Collab-Or-Ate

I’m combining my blogging and twitter personalities. You can see my most recent tweet on my blog (look at the header) and when I blog, it will automatically fire off a tweet from joandimicco. At least that is what I’m hoping this blog post will successfully test.

It is just two short weeks away from the CSCW conference in San Diego, where we’ll be presenting Beehive in a variety of ways. The conference full program (in PDF) is available on the conference website.

On Sunday, 11/9, 9:00 – 13:00, we are hosting a workshop: Workshop 8: Social Networking in Organizations. To see who is participating in the workshop and more information, we have a workshop website.

Workshop Description: Social networking websites, such as Facebook and LinkedIn, are heavily used by students to maintain friendships and by professionals to maintain contacts with others such as potential customers and recruits. Technologies such as email, IM, and weblogs were initially adopted by students and consumers for personal use and then moved into enterprises, having a significant impact on business environments. Social networking technologies seem to be following suit, perhaps more rapidly, but we are just beginning to explore how these applications are being used inside enterprises and large organizations. To what extent are they used to maintain or establish external ties to family, friends, and professional colleagues? To what extent are they being used to meet internal team or organizational goals? How are organizations responding? This workshop will bring together those with a research or applied industry interest in social networking in organizational or enterprise settings.

On Monday, 11/10, 19:30 – 22:00, we will be demoing Beehive at the Demo Session:

Beehive: Social Networking inside the Enterprise

Demo Description: Beehive is an internal social networking site that gives enterprise users a “rich connection to the people they work with” on both a personal and a professional level. Beehive helps employees make new connections, track current friends and coworkers, and renew contacts with people they have worked with in the past.

And on Wednesday, 11/12, 15:00 – 16:30, in the afternoon paper session Social Networking at Work and School, we will be presenting a Note and a Paper on Beehive:

It’s All About You: Diversity in Online Profiles
Casey Dugan, Werner Geyer, Michael Muller, Joan DiMicco, Beth Brownholtz, David R. Millen

We report on an alternative way for users to richly describe themselves, by entering not only responses, but their own questions as well.

Motivations for Social Networking at Work (download PDF)
Joan DiMicco, David R. Millen, Werner Geyer, Casey Dugan, Beth Brownholtz, Michael Muller

Our analysis of user behavior and interviews presents the case that professionals use internal social networking to build stronger bonds with their weak ties and to reach out to employees they do not know.

And here is the “view” we’ll be seeing in San Diego more than the sun and surf. :)

Last weekend, NPR’s On the Media had a story called “Reading Between the Lines” on CNN’s squiggly lines that run underneath the debating presidential candidates. The movement of the lines are driven by knobs turned by uncommitted Ohio voters, sitting in CNN’s studio during the debate.

As you watch the debates, even though CNN has told you that these uncommitted Ohioans are not a statistically representative sample, you are influenced by their knob turning. Just like you can be influenced by your friends’ laughter and comments in a face-to-face group setting, as you watch those lines moving up and down, you are convinced that McCain is angry and Obama is presidential. There is lots of experimental evidence of this from previous elections (read the OTM transcript).

My PhD thesis focused on this exact issue: real-time visualizations of social behavior and how this information changes the dynamics and your perceptions of an interaction. For my project, Second Messenger, I focused on small, face-to-face groups receiving feedback about their group dynamics, but the phenomenon is universal and extends beyond social visualization. Behavioral economists refer to it as framing.

Besides being interesting to think about, it is important to consider the influence of the squiggly lines. First, CNN should be aware of its power to influence viewers. Second, viewers should be aware that their attitudes can be manipulated by this relatively simple and unrepresentative data point. They discussed this a bit on OTM:

BOB GARFIELD (interviewer): We have established that the squiggly lines do not represent any statistically significant data. And … we’ve established that people are influenced by the squiggly lines. Does that not mean that it is journalistically irresponsible to put them on the TV? I mean, is CNN doing the right thing in adding this feature to its coverage?

SAM SCHECHNER: We’re social animals. We process information in the context of the people around us. We do watch our debates with friends or at a bar or in some sort of group environment, frequently, in part because we want to hear the reactions of other people. That’s in part why … you and I can’t stop looking at that CNN line on the bottom of the screen.

I think it’s hard to argue, necessarily, that it’s a bad thing. In fact, the people who do it – the professors at SMU – see it as a way of shifting some of the balance of influence from pundits, who have been shown to be able to have a pretty strong effect with their pre- and post-debate spin and how they set expectations and frame the debates to actual voters.

I’m not sure I agree that uncommitted Ohio voters are the antidote to polarizing pundits, but something to think about.

More information on the report:

WSJ, 10/10/08: “When Your Political Opinion Isn’t Yours Alone” Broadcasts of Political Debates That Include Live Audience Feedback Can Influence What You’re Thinking

More on my research:

Joan Morris DiMicco, Kate J Hollenbach, Anna Pandolfo, Walter Bender. (2007) “The Impact of Increased Awareness while Face-to-Face.” Special Issue on Awareness Systems Design, Human-Computer Interaction. Volume 22 (2007), Number 1.

The NYTimes has an interesting article about the promotion side of invention: If No One Sees It, Is It an Invention?. It is the story of Johnny Chung Lee, an HCI PhD student at CMU, who posted his research ideas on YouTube. If Lee had only pursued the traditional avenue of sharing his HCI inventions by publishing and presenting at CHI, the premier HCI conference, he would not have had nearly the impact. For example, Bill Gates probably wouldn’t know his name.

If you create the coolest widget, it can’t have impact unless people see it, use it, experience it. I guess that is basically Marketing 1.0. But something computer scientists aren’t always so savvy to.

Ok, time to go review CHI papers for publication. It would be so much more fun to be reviewing YouTube videos…

Christmas came early: I got a new MacBook Pro today from my employer. Yipee!