Hawaii in January -- what could be better! Papers due June 15, 2008. Minitrack organizers include a few familiar AoIR names. Do consider sending your papers our way. /Track organizers Caroline Haythornthwaite (haythorn@uiuc.edu), Karine Barzilai-Nahon (karineb@u.washington.edu), Paul Benjamin Lowry (Paul.Lowry.PhD@gmail.com), Ian MacInnes (IMacInne@syr.edu) ----------- Call for Papers **Social Networks and Virtual Worlds for Work, Learning, and Play** Minitrack in the **Internet and the Digital Economy Track** HICSS 42 DUE DATE: June 15, 2008 Forty-Second Hawaii International Conference on Systems Sciences (HICSS-42) January 5-8, 2009 Hilton Waikoloa Village, Waikoloa, Big Island, Hawaii http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_42/apahome42.htm Our online ways and means of connecting with others and maintaining ties for everyday life, community, work, learning and play are changing dramatically with the increasing adoption and use of social networking applications such as Facebook, MySpace, etc., immersive worlds such as Second Life, and more comprehensive online support environments such as collaboratories, virtual communities, and online communities of practice. These new settings provide the infrastructure for new patterns of connectivity, new ways of working, learning and playing with known and unknown others, locally and globally distributed, with common and diverse cultural experiences. This minitrack for HICSS 42 calls for papers that address the design, analysis, theory, review, experiments and/or observation of social networks, virtual communities, and virtual worlds in the contexts of work, school, home, community, and play. Papers from all methodological approaches are welcome, including design and user studies, quantitative and qualitative research, and theoretical work. Interdisciplinary work is particularly encouraged. All papers should be well grounded in the literature, present original work, and make a substantial addition to the literature in this area. Examples of topics for this minitrack include, but are not limited to the following: • Online communities: organizational, group and individual behavior • Design for online networks and communities • E-learning: structures, implementation, and practices • Interaction between the off-line and online community • Online gaming: design, economics, behavior • Collaborative work, learning or gaming online • Peer-to-peer or mobile services for virtual communities • Case studies and topologies of online communities • Theoretical models of virtual worlds • Business and organizational models of virtual worlds • Economic behaviors in virtual worlds, and game economies • Synergies and conflicts between real and virtual worlds • Identity in virtual worlds • Interface design for social networking, virtual worlds, virtual communities • Social networking agents • Anti-social behavior, online addiction, predatory behavior online • Legal and ethical issues of virtual worlds • Privacy and security issues in online networks IMPORTANT DATES: Abstracts (optional): April 15, 2008 Full Paper Submission: June 15, 2008 All papers must conform to HICSS formatting standards: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_42/authorinstruction.htm Please contact any of the organizers with questions about submissions to this minitrack. Abstracts may be sent to any of the organizers. Caroline Haythornthwaite (haythorn@uiuc.edu), Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Karine Barzilai-Nahon (karineb@u.washington.edu), The Information School, University of Washington Paul Benjamin Lowry (Paul.Lowry.PhD@gmail.com), Information Systems Department, Kevin Rollins Center for e-Business, Marriott School, Brigham Young Ian MacInnes (IMacInne@syr.edu), School of Information Studies, Syracuse University -------------------------------------- Caroline Haythornthwaite Professor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 501 East Daniel St., Champaign IL 61820