Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Web Based Communities

 

Special Issue on: "Making Meetings Work: Design and Evaluation of Online, Mobile and Physical Environments for Enhancing Collaborative Work"

Guest Editors:
Maribeth Back and Scott Carter, FX Palo Alto Laboratory, USA
Saadi Lahlou, London School of Economics, UK

This special issue grows out of a series of workshops at the UbiComp and CSCW conferences for a community of people interested in technologies that support meetings as well as how those technologies are changing our notion of what a meeting is. We see a deep interest in this community in understanding, augmenting, and challenging meeting practices and group collaborations across a variety of media spaces and contexts.

In this special issue, we are particularly focused on the demands of the increasingly distributed global workforce. Meeting these demands may require supporting collocated, remote and mobile participants simultaneously. Similarly, it may be critical to support a spectrum of richness and responsiveness. In order to move forward, it is important to bring together research as well as systems from a variety of areas including smart environments, web videoconferencing, online virtual worlds, mobile multimedia applications, and social software.

One of the difficulties with this mashup approach is striking an effective balance between usability and functionality. Therefore, we also encourage work that focuses on design and real-world user experience. In particular, we are interested in studies that show how to enable easy and effective crossovers between media like virtual worlds, videoconference systems, and mobile applications.

We encourage papers that address issues such as (but not limited to) the following:

• How can real-time face-to-face or video interaction complement asynchronous and intermittent mobile communication?
• What techniques can help orchestrate multiple streams of input with multiple output devices?
• What kind of displays and system management tools are needed in smart environments?
• How can technology overcome the "second-class citizen" effect often felt by remote participants, so that all participants feel equally involved regardless of medium?
• In what ways do web- and mobile-based meetings intermingle with other work processes?
• How can the physical design of workspaces and meeting rooms aid in the integration of new technologies for collaboration?

Subject Coverage
Examples of topics appropriate to the theme of technologically enhanced collaboration environments include, but are not limited to:

• Social requirements for formal and informal online meetings or other forms of work
• Ubiquitous displays: multiple screens, multiple media
• Interactive furnishings and smart environments
• Rich media for mobile devices in conference settings
• Remote and local multimedia conference support systems
• Designing across cultural and linguistic barriers
• Learning from prototypes and experimental systems
• Content preparation and presentation
• Meeting space design and physical form for smart objects
• Context-aware systems for conferencing
• Meeting capture and access
• Media transmission and storage
• Security, data handling, and privacy
• Spontaneous integration of public/private data & devices
• Appropriate design and evaluation techniques

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere

All papers are refereed through a peer review process. A guide for authors, sample copies and other relevant information for submitting papers are available on the Author Guidelines page

Important Dates

Deadline for abstract submission: 30 April 2009

Deadline for paper submission: 30 June 2009

Notification to authors: 31 July 2009

Deadline for camera ready papers: 31 August 2009