ECSCW'99 Workshop
Copenhagen, Denmark
September 12, 1999

• Fiorella de Cindio - University of Milano, Italy
• Peter Day - University of Brighton, UK
• Susana Finquelievich - University of Argentina, Argentina
• Peter Mambrey - GMD, German National Research Center for Information Technology, Germany
• Agneta Ranerup - University of Gvteborg, Sweden
• Doug Schuler - The Evergreen State College, U.S.
• Artur Serra - Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain
• Erik Stolterman - University of Umea, Sweden
• Peter Van den Besselaar - University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Primary contact person: Doug Schuler, dschuler@evergreen.edu, 2202 N. 41st, Seattle, WA 98103, USA.

Co-sponsored by IFIP Working Group 9.1. Computers and Work

Problems Addressed

As millions of people with correspondingly diverse needs, social backgrounds, and skill levels stream onto the Internet the challenge to the idea of Computer Supported Cooperative Work becomes profound. The need for a new type of CSCW that we might call "Computer Supported Community Work" (or "Community Informatics" or, even, "Computer Suported Community Cultures") becomes increasingly important. Community networks and other types of public communication and information systems are a new public institution that are intended to address this need. There are currently hundreds of community networks worldwide serving tens of thousands of users daily. As a new "place" made possible through digital networks, community networks represent intriguing opportunities for society as well as for CSCW researchers and implementers. In this workshop we intend to:

• Increase understanding of current work and links to other disciplines;
• Expose others to this rich and largely unexplored area within CSCW;
• Present new research findings and surface new research questions;
• Help to inform the European Commission Fifth Framework Programme, specifically the "Creating a User Friendly Information Society" aspect on social and political dimensions of the enterprise;
• Build a research agenda that helps coordinate and focus current and future work;
• Explore new venues for research activities, joint work, and publication opportunities; and
• Strengthen our research network and the ties between the researchers.

At the workshop we plan to discuss the following major topics.

• Theoretical foundations for community network research and relevant theories from other fields of research;
• New technology (e.g. user interfaces) and new applications;
• Virtuality vs. geographic orientation;
• Connections between "traditional" CSCW and "Computer Supported Community Work";
• Community networks in developing nations;
• The relationship of community networks to local governmental authorities;
• Participatory design and evaluation of community networks;
• Policy and education;
• How do the roles of activist, researcher, developer, and citizen interact with each other? and
• How can activists, researchers, developers, and citizens work together on these common goals virtually (that is, with no formal alliances or geographical proximity)?

Participation Requirements

The intended audience for this workshop is people who are interested in studying, as well as developing, community networks and other forms of "Computer Supported Community Work" systems. We are anticipating a wide diversity of people and experiences. We are also hoping for attendees who have done theoretical work in this area. Since the central theme of the workshop is systems for citizen use we are especially interested in attendees who are interested working with a wide variety of people in devising systems for their own use.

For purposes of this workshop we request a 2-5 page position paper. Within the general area of community networks and other public information and communication systems) we seek papers and participants from a wide variety of backgrounds with a wide variety of perspectives. Some perspectives include sociological, economic, public policy / public administration, educational, or cultural to name just a few. We plan to limit attendance to 30 people in the absence of strong mitigating circumstances.

Please send two hardcopies of your position paper to Doug Schuler at the address above by August 1, 1999. In addition, please send a copy of your position paper electronically to Doug Schuler (dschuler@evergreen.edu) in plain text HTML (no attachments or encodings please).

Additional Information

The organizers of the workshop have been studying and developing community networks for serveral years. We are currently building a research network consisting of researchers and developers from all over the world. The site for the network is http://www.scn.org/tech/the_network.

The position papers from our CSCW'98 workshop held in Seattle can be found at http://www.scn.org/tech/the_network/Proj/ws98/index.html.

More information on ECSCW '99 can be found at http://www.cti.dtu.dk/CSCW/ECSCW99.html .