[Air-l] (Virtual) Community Informatics: Workshop & Patterns at DIAC-02

Michael Bieber bieber at homer.njit.edu
Thu Mar 28 10:40:56 PST 2002


Geo-Physical + Virtual Communities = (Virtual) Community Informatics

Call for Participation:  Workshop on (Virtual) Community Informatics
DIAC 2002 Seattle May 16-19, 2002
http://ccsweb.njit.edu/~bieber/vci-diac2002.html

"(Virtual) Community Informatics" lies at two cross-roads: bringing
together people concerned with Geo-Physical and Virtual or On-Line
Communities, and bringing together the researchers and practitioners
(developers, leaders and participants) in these two domains.
Community Informatics is the study of information technology to
support communities and their processes. Virtual Community
Informatics promotes the cross-fertilization found at this
cross-roads, bringing together researchers and practitioners from
such varied disciplines as Sociology, Social Services, Planning,
Computer Sciences, Information and Library Sciences, (Management)
Information Systems, among others.

(Virtual) Community Informatics is a new concept. We are conducting a
1/2 day workshop as part of the DIAC 2002 program. The workshop has
the following goals:

- developing a fuller understanding of (virtual) community informatics
- developing approaches for bringing together the fields of Virtual
    Communities and Community Informatics
- developing approaches for bringing together researchers and
    practitioners in these domains
- determining a research agenda for (virtual) community informatics as
    field of study and practice
- identifying and synthesizing the "patterns" that may be common to virtual
and geo-physical community informatics as for example in such areas as
training, boundary identification and maintenance, decision making, problem
solving

The workshop will include short presentations by invited speakers, a
panel discussion with a lot of audience participation, and a lot of
time for brainstorming and collectively developing the goals above.

Position statements are strongly encouraged but not mandatory. They
will be distributed at the workshop. Please email a position
statement to both Michael Bieber (bieber at homer.njit.edu) and Michael
Gurstein (gurstein at adm.njit.edu) by Tuesday April 30, 2002. We will
email people who have expressed an interest more information soon.


Stay Informed on (Virtual) Community Informatics

If you would be interested in further developments concerning (Virtual)
Community Informatics, please email Michael Bieber
(bieber at homer.njit.edu) or Michael Gurstein (gurstein at adm.njit.edu).


About DIAC 2002 & Patterns

CPSR's 8th biannual "Directions and Implications of Advanced
Computing" (DIAC) symposium:
Shaping the Network Society: Patterns for Participation, Action, and Change
Seattle, May 16-19, 2002
http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/diac02

A variety of events are planned ranging from invited speakers, panel
discussions, and pattern presentations to informal working sessions
-- both planned and spontaneous.  Symposium topics include the
digital divide, human rights and privacy, cyberspace and economic
development, open content research, pattern language development,
community networks, wireless community networking, developing a civil
society charter for the UN Summit on the Network Society, virtual
communities, online activism, cross-border collaborations, and MORE!

Join 500 researchers, practitioners, activists, journalists,
educators, artists, policy-makers and citizens from around the world
to address critical questions and develop action plans.

Based on the insights of architect Christopher Alexander, DIAC-02 is
soliciting "patterns" that people use to create communication and
information technology that affirms human values. We will use these
patterns to craft a "pattern language" - a useful and compelling
"knowledge structure" based on the collective wisdom of our
community. Ideally our pattern language will help articulate -- and
promote interest in -- engaged and effective research and activism.
All patterns entered by May 1st will be reviewed at the symposium for
possible inclusion in the final pattern language.
-- 
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  Michael Bieber, Associate Professor
  - Collaborative Hypermedia Research Lab (Co-Director)
  Email: bieber at homer.njit.edu   URL: http://ccsweb.njit.edu/~bieber
  Phone: (973) 596-2681     FAX:    (973) 596-5777

  Information Systems Department (http://is.njit.edu/)
  College of Computing Sciences,  New Jersey Institute of Technology
  5500 Information Technology Center
  University Heights,  Newark, New Jersey 07102-1982  USA
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