[Air-l] CFP: CSCW 2004 workshop on Social Networks for design

[Danyel Fisher]

fellow A(o)IR members,

I'm forwarding this announcement to the list because I think that this 
workshop represents an interesting approach to processing computer-based 
data and thinking about the applications of social networks to internet 
research. I'd like to invite you to consider submitting to the workshop, 
and attending CSCW 2004 in Chicago.

CSCW is a research field studying Computer Supported Collaborative Work; 
while it draws largely from computer science, it has many active members 
with backgrounds in design, sociology, anthropology, and psychology. The 
CSCW Conference, held this year in Chicago in November, is one that many 
AIR members might enjoy.

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Social Networks for Design and Analysis:
Using Network Information in CSCW

A CSCW 2004 workshop.

   Workshop Date: Saturday November 6, 2004 – Chicago, IL
   Submission Deadline: Wednesday, September 22
   Notification of Acceptance: Friday, October 1

[ Note that CSCW early registration ends on October 13. ]

Workshop web page: http://www.ischool.washington.edu/mcdonald/cscw04/

Organizers

*   Shelly Farhnam, Microsoft Research
*   Danyel Fisher, Microsoft Research
*   David W. McDonald, The Information School, University of Washington

The CSCW community has a tradition of adopting social and analytical 
theories to understand groups and group processes as well as when 
designing new systems to support and augment cooperative work. Social 
networks have a long tradition in sociology and cultural anthropology, 
but are only beginning to break in       totheCSCWmainstream.Thekeynotion
from network analysis, that the interconnections between people can be 
used to understand and improve their interactions, is one that has 
direct implications for CSCW research. Network models have clear 
implications for research into communication systems, teamwork, and 
knowledge management.

Social networks are being used in several different ways:

*  "Social Network Analysis" – Which is the more traditional, formal, 
techniques of mathematical sociology and anthropology are used to 
analyze a population.

*   "Social networks" – The general connections that people have with 
each other. Examples include explicitly articulated social networks in 
Friendster, Orkut, or LinkedIn, which use the language and concepts of 
social networks.

*   Social network techniques in CSCW design – These techniques can vary 
from contact management, to recommendation techniques, to ways of 
understanding how an organization is adopting and using a new technology.

While we are particularly interested in this third stream of research, 
we are generally interested in understanding the broad range of social 
network research within CSCW. We are interested in exploring tools that 
both use social networks as a source of information, and that support 
end-user interactions with social networks.

This full-day workshop seeks participation from social scientists and 
system designers to address the ways in which social networks can be 
adapted for use in analyzing cooperation and as a framework for 
considering new system designs. The workshop will consider four specific 
topics:

* MEASUREMENT - How are social networks being collected and measured 
(automatically, manually, quantitatively, qualitatively)? What do these 
networks actually represent? How are the networks validated? Are the 
measurements implicit or explicit?

* TOOLS - What is the state-of-the-art for analyzing, visualizing and 
representing social networks? In what context are these tools useful and 
how can the tools be adapted to specific CSCW situations?

* APPLICATIONS - Systems are embedding social networks into the fabric 
of system design. How can system designers distill the complexities of 
networks into user-oriented displays? How are social networks supported 
by the system, software, or architecture?

* EVALUATION - How does the use of a social network change, facilitate, 
or hinder users and their collaborations?


JOINING THE WORKSHOP

Individuals interested in participating in the workshop should submit a 
position paper describing work in one or more of the topic areas above 
and a completed workshop survey. The workshop organizers will review 
position papers. Authors will be notified of acceptance to the workshop 
on October 1st. One goal of the workshop is to nurture interdisciplinary 
applications of social networks that specifically consider a CSCW 
perspective. Attention will be paid to representing a diverse spectrum 
of positions. The workshop will be limited to 15 participants.
All workshop attendees should register for the CSCW conference.

Proposals should consist of

* A four-page position paper describing work in one or more of the 
workshop areas above.
* A completed workshop survey, which is intended to get some ideas of 
the broad range of skills in the community.

The survey can be found on the workshop web page,
http://www.ischool.washington.edu/mcdonald/cscw04/

Please submit your workshop proposal to David McDonald, 
dwmc at u.washington.edu in PDF or Microsoft Word.