FINAL CALL FOR PAPERS - Deadline extended until 29th September. DEST SUBMISSION- PLEASE NOTE: Papers will be peer-reviewed, published and authors will be invited to present their papers at the workshop as required for DEST submission. http://www.virtual-communities.net.au/ozchi06/ Virtual Communities OzCHI 2006 Workshop Approaches to the Design of Social Software for Dis-Organisations : A One-Day Workshop in Association with OZCHI 2006 http://www.ozchi.org/ A fundamental challenge exists for distributed organisations seeking to foster collaboration: understanding and capitalising on the inter- relationships between collaborative tools and techniques to support generation of ideas and innovation. Commercial imperatives underpin research into these inter-relationships, in terms of how to create a culture and environment in which ideation and innovation can flourish. This workshop will address the collaborative needs of organisations that are distributed or otherwise informally structured. In particular we will explore approaches to the design of tools that support increased communication and social interaction within such groups. Traditionally, support systems have been introduced from the top downwards but there is increasing evidence to suggest that alternative approaches can be even more effective. The increasing use of bottom-up, emergent technologies such as wikis and weblogs, is a well-known phenomenon. This workshop seeks to address approaches for the design of such tools. The purpose of this workshop is to bring together people with an interest in social software and those whose concerns relate to user- centred design approaches. Social software as embodied in current systems, such as wikis, is typically developed and introduced from the bottom of an organisation and works its way upwards. Even when more traditional design adopts a user-centred approach, instigation for the introduction of new systems often comes from the top of an organisation. The workshop will address this seeming dichotomy: how can this bottom-up adoption be facilitated and encouraged by those at the top. More specifically, we aim to address how approaches to the design of the tools themselves can stimulate increased adoption. There are also fundamental differences in the nature of the software itself which the workshop will also cover. In comparison to traditional groupware like Groove, social software tends to be more lightweight and at least in the case of wikis and weblogs more extensible. One important question is how these characteristics contribute to the apparent success of social software. Many of these tools come from a technically minded background and have not received any formal usability testing, let alone had any form of user participation during the design process. How could such testing or participation be of benefit? We invite papers, which may describe approaches and work in progress as well as finished research, length 3-5 pages. In keeping with the workshop theme of bottom-up social software at work, topics of interest include, but are not limited to: * Design methods for social software * Evaluation of social software impact * Categorisation of social tools * Social Software at Work * Integrating social software and task oriented software * Issues around self-image as represented through social software usage Important Dates : * Submission of papers: - extended deadline: 29th September 2006 * Notification to authors: 6th October 2006 * Camera Ready papers due: 12th October 2006 The Virtual Communities Project is funded by the Australasian CRC for Interaction Design http://www.interactiondesign.com.au . Virtual communities is researching how to improve work in distributed organisations, looking at how to help these organisations translate their ideas into actions. We develop models and business cases that describe key principles, success stories and how-tos. Programme Committee: Jeremy Yuille (RMIT), Ralf Muhlberger (University of Queensland), Fiona Peterson (RMIT), Laurene Vaughan (RMIT), Markus Rittenbruch (University of Queensland), Alastair Weakley (University of Technology, Sydney) ___________________________________________ Alastair Weakley Senior Research Assistant Australasian CRC for Interaction Design Creativity & Cognition Studios Faculty of IT University of Technology, Sydney Australia