If you are planning to attend WWW2003 or happen to be in the vicinity of Budapest on Tuesday May 20 you are invited to participate in a Workshop on (Virtual) Community Informatics and hear Jenny Preece (author of Online Communities and Professor at the University of Maryland) give the keynote along with presentations (and discussions) with researchers and academics on building communities, blogs and communities, and the relation between virtual and geo-local communities. The cfp for reviewed papers is closed but we are still accepting position papers for presentation. MG ------------------------------------------------ Call for Participation (Virtual) Community Informatics Workshop Technological Aspects of and Frameworks for Electronic Community Support held in conjunction with the 12th International World Wide Web Conference (WWW2003) Budapest, Hungary Tuesday May 20, 2003 http://is.njit.edu/vci-www2003/ We cordially invite you to participate in the (Virtual) Community Informatics Workshop, held the first day of the WWW2003 Conference. Researchers, students and practitioners interested in the areas of community informatics, virtual communities and communities of practice are welcome to submit either a position statement or a full paper for presentation. People are also welcome to attend without a position paper. (Virtual) Community Informatics involves many facets of supporting communities, including technical, educational, societal and policy aspects. VCI research and activities address all of these. At the WWW2003 workshop, we will focus on the technical aspects of and frameworks for electronic community support. How can we best direct and construct Web and other technologies to support the activities that take place within communities? While our focus is on engineering technological support, we welcome participants interested in all aspects of communities in an electronic environment. (Virtual) Community Informatics lies at two cross-roads: bringing together people concerned with Local , Virtual and Communities of Practice; and structuring collaborations between researchers and practitioners, including industry, in these three domains. (Virtual) Community Informatics promotes the cross-fertilization of ideas and experience found at this cross-roads, bringing together researchers and practitioners from many varied disciplines. Workshop Program Overview - keynote address - overview of and current issues in Community Informatics - paper presentations - panel - short overview of several nascent (Virtual) Community Informatics activities - general discussion The specific focus of this workshop will be on a discussion of the technology aspects of, and frameworks for electronic community support. For further information and submission details, please see the workshop Web site: http://is.njit.edu/vci-www2003/ --- Stay Informed on (Virtual) Community Informatics If you would be interested in further developments concerning (Virtual) Community Informatics, please email Michael Bieber (bieber@oak.njit.edu) or Michael Gurstein (gurstein@njit.edu).