technology helps IS and IT professionals understand what is happening within the system, quickly identify and solve problems, and more effectively utilize events for enhanced operation, performance, and security. CEP can be applied to a broad spectrum of information system challenges, including business process automation, schedule and control processes, network monitoring and performance prediction, and intrusion detection. "The Power of Events" introduces CEP and shows specifically how this innovative technology can be utilized to enhance the quality of large-scale, distributed enterprise systems. The book describes the challenges faced by today's information systems, explains fundamental CEP concepts, and highlights CEP's role within a complex and evolving contemporary context. After thoroughly introducing the concept, the book moves on to a more detailed, technical explanation of CEP, featuring the Rapide(TM) event pattern language, reactive event pattern rules, event pattern constraints, and event processing agents. It offers practical advice on building CEP-based solutions that solve real world IS/IT problems. Readers will learn about such essential topics as: Managing the open electronic enterprise in the "global event cloud"Process architectures and on-the-fly process evolutionEvents, timing, causality, and aggregationEvent patterns and event abstraction hierarchiesCausal event tracking and information gapsMultiple views and hierarchical viewingDynamic process architecturesThe Rapide event pattern languageEvent pattern rules, constraints, and agentsEvent processing networks (EPNs)Causal models and event pattern mapsImplementing event abstraction hierarchies Several comprehensive case studies illustrate the benefits of CEP, as well as key strategies for applying the technology. Examples include the real-time monitoring of events flowing between the business processes of collaborating enterprises, and a hierarchically organized set of event-driven views of a financial trading system. One of the case studies shows how to apply CEP to network viewing and intrusion detection. The book concludes with a look at building an infrastructure for CEP, showing how the technology can provide a significant competitive advantage amidst the myriad of event-driven, Internet-based applications now coming onto the market. 0201727897B05172002
Iconic Events: Media, Power, and Politics in Retelling History examines the processes of collective memory surrounding traumatic events that have been deemed iconic in American culture. Leavy investigates the social and market forces that have shaped the meanings around and enduring significance of events that have captured the public's imagination, including Titanic, Pearl Harbor, Columbine, and September 11th. Iconic Events focuses on three interpretive phases that serve to mold public perception of these events: journalistic representations, political appropriations, and popular adaptations. With a vital, engaging approach, Leavy explores the processes by which traumatic events are made mythic in the public eye. Iconic Events is essential for collective memory scholars and undergraduate courses in communications, American studies, history, and sociology, as well as the general reader.
This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the International RuleML Symposium on Rule Interchange and Applications, RuleML 2008, held in Orlando, FL, USA, in October 2008 - collocated with the 11th International Business Rules Forum. The 10 revised full papers and 10 revised short papers presented together with 2 demo papers and the abstracts of 3 keynote lectures were carefully reviewed and selected from 35 submissions. The papers are organized in topical sections on rule engineering, rule-based methodologies and applications in policies, electronic contracts and security, rule representation languages and reasoning engines, rule-based methodologies and applications in distributed and heterogeneous environments, natural-language and graphical rule representation and processing, as well as exemplary contributions to the RuleML-2008 challenge.
“Worth a read for anyone who cares about making change happen.”—Barack Obama A powerful new blueprint for how governments and nonprofits can harness the power of digital technology to help solve the most serious problems of the twenty-first century As the speed and complexity of the world increases, governments and nonprofit organizations need new ways to effectively tackle the critical challenges of our time—from pandemics and global warming to social media warfare. In Power to the Public, Tara Dawson McGuinness and Hana Schank describe a revolutionary new approach—public interest technology—that has the potential to transform the way governments and nonprofits around the world solve problems. Through inspiring stories about successful projects ranging from a texting service for teenagers in crisis to a streamlined foster care system, the authors show how public interest technology can make the delivery of services to the public more effective and efficient. At its heart, public interest technology means putting users at the center of the policymaking process, using data and metrics in a smart way, and running small experiments and pilot programs before scaling up. And while this approach may well involve the innovative use of digital technology, technology alone is no panacea—and some of the best solutions may even be decidedly low-tech. Clear-eyed yet profoundly optimistic, Power to the Public presents a powerful blueprint for how government and nonprofits can help solve society’s most serious problems.
"Fascinating and exhilarating—Sean B. Carroll at his very best."—Bill Bryson, author of The Body: A Guide for Occupants From acclaimed writer and biologist Sean B. Carroll, a rollicking, awe-inspiring story of the surprising power of chance in our lives and the world Why is the world the way it is? How did we get here? Does everything happen for a reason or are some things left to chance? Philosophers and theologians have pondered these questions for millennia, but startling scientific discoveries over the past half century are revealing that we live in a world driven by chance. A Series of Fortunate Events tells the story of the awesome power of chance and how it is the surprising source of all the beauty and diversity in the living world. Like every other species, we humans are here by accident. But it is shocking just how many things—any of which might never have occurred—had to happen in certain ways for any of us to exist. From an extremely improbable asteroid impact, to the wild gyrations of the Ice Age, to invisible accidents in our parents' gonads, we are all here through an astonishing series of fortunate events. And chance continues to reign every day over the razor-thin line between our life and death. This is a relatively small book about a really big idea. It is also a spirited tale. Drawing inspiration from Monty Python, Kurt Vonnegut, and other great thinkers, and crafted by one of today's most accomplished science storytellers, A Series of Fortunate Events is an irresistibly entertaining and thought-provoking account of one of the most important but least appreciated facts of life.
Although the event management field has grown considerably over the last decade, critical, social-scientific studies of the international events industry are rare. This book intends to help fill this void. It focuses on power, social and political relations, conflicts and controversies in the context of international events, popular festivals and famous spectacles. It draws on recent primary research and offers a diverse range of new and intriguing case studies, for example the Arirang Festival in North Korea, the Gay Games, the Gymnaestrada, horse-racing events, the London 2012 Olympics, regional and rural festivals, the World Baseball Classic, World Fairs/Expos and U2 concerts. The main aim of this volume is to bring the critical, social-scientific analysis of events, festivals and spectacles more into the core of the teaching of events management degree programmes. The book draws extensively upon the disciplines of politics, sociology, cultural studies and history. In the process, it addresses key themes such as: • political economy • politics of popular culture • the global and the local • regionalism and globalization • nations and nationalism • international relations and foreign policy. This groundbreaking collection of essays is unique and innovative. It will be an essential source for students, researchers and academics with a keen interest in critical, social-scientific analyses of events.
