[Air-l] CFP: OZCHI 2006 Virtual Communities Workshop

[Alastair Weakley]

http://www.virtual-communities.net.au/ozchi06/

Virtual Communities OzCHI 2006 Workshop
Approaches to the Design of Social Software for Dis-Organisations : A  
One-Day Workshop in Association with OZCHI 2006 http://www.ozchi.org/

A fundamental challenge exists for distributed organisations seeking  
to foster collaboration: understanding and capitalising on the inter- 
relationships between collaborative tools and techniques to support  
generation of ideas and innovation. Commercial imperatives underpin  
research into these inter-relationships, in terms of how to create a  
culture and environment in which ideation and innovation can flourish.

This workshop will address the collaborative needs of organisations  
that are distributed or otherwise informally structured. In  
particular we will explore approaches to the design of tools that  
support increased communication and social interaction within such  
groups. Traditionally, support systems have been introduced from the  
top downwards but there is increasing evidence to suggest that  
alternative approaches can be even more effective. The increasing use  
of bottom-up, emergent technologies such as wikis and weblogs, is a  
well-known phenomenon. This workshop seeks to address approaches for  
the design of such tools.

The purpose of this workshop is to bring together people with an  
interest in social software and those whose concerns relate to user- 
centred design approaches. Social software as embodied in current  
systems, such as wikis, is typically developed and introduced from  
the bottom of an organisation and works its way upwards. Even when  
more traditional design adopts a user-centred approach, instigation  
for the introduction of new systems often comes from the top of an  
organisation. The workshop will address this seeming dichotomy: how  
can this bottom-up adoption be facilitated and encouraged by those at  
the top. More specifically, we aim to address how approaches to the  
design of the tools themselves can stimulate increased adoption.  
There are also fundamental differences in the nature of the software  
itself which the workshop will also cover. In comparison to  
traditional groupware like Groove, social software tends to be more  
lightweight and at least in the case of wikis and weblogs more  
extensible. One important question is how these characteristics  
contribute to the apparent success of social software. Many of these  
tools come from a technically minded background and have not received  
any formal usability testing, let alone had any form of user  
participation during the design process. How could such testing or  
participation be of benefit?

We invite papers, which may describe approaches and work in progress  
as well as finished research, length 3-5 pages. In keeping with the  
workshop theme of bottom-up social software at work, topics of  
interest include, but are not limited to:

     * Design methods for social software
     * Evaluation of social software impact
     * Categorisation of social tools
     * Social Software at Work
     * Integrating social software and task oriented software
     * Issues around self-image as represented through social  
software usage

Important Dates :

     * Submission of papers: 22nd September
     * Notification to authors: 6th October 2006
     * Camera Ready papers due: 12th October 2006


The Virtual Communities Project is funded by the Australasian CRC for  
Interaction Design http://www.interactiondesign.com.au . Virtual  
communities is researching how to improve work in distributed  
organisations, looking at how to help these organisations translate  
their ideas into actions. We develop models and business cases that  
describe key principles, success stories and how-tos.

Programme Committee:
Jeremy Yuille (RMIT), Ralf Muhlberger (University of Queensland),  
Fiona Peterson (RMIT), Laurene Vaughan (RMIT), Markus Rittenbruch  
(University of Queensland), Alastair Weakley (University of  
Technology, Sydney)


___________________________________________
Alastair Weakley
Senior Research Assistant
Australasian CRC for Interaction Design
Creativity & Cognition Studios
Faculty of IT
University of Technology, Sydney
Australia

Mobile: +61 (0)424316744
alastair at weakley.org.uk
http://www.weakley.org.uk
AIM: alwkly