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Keynote Presentations
Abstract
The design
of online communities is one of the most important theoretical
and practical challenges we face. Social dynamics and
community design are important even in realms that at first
seem purely economic or technical. This presentation reports
on results from a multi-year study of the social dynamics of
online commodity markets. In particular, it examines the
many attempts (and failures) to create new online markets for
the trading of wholesale standardized goods during 1998-2001.
These failed attempts provide invaluable data on the necessary
underpinnings of online trading communities and the social
dynamics that drive them. Ignoring the behavioral realities
of markets and the necessary roles of trust and cooperation
led to designs and technology that in many cases were
incompatible with the needs of the market participants.
Bio
Peter Kollock is Professor & Vice Chair in the Department of
Sociology at UCLA and Cofounder of onExchange Inc., a Boston
based company that builds online marketplaces for the
financial industry. From the inception of the company through
2001, Dr. Kollock headed research and strategic planning at
onExchange as Executive Vice President. He is a recognized
expert on Internet markets and communities, having worked in
the area since 1990. Dr. Kollock edited Communities in
Cyberspace and is at work on a second volume of studies of
online communities titled Connected Action. His current
research focuses on the social dynamics of markets, both
online and traditional.
In addition to his academic and applied research projects, Dr.
Kollock has several years experience as a developer and
consultant in the software industry, and has worked with
numerous companies including Microsoft, Philips , France
Telecom, and LG Corporation. He is a frequent speaker at
Internet and financial industry conferences. He holds a BA,
MA, and PhD from the University of Washington .
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Communities of Ideology
How
Virtual Strength in Numbers is Changing the World
by Cliff Figallo,
SociAlchemy, USA
E-mail: cfig at
socialchemy.com
Home page:
http://www.socialchemy.com/ |
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Abstract
The rewards one gets from a community are the main drivers of
one’s commitment to that community. As technology has advanced
in power, convenience, global reach and design, rewards are
being realized through association with expansive Web
communities of shared ideology and mission. The influence of
these modern, large-scale Web communities is being felt across
the landscape of establishment politics, economics and media.
Being a partner with thousands of others in such influential
interactive ventures has stimulated today’s version of the
network effect, where greater numbers are seen to generate
greater value.
In this presentation, twenty years of insider perspective are
applied to the evolution of group communication from isolated
message boards to today’s global, grassroots, collaborative
publishing environment. Weblogs have become hubs for
citizen-driven systems of belief and activism around the
world, and in this highly politicized infospace, people
strongly identify themselves with active communities that
conduct investigative research, advance ideological causes,
challenge mainstream news sources, and exert noisy influence
on governments and international politics. The presentation
will consider the question: Are Web communities becoming a new
and important organ of world politics?
Bio
Cliff
Figallo was founding Director of The WELL, one of the earliest
and most celebrated virtual communities. His six years in that
position qualified his as a leading expert in the social uses
of networked media. Since that time, he has continued to
design, manage and report on communities for purposes ranging
from software development and product support to entertainment
and health care. He has written two books – one on community
management and the other on knowledge sharing. He is currently
serving as a content editor for Trilogy, a health and human
services resource provider on the Web, and as a community
management consultant for TAP-IN, a project for staffing free
clinics in the U.S. with retired healthcare professionals.
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The Growing
Importance of e-Communities on the Web
by Professor Hermann
Maurer, Graz U. of Technology, Austria
E-mail:
hmaurer at iicm.tu-graz.ac.at
Home page:
http://www.iicm.edu/maurer |
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Abstract
As the web
is changing, e-communities are gaining more and more
importance. The formation and maintenance of e-communities is
supported by various technologies like wikis, discussion
forums and Internet games which we briefly describe in this
paper. Some of these technologies are not completely new and
have been well known for a long time. We believe that in
combination with new technologies and methodologies it makes
sense to take a look on how e-communities are used now and
will be in the near future. This paper describes an overview
which software pieces, methodologies and techno-social
behaviours are responsible for the growing importance of the
further development of e-communities.
KEYWORDS: wiki, blog, Internet games, file sharing, discussion
forums, answer brokering, Web 2.0.
Bio
Born in
Vienna, Austria, Maurer studied mathematics and computer
science at the Universities of Vienna and Calgary, and was
Assistant and later Associate Professor for Computer Science
at the University of Calgary 1966-1971. He then took on
various positions as full professor at a number of
universities, and is now at the Graz University of Technology
specializing in networked multimedia systems and their
applications to knowledge management, learning, digital
libraries, museums, and societal implications of new
developments in computers. As hobby he is writing a series of
Science Fiction novels.
Some of his
main accomplishments include: Dean of Faculty of Computer
Science with about 200 researchers and 2500 students, head of
two research institutes in Graz Published some 600 papers and
20 books, half of them technical, the most recent on “Learning
Support Systems for Organizational Learning“ (2004) and the
others Science Fiction.
Supervised
some 500 M.Sc. and 40 Ph.D. theses'. Founded 16 companies and
a number of international conferences and journals.
Two honorary doctorates, member of two academies of science,
many distinctions
Project leader of some 20 multimillion-dollar projects
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