Hi all

To me, the great strength of Drupal are the 'community plumbing' aspects that encourage (enforce?) collaboration. So, some Drupalers might be interested in the following conference or have insights into some of the issues they might want to contribute:

"GROUP 2005 provides a forum for researchers and practitioners who are interested in topics related to computer-based systems that have an impact on groups, organizations and social networks. Relevant issues include design, implementation, deployment, evaluation, methodologies, and effect of these systems."

Group 2005 Conference
November 6-9, 2005
Sanibel Island, Florida, USA

More details available at:
[http://www.acm.org/sigs/siggroup/conferences/group05/]

To quote the blurb:

* THE TOPIC *
What makes communities grow and prosper, or wither and die? In this workshop we'll explore this question by taking a close look at how incentive structures interact with short and long term viability. We'll address questions such as "What motivates participants to contribute?" "What social and technical mechanisms support (or deter) contribution?" and "How and to what extent can designers design sustainable communities?"

* THE CONTENT *
We are interested in open source communities, community-managed discussion spaces like Slashdot, social network-based communities such as Orkut, open content communities like Wikipedia, group blogs, "real world" communities, and other similar environments.

* THE PARTICIPANTS *
Our hope is to attract participants from a wide range of disciplines including anthropology, computer science, economics, interaction design, psychology, sociology, and so on.

* THE FORMAT *
Our goal is to raise questions and begin answering them from the divers directions supplied by the approaches of the attendees. The workshop will be highly interactive with minimal presentation of the position papers."

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Just for the record, I'm not involved in organising it or planning to attend myself (not that I'd mind if a plane ticket came through the letterbox) - I'm just passing the info on.

Thanks

SimonP

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