[Air-l] Communities and Technologies 2007 Update

[Charles Steinfield]

Dear Colleagues,
Here is the latest news regarding the upcoming Communities and  
Technologies 2007 conference, to be held at Michigan State  
University.  A full call for papers is provided below, and we  
encourage you to share this with interested colleagues and repost  
where appropriate.

In the latest C&T 2007 news, we are pleased to announce several  
invited speakers:

Judith Donath, Director of the Sociable Media Group, MIT Media Lab
Rob Malda and Jeff Bates, creators of Slashdot
Marc Smith, Director of the Community Technologies Group, Microsoft  
Research. Marc will lead a workshop on "illustrating digital traces:  
Visualizations of patterns generated by computer-mediated collective  
action systems."

Deadlines for submitting papers and workshop proposals are coming up  
soon - November 13, 2006 for papers and December 4, 2006 for workshops.

We hope you will find the topics provided below to be of interest,  
and we look forward to welcoming you to Michigan State University for  
C&T 2007.

with best regards,
Charles Steinfield, Brian Pentland, Mark Ackermann, and Noshir  
Contractor

p.s. we apologize for any duplicate emails resulting from our posting  
this to several different listservs.

-----------------------------------------------

3rd International Conference on Communities and Technologies
hosted by
Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan U.S.A.
June 28-30, 2007

Call for Papers

Conference Website:  http://ebusiness.tc.msu.edu/cct2007/

Following the success of two prior conferences, we cordially invite  
submissions to the 3rd International Conference on Communities and  
Technologies (C&T 2007), hosted by Michigan State University.  This  
biennial meeting serves as a forum for stimulating and disseminating  
research on the complex connections between communities - both  
physical and virtual - and information and communication technologies.

C&T 2007 welcomes contributions from researchers in many fields,  
given the multidisciplinary and collaborative nature of inquiries  
into the interaction between community and technology.  Past meetings  
have involved researchers working in such areas as computer supported  
cooperative work, computer supported collaborative learning,  
artificial intelligence, information retrieval, human computer  
interaction, information systems, community informatics, knowledge  
management, and Internet studies; across such fields as anthropology,  
communication, computer science, economics, geography, information  
studies, information systems, management science, political science,  
psychology, sociology, and telecommunication.  The conference program  
includes competitively selected, peer-reviewed papers, as well as  
workshops, tutorials, and a small number of invited speakers.

Important Dates:
November 13, 2006:  Paper submission deadline
December 4, 2006:  Deadline for submission of workshop proposals

Conference Themes:
There are many definitions of community.  We focus on the notion of  
communities as social entities comprised of actors who share  
something in common: this common element may be geography, needs,  
interests, practices, organizations, or other bases for social  
connection.  Communities are considered to be a basic unit of social  
experience. Information and communication technologies (ICTs) can  
interact with communities in many complex ways.  For example, ICTs  
can support community formation and development by facilitating  
communication and coordination among members.  Conversely, the lack  
of attention to the surrounding community context may inhibit the  
design and effective use of ICT innovations.  Hence, new research  
into the creation, use, and evaluation of ICTs aimed at community  
support is appearing at an increasing rate.  New phenomena such as  
blogs, podcasting, smart mobs, and the popularity of social network  
software illustrate some of the new areas for research into the  
powerful and changing connections between community and technology.

Empirical, conceptual, and design contributions are invited,  
involving a range of methodologies and approaches. These might  
include application designs, innovative frameworks, case studies,  
ethnographies, experiments, survey research, network analyses or  
economic studies.

Topics appropriate for submission to this conference are manifold.   
Examples of some of the vibrant areas of communities and technology  
research include, but are not limited to:

* virtual community formation and development
* communities of interest and practice, knowledge sharing and  
organizational learning
* communities and innovation
* community informatics
* technical support for communities
* innovative applications of communityware
* ad hoc communities and ICTs
* innovations in community technology design
* system platforms for e-community research
* design methods for communityware
* ICTs and geographical business communities (e.g. clusters and/or  
regional development)
* ICTs and virtual business communities
* community e-commerce business models
* interactions between online and offline communities
* social capital, communities, and technology
* communities and e-government
* ethnographic and case studies of virtual communities
* trust, privacy and security issues in virtual communities
* communities, technology and social movements
* interaction in large scale online communities
* persistent conversation in technology-facilitated communities
* supporting collaboration in local and distributed communities
* economics of technology-facilitated communities
* inter-organizational communities and technology
* communities, technology, learning and education

Submitting Papers and Workshop Proposals
Completed and original research papers of not more 20 pages must be  
submitted electronically to the conference website, and will undergo  
a peer review process.  More information is available at the  
conference web site.

We also invite the submission of proposals for workshops, which will  
be held on Thursday, June 28, 2007, the first day of the conference.   
Workshops can be either half or full day in length and built around  
specific themes relevant to the conference. Workshop proposals should  
be 4 pages in length, and should define the theme(s) of the workshop,  
the main activities and goals, the background and contact information  
of the organizer(s), the maximum number of participants in the  
workshop, the means of soliciting participants, and the method of  
selecting participants.  Proposals should also include a brief  
summary of no more than 150 words suitable for describing the  
workshop in the conference program.

Proceedings
The Communities and Technologies 2007 Proceedings will be published  
by Springer, and will be available both as a bound volume and online  
for global digital access.

Conference Organizers and Contact Information
The 2007 meeting is being co-organized by Charles Steinfield and  
Brian Pentland of Michigan State University, Mark Ackerman of the  
University of Michigan, and Noshir Contractor of the University of  
Illinois. Questions regarding C&T 2007 should be sent to the  
conference email address, which is cct2007 at msu.edu.