Collab-Or-Ate

There have been several news articles recently the awkwardness of blending personal and professional lives. Recent college graduates are realizing that party pictures do not help them get jobs and employers are looking online with more and more regularity to see what their employees are sharing. The WSJ describes a larger phenomenon of coworkers blurring the line and sharing too much with their coworkers, say around the watercooler. I disagree with the point this article makes though about coworkers not being friends. True, coworkers != high school friends, but at least with a portion of your coworkers, you do have an affinity towards them and you do share aspects of your non-work life with them.

On Wednesday, 2:30pm at CHI 2010 (in Regency 5), Anna Wu and I will be presenting a paper that touches on this topic. Anna and I spent last summer figuring out which user behaviors on Beehive indicate that two IBMers have a strong or weak relationship, and then further determining which behaviors reflect a professional versus a personal closeness. As you might expect, many behaviors on the site indicate general closeness, but a few are reflective of personal closeness only. Come to our talk to find out the details! (or, read the paper.)

A Wu, JM DiMicco, DR Millen. (2010) “Detecting Professional versus Personal Closeness Using an Enterprise Social Network Site.” Proceedings of CHI 2010, April 2010.