Since the inception of the Community Informatics Conferences in Prato in 2003, the Centre for Community Networking Research of the Caulfield School of Information Technology at Monash University has explored issues such as theory, action, and community memory. Online communications have the potential to build strong and purposeful on-line and off-line communities, with shared values, goals, and interests. There is constant interplay between all of these aspects around attempts to promote social inclusion and social development through effective use of ICTs.

Possible topics to be addressed at Prato 2008 include, but are not limited to:

Community Informatics

• Design and decision-making processes for projects for social inclusion.
• ICTs for inclusion on a global or local scale: can the market provide solutions?
• How does social inclusion fare with a social justice approach to ICTs?
• Inclusion in different of societies and the role of ICTs.
. Public spaces for ICTs-libraries, internet cafes, and other opportunities
. Mobile technologies and in/exclusion
. The interface between e-government and community informatics
• The evaluation of community-informatics projects for social inclusion.
• Values and reality-checks: the interplay between project ideals and implementation reality.
• The incorporation of other values into the planning and implementation of inclusive activity engaged with ICTs, including non-western/gendered/disability/ perspectives.
• Is it really all hype? Can social inclusion be achieved via ICT projects?
• Social cohesion and social censorship: is the desire for social harmony a danger to a free internet?
• Is Web 2.0 inclusive, or is it creating a new gap?
• What are examples of technological opportunity that have led to real social change?
• Internet governance, social inclusion and deliberate exclusion: free speech, pornography, terrorism and moral frameworks.
• The moral dimensions of inclusion: what of the undeserving poor and marginal?
• Self-exclusion.
• Sustainability and ICT inclusion.

Development Informatics

• Web technologies - eg. synchronisation with off-line systems
• Human Factors (Human Computer Interaction) - e.g. interfaces for limited or non-literate users
• Online communities
• e-Governance
• e-Democracy
• Education
• Agriculture
• Healthcare
• Telecentres and Multi-Purpose Community Centres
• Rural connectivity
• Multi-language systems
• Systems implementation and sustainability in developing countries
. Infrastructure issues and support networks
. Cross-cultural issues in system design
. How NGOs understand ICTs

And other topics within community informatics, such as

• Community enterprise and community business.
• Theoretical contributions on all aspects of community informatics, including information theory or the relationship between the body, technology, and community.