FYI (crosspost)- CSCW workshop on Social Networks for Design & Analysis

[Tom Johnson]

fyi

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J. T. Johnson
Institute for Analytic Journalism
505.577.6482(c)                          415.775.2530(h)
http://www.jtjohnson.com               [hidden email]
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-----Original Message-----
From: Mapping and visualising Internet infrastructure and Web space
[mailto:[hidden email]]On Behalf Of Danyel Fisher
Sent: Friday, August 27, 2004 12:51 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: [MAPPING-CYBERSPACE] CFP: CSCW workshop on Social Networks for
Design & Analysis


Cyberspace mappers,

I apologize for the mass email, and for any cross posting. I'd like you
to know about this upcoming workshop. Social networks are beginning to
gather momentum in various communities as a technique for analysis and
design. Many of us as mappers of cyberspace have implemented or used
tools for looking at internet communities using social networks; I'd
like to invite you to gather and discuss at this workshop.

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.

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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     intotheCSCWmainstream.Thekey
notion 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,
[hidden email] in PDF or Microsoft Word.