User:Mark Elliott

My PhD
I am currently completing a PhD at the Centre for Ideas, Victorian College of the Arts, Melbourne, Australia, researching and developing large-scale collaborative systems and methods. My primary interest is in the application of such research towards the continued positive development of humanity. By 'positive development' I mean a shared developing awareness of our universe which promotes an integrative, sustainable existence and meets the current challenges of the time.

Meta Collab
Meta Collab is a free collaborative encyclopaedia on collaboration which was initially launched as part of my phd on on the Centre for Ideas server and was soon moved to a WikiCity.

Australian Bill of Rights Initiative
One of my phd projects is running an online wiki project to collaboratively draft and Australian bill of rights (we're the only common law country that doesn't have one - and we need one!!) called the Australian Bill of Rights Initiative. The project is due to launch publicly in Nov '05 - I'll post in news when it does.

Teaching
Other than my research & collab projects, I teach composition, computing for musicians, guitar and contextual studies for artists at Melbourne University, Victorian College of the Arts and Sophia Mundi Inner City Steiner School.

Background
I have a background in music composition - (ugrad & masters) with interests in improv, computer music & live processing - though I compose for traditional instruments as well - got concerto performance (solo Chinese mouth organ & orch) and an Australian tour coming up next year (very exciting).