iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 06/01/2026

Working on AI, information access, and language technologies in low resource environments? Consider submitting to @acm.org @acmsigir.bsky.social 2026 Low Resource Environments Track: sigir2026.org/en-AU/pages/... #SIGIR2026 #Naarm #Melbourne Catherine Chavula | Monica Landoni | @damianospina.com

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 15/07/2025

Lucky to witness #IRRJ editor-in-chief @djoerd.idf.social.ap.brid.gy signing a copy of the first edition of @irrj.sigmoid.social.ap.brid.gy for Ian Soboroff, author of the paper “Don’t Use LLMs to Make Relevance Judgments” in the volume. #SIGIR2025 irrj.org/article/view...

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 15/07/2025

Join us at the #SIGIR2025 poster session today and check out Jiaman He’s poster #10 on “Characterising Topic Familiarity and Query Specificity Using Eye-Tracking Data” @rmitcomputing.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au @jtrippas.bsky.social @danachatter.bsky.social @gtresearchnews.bsky.social

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 29/06/2025

I’ve just started my 3-year appointment as a Distinguished Speaker of the Association for Computing Machinery (#ACM), the world's largest educational and scientific computing society. speakers.acm.org/speakers/spi... @rmitcomputing.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 02/05/2025

Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGIR Conference on Human Information Interaction and Retrieval #CHIIR2025 are now available at the ACM DL: dl.acm.org/doi/proceedi...

https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/3698204

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 30/04/2025

Can #LLMs perform basic numeracy tasks? How do we find out? If you're attending #NAACL2025 drop by to Session B (11:00 - 12:30) to check out our poster and say hi to Rahmad Mahendra: aclanthology.org/2025.finding... w/ L. Cavedon & @karinv.bsky.social @rmitcomputing.bsky.social

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 26/03/2025

Excellent presentation by @admscentre.org.au @rmitcomputing.bsky.social master’s student Kun Ran m at #chiir2025 @marwahalaofi.com @iroldie.bsky.social www.damianospina.com/publication/...

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 26/02/2025

Bonus of attending our @rmitcomputing.bsky.social CHAI Human Information REtrieval weekly research catch-ups in person 😝 Thank you @marwahalaofi.com, Nuha, Kaixin and Huiweng for the Saudi and Chinese treats! 🍫🍬

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 04/02/2025

pre-print will be available soon :)

A schematic representation of the relation between the four ethical models, the degree of
intervention – both inferential (related to guessing relevance) and ethical (related to what is considered
good for the user and/or society) – that models take into account, and examples of instances of IR
techniques throughout that spectrum.

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 04/02/2025

In this multidisciplinary collaboration between CAIDE UoM and @admscentre.org.au, we examine the ethical question: ‘What is a good search engine?

Abstract
This paper examines the ethical question, ‘What is a good search engine?’ Since search engines are gatekeepers of global online information, it is vital they do their job ethically well. While the Internet is now several decades old, the topic remains under-explored from interdisciplinary perspectives. This paper presents a novel role-based approach involving four ethical models of types of search engine behavior: Customer Servant, Librarian, Journalist, and Teacher. It explores these ethical models with reference to the research field of information retrieval, and by means of a case study involving the COVID-19 global pandemic. It also reflects on the four ethical models in terms of the history of search engine development, from earlier crude efforts in the 1990s, to the very recent prospect of Large Language Model-based conversational information seeking systems taking on the roles of established web search engines like Google. Finally, the paper outlines considerations that inform present and future regulation and accountability for search engines as they continue to evolve. The paper should interest information retrieval researchers and others interested in the ethics of search engines.

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 11/12/2024

We managed to squeeze in an improvised quick visit to the State Library of Victoria during the lunch break. #sigirap2024 #naarm #melbourne @olegzendel.bsky.social @admscentre.org.au

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 10/12/2024

Excellent keynote by Peter Bailey from Canva about how to build a more cost-effective online & offline experimentation framework #sigirap2024 #melbourne #naarm @admscentre.org.au @rmitcomputing.bsky.social

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 03/12/2024

Prof. Julian Thomas introducing the @internetobservatory.org.au research infrastructure project

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 03/12/2024

Attending the @admscentre.org.au “Are Fair Elections Possible in the Age of AI?” event, with a very interesting program to tackle one of the most important challenges of our current times.

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 02/12/2024

Our AI-powered customised chatbot #Walert ("possum" in Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung languages) won the EIP-RACE Demonstrator Competition last week! The support we received from the Information in Society EIP and the RACE Hub helped us improving the evaluation of RAGs. More info: bit.ly/walert

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 01/12/2024

Last week #RMIT and #ACCIONA have signed a partnership agreement to drive innovation and build skills for a sustainable future. I had the privilege to present to senior executives the outcomes of our collaboration for AI integration and optimisation. @admscentre.org.au @rmitcomputing.bsky.social

Samibt Das (ACCIONA) and Damiano Spina (RMIT) presenting their collaboration for AI Integration and Optimisation to RMIT and ACCIONA AU&NZ senior executives

Slides listing the outcomes of our collaboration

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 25/11/2024

Thanks for the tip, Matt! In mine it appears as "Menu Bar Extension" under the General settings...

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Damiano Spina @damianospina.com · 20/11/2024

Very similar trend down under 🐨

Google Trends for search terms "bluesky", "Twitter", and "mastodon" for the past 30 days in Australia

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