Technical Programme

Opening Keynote

CSCW: Inquiring and Learning

Prof. Peter Checkland, Management School, Lancaster University, UK

The nature of computer-based systems makes them not only a 'how' - their traditional core role - but also an enabler of new 'whats'. When the shift from 'how to do something' to 'what to do' occurs, some rethinking of the role of IS and IT is needed. CSCW is just such a development, and it require some shifts in the way we think about both information and organizations.

Professor Peter Checkland joined the Department of Systems and Information Management at Lancaster University in 1969, after 15 years at ICI Limited. He has led research into tackling real-world problems using soft systems thinking which has produced Soft Systems Methodology (S.S.M.). S.S.M. is taught in universities and colleges around the world and has been taken up by many industrial and other organisations. The nature of S.S.M. and its development is described in his books Systems Thinking, Systems Practice (Wiley, 1981) and, with, Jim Scholes, Soft Systems Methodology in Action (Wiley, 1990). A new book, written with Sue Holwell, will be published by Wiley in 1997; Information, Systems and Information Systems. In 1994 he was the first recipient of 'The Most Distinguished and Outstanding Contributor Award' of the Information Systems Methodologies Group of the British Computer Society.

Tuesday 9 September 1997

9.00 - 10.30	Opening Plenary	Prof. Peter Checkland
10.30 - 11.00	Break
11.00 - 12.30	Session I: Conceptualizing and Designing for Cooperative Work	Chair: Lucy Suchman
	The Production of Order and the Order of Production	Graham Button, Rank Xerox Research Centre, Cambridge Wes Sharrock, University of Manchester
	Plans as Situated Action: An Activity Theory Approach to Workflow Systems	Jakob E. Bardram, University of Aarhus
	Rethinking CSCW systems: The architecture of Milano	Alessandra Agostini and Giorgio De Michelis, University of Milano Maria Antonietta Grasso, Rank Xerox Research Centre, Grenoble
12.30 - 14.00	Lunch
14.00 - 15.30	Session II: Shared Information Spaces	Chair: Kari Kuutti
	Effects of the amount of shared information on communication efficiency in side by side and remote help dialogues	Laurent Karsenty, Aramiihs-CNRS
	MetaWeb: Bringing synchronous groupware to the World Wide Web	Jonathan Trevor, Thomas Koch and Gerd Woetzel, GMD-FIT
	Constructing Common Information Spaces	Liam Bannon, University of Limerick Susanne Bødker, University of Aarhus
15.30 - 16.00	Break
16.00 - 17.30	Session III: Cooperation in Real and Virtual Worlds	Chair: Tone Bratteteig
	Task Conflict and Language Differences: Opportunities for Videoconferencing	Gayna Williams, Microsoft Corporation
	The Social Construction and Visualisation of a Norwegian Offshore Installation	Vidar Hepsø, Statoil Research Centre
	Staging a Public Poetry Performance in a Collaborative Virtual Environment	Steve Benford, Chris Greenhalgh, Dave Snowdon and Adrian Bullock, University of Nottingham
18.00	Dinner at 18.00 on campus. Followed by Lancaster Evening, buses depart 19.15

Wednesday 10 September 1997

9.00 - 10.30	Session IV: Formalisms and Mediation	Chair: Eevi Beck
	On Distribution, Drift and the Electronic Medical Record: Some Tools for a Sociology of the Formal	Marc Berg, Maastricht University
	Tailoring Cooperation Support through Mediators	Anja Syri, GMD-FIT
	Doing Software Development: Occasions for Automation and Formalisation	Rebecca E. Grinter, Bell Labs
10.30 - 11.00	Coffee
11.00 - 12.30	Session V: Objects, Spaces and Bodies	Chair: Paul Dourish
	Introducing Third Party Objects into the Spatial Model of Interaction	Steve Benford and Chris Greenhalgh, University of Nottingham
	Cooperative Work and Lived Cognition: A Taxonomy of Embodied Actions	Toni Robertson, University of New South Wales
	Aether: An Awareness Engine for CSCW	Ovidiu Sandor and Christian Bogdan, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm John Bowers, University of Manchester
12.30 - 14.00	Lunch
14.00 - 15.30	Session VI: Sharing: Information and Process	Chair: Yvonne Rogers
	Providing Flexible Services for Managing Shared State in Collaborative Systems	Hyong Sop Shim, Robert W. Hall, Atul Prakash and Farnam Jahanian, University of Michigan
	Supporting Groupware Conventions through Contextual Awareness	Gloria Mark, Ludwin Fuchs and Markus Sohlenkamp, GMD-FIT
	Supporting the Flow of Information Through Constellations of Interaction	Tony Salvador, Intel Corporation Sara Bly, Sara Bly Consulting
15.30 - 16.00	Break
17.00	Coaches depart for Conference Banquet in Lake District

Thursday 11 September 1997

9.00 - 10.30	Session VII: The Influence of Devices and Environments	Chair: Helmut Krcmar
	Supporting cooperative working using shared notebooks	Phil Turner, The MARI Group Ltd Susan Turner, University of Northumbria at Newcastle
	Does "roomware" matter ? Investigating the role of personal and public information devices and their combination in meeting room collaboration	Norbert A. Streitz, Petra Rexroth and Torsten Holmer, GMD-IPSI
	Analysing movement and world transitions in virtual reality tele-conferencing	Chris Greenhalgh, University of Nottingham
10.30 - 11.00	Coffee
11.00 - 12.30	Session VIII: Cooperation and Access Coordination	Chair: Mike Robinson
	Designing for Cooperation at a Radio Station	Finn Kensing, Jesper Simonsen and Keld Bødker, Roskilde University
	A Group-based Authorization Model for Cooperative Systems	Klaas Sikkel, GMD-FIT
	Gatherers of Information: Some Remarks on the Mission Process at the International Monetary Fund	Richard H.R. Harper; Rank Xerox Research Centre, Cambridge
12.30 - 14.00	Lunch
14.00 - 16.00	Closing Plenary	Prof. Anatol Holt

Closing Keynote

Primitive Man in the Electronic Work Environment

Dr. Anatol Holt, University of Milano , Italy

Primitive man is here to stay; he is nature (not civilization). As he breathes, so he coordinates and communicates. This is the soil of information; this is the source of all computing, and especially CSCW. Organized activity is rooted in primitive man. The beginnings of a theory and its relevance to CSCW (and computing more generally) will be discussed.

Anatol Holt began as a UNIVAC I programmer under John W. Mauchly, in 1952. Together with the late William J. Turanski he developed a programming environment for the UNIVAC family called "Generalized Programming" - a very early example of CSCW. From 1963 to 1974, Holt was Principal Investigator under ARPA's IPTO sponsored research called the "Information Systems Theory Project". During this time Holt cooperated with Carl Adam Petri, (GMD, Bonn, Germany), in the development of Petri nets. Since 1974 Holt has been active in various industrial and university settings. In 1979, together with Paul Cashman, Holt launched the world's first "coordination program" on the ARPA net (Monitor Software Trouble Reports). Some years later, Holt and venture capitalist Eli Jacobs, founded "Coordination Technology, Inc." for the development of a new system software platform to support distributed electronic work environments. In the last 6 years, Holt has lived and worked in Milano, Italy, where (among other things) he has been active at the University of Milano. In 4 of these years, he authored a book titled "Organized Activity and Its Support by Computer", just produced by Kluwer Academic Publishers. Holt holds an Ms in mathematics from MIT, and a PhD in descriptive linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania.

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