International Conference on Communities & Technologies

Just to indicate how the issue of online communities and c0mmunities online is of increasing interest and importance, take a look at the issues being covered at the Second International Conference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2005) being held in Milan, Italy, 13-16 June, 2005; http://www.cct2005.disco.unimib.it/

The relationship between communities and technology is an increasingly important research topic as the number of communities turning to technology for online and face-to-face support grows. The Second InternationalConference on Communities & Technologies (C&T 2005) conference provides a forum for stimulating and disseminating research about all facets of community and technology support for communities.

To be successful this field requires multidisciplinary research effortsinvolving researchers from different fields of applied computer science (Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Computer Supported Collaborative Learning, Artificial Intelligence, Information Retrieval, Human ComputerInteraction, Information Systems), the social sciences (Economics,Management Science, Psychology, Political Science, Sociology, Ethnography,Linguistics, Cultural Studies, Economics) and many application areas, such as Education, Business, Medicine and civic engagement.

Communities are social entities whose participants share common goals,needs, interests, and practices: they constitute the basic units of social experience. For a number of reasons, researchers are increasingly interested in the topic of communities.

First, within a global knowledge-based society,communities play a pivotal role. Problems such as new forms of politicalparticipation and civic engagement, maintenance of cultural identity, or theintegration of minorities need to be tackled on the community level.

Second, communities also re-shape the processes of learning and sharing knowledge in and among organizations, formal and informal groups. The Internet and the Web make communication possible across national boundaries and between cultures in ways that could not happen before. Furthermore, mobile devices, particularly advanced phone technologies, promise to open the Internet to people who have been denied access for financial, technical and cultural reasons. For information technologies to support communities research is needed to understand the social, technical and usability needs of participants.

Many topics need to be addressed including: trust-building, maintaining social relations, social capital, visualization of social relationships, matching participants, bridging between physical and electronically-mediated interaction, cultural needs.

The conference offers an opportunity to present and discuss empirical and conceptual research. Topics covered include, but are not restricted to, the following subjects:

Social science approaches to communities and technologies:

* models and theories
* online communities and organization theory
* communities and social network analysis
* ethnographic studies of virtual communities

Social dimensions of community technologies:

* privacy and security
* empathy and trust
* participation and non-participation
* community learning

Local communities and social capital:

* technologies and social capital development
* community informatics / digital cities
* case studies of community building and development
* cross-cultural communities
* communities and NGO's
* local, rural and regional communities

Communities in organizations and business:

* communities and business models
* consumer communities and electronic commerce
* online consumer and brand communities
* communities and knowledge management

Communities and innovation:

* communities of practice and communities of interest
* communities and innovation
* open source communities
* epistemic communities and technology development

Technologies for community support:

* virtual, networked and mobile community formation and development
* novel forms of technology support
* design and development methods
* technical architectures
* interoperability among community systems
* virtual community support for education, business, government, civic activities, etc
* light-weight technologies
* visualization