Workshops during the General Online Research 05 given by Pro. Dr. Chris Snijders

1.) title of the workshop:
Working with MSR Community Tools and related social software

2.) duration of the workshop:

3.)workshop fees:
Preise (voll/ermäßigt) / Price (full/reduced): 90,- EUR / 25,- EUR

4.) target groups:
Social scientists, community hosts and managers, HCI, CSCW

5.) Is the workshop prepared for an exclusively German language or an international audience?
English only (sorry)

6.) workshop language:
English

7.) Description of the content of the workshop:
Workshop description: The Microsoft Research Community Technologies Group has constructed a set of tools available to the public. In this workshop I will review these systems and explore the ways that they can be used to further a number of research agendas. Tools include the Netscan system for reporting social accounting meta-data about Usenet newsgroups, the SNARF application for analyzing Outlook and reporting and navigating email based on "social sorting", the Netscan Data Archive DVD which includes a small sample Usenet metadata dataset and a copy of the Usenet Views Treemapper application, and the AURA and SLAM mobile handheld applications.

8.) goals of the workshop:
Familiarity with tools and data set available from Microsoft Research Community Technologies Group as well as work in related areas from other research groups.

9.) necessary previous knowledge:
Interest in online social spaces like Usenet newsgroups, web boards, email lists, chat rooms, collective tagging and content creation and sharing systems.

10.) literature that has to be read for participation:

11.) additional literature
http://www.research.microsoft.com/~masmith
http://netscan.research.microsoft.com
http://aura.research.microsoft.com

Turner, T. C., Smith, M. A., Fisher, D., and Welser, H. T. (2005). Picturing Usenet: Mapping computer-mediated collective action. Journal of Computer Mediated Communication, 10(4), article 7. 

Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, Marc A. Smith, Danyel Fisher. The Social Network and Relationship Finder: Social Sorting for Email Triage CEAS 2005.

Carman Neustaedter, A.J. Bernheim Brush, and Marc A. Smith, Beyond "From" and "Received": Exploring the Dynamics of Email Triage CHI 2005, 1977-1980.

A.J. Bernheim Brush, Tammara Combs Turner; Marc A. Smith; Neeti Gupta, Scanning Objects in the Wild: Assessing an Object Triggered Information System UbiComp 2005.

A.J. Bernheim Brush, Xiaoqing Wang, Tammara Combs Turner, and Marc A. Smith, Assessing Differential Usage of Usenet Social Accounting Meta-Data CHI 2005, 889-898.

Smith, Marc A. - Tools for navigating large social cyberspaces, Communications of the ACM, 2002.

Smith, Marc A., J Ubois, UC Berkeley, BM Gross, Forward Thinking, Conference on Email and Antispam 2005.

Smith, Marc, Duncan Davenport, Howard Hwa. "AURA: A mobile platform for object and location annotation", in Ubicomp 2003.

Burkhalter, Byron and Marc Smith. "Inhabitant’s uses and reactions to Usenet social accounting data", in Inhabited Information Spaces, Snowden and Churchill, 2003.

Viégas, Fernanda B., Marc Smith. "Newsgroup Crowds and AuthorLines: Visualizing the Activity of Individuals in Conversational Cyberspaces", HICSS 2004. [Best Paper: Persistent Conversation Minitrack]

Fiore, Andrew, Scott Lee Teirnan, Marc Smith. "Observed Behavior and Perceived Value of Authors in Usenet Newsgroups: Bridging the Gap", 2001.

Fiore, Andrew and Marc Smith. "Tree Map Visualizations of Newsgroups", 2001.

Smith, Marc and Andrew Fiore. "Visualization components for persistent conversations", in ACM SIG CHI 2001.

Smith, Marc. "Some social implications of ubiquitous wireless networks" ACM Mobile Computing and Communications Review, April 200, Vol.4 No. 2

Smith, Marc, JJ Cadiz, Byron Burkhalter, Conversation Trees and Threaded Chats, CSCW 2000.

Smith, Marc and Peter Kollock. Communities in Cyberspace: Perspectives on New Forms of Social Organization. London, Routledge Press, 1999.  

Outline of the book.
Smith, Marc. “Invisible Crowds in Cyberspace: Measuring and Mapping the Social Structure of USENET” in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc Smith and Peter Kollock. London, Routledge Press, 1999

Smith, Marc. “Voices from the WELL: The Logic of the Virtual Commons” Unpublished manuscript, 1992

Kollock, Peter, and Marc Smith. 1999. "Introduction: Communities in Cyberspace."  Pp. 3-25 in Communities in Cyberspace, edited by Marc Smith and Peter Kollock. London: Routledge Press, 1999.

Kollock, Peter and Marc Smith. "Managing the Virtual Commons: Cooperation and Conflict in Computer Communities." Computer-Mediated Communication, edited by S. Herring. Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1996.

Smith, Marc, Shelly Farnham, Steven Drucker. “The Social Life of Small Graphical Chats” in ACM SIG CHI 2000

Dave Vronay, Smith, Marc, Steven Drucker. “Chat as a Streaming Media Type” in ACM UIST 1999

Xiong, Rebecca ; Smith, Marc ; Drucker, Steven. "Visualizations of Collaborative Information for End-Users". Microsoft Technical Report, 1999.

12.) information about the workshop organizer:
Marc Smith is a research sociologist at Microsoft Research specializing in the social organization of online communities. He leads the Community Technologies Group at MSR.
He is the co-editor of Communities in Cyberspace (Routledge), a collection of essays exploring the ways identity; interaction and social order develop in online groups.
Smith's research focuses on the ways group dynamics change when they take place in social cyberspaces. Many groups in cyberspace produce public goods and organize themselves in the form of a commons (for related papers see: http://www.research.microsoft.com/~masmith). Smith's goal is to visualize these social cyberspaces, mapping and measuring their structure, dynamics and life cycles. He has developed a web interface http://netscan.research.microsoft.com) to the "Netscan" engine that allows researchers studying Usenet newsgroups to get reports on the rates of posting, posters, crossposting, thread length and frequency distributions of activity.
This research offers a means to gather historical data on the development of social cyberspaces and can be used to highlight the ways these groups differ from, or are similar to, face-to-face groups. Smith is applying this work to the development of a generalized community platform for Microsoft, providing a web based system for groups of all sizes to discuss and publish their material to the web.
Smith received a B.S. in International Area Studies from Drexel University in Philadelphia in 1988, an M.Phil. in social theory from Cambridge University in 1990, and a Ph.D. in Sociology from UCLA in 2001.