Communixx

While the rest of this blog is written in German, I will keep the posts about ECSCW 2007 in English - to allow for better accessibility for all the other ECSCW participants …

For me the first big event at ECSCW 2007 was the workshop on Web 2.0 and CSCW I organized with Wolfgang Prinz. The motivation for the workshop was that we hear more and more about Web 2.0, Social Software and Enterprise 2.0 doing stuff CSCW has been doing in the past - somehow Enterprise 2.0 seems to conquer CSCW ;-). So, we set the target to explore how CSCW relates to these new fields and what we could learn from this to define a future research agenda for CSCW - to reconquer Web 2.0 and Social Software ;-)

There will be a more detailed documentation of the workshop results on a wiki page in the next days.

In this post I will “just” document some thoughts I find particularly worth writing down (for my own microcontent management - and perhaps for your interest) - without any particular order - sometimes my own thoughts (inspired by the discussion), sometimes a documentation of what was said by other participants in the discussion.

• Web 2.0 is: about contribution, fast, open, easy, offers quick rewards, it is easy to present oneself, addresses needs of the single user, builds on shared personal benefits, collaboration happens “by accident”
• CSCW is: about collaboration, groups, group processes, hierarchy, stucture, shared workspaces
• Managers are in CSCW systems but not in Web 2.0 / Enterprise 2.0 systems
• Managers are looking for dashboards - and cannot find them in Social Software tools
• Niels Pinkwart presented five areas where CSCW and Web 2.0 differ: application area (CSCW focused on work), control, use of technologies, success factors (make it as easy as possible in Web 2.0), algorithms (quite sophisticated in CSCW, just collaborative filtering in Web 2.0)
• Another difference was added in the discussion: the way to spread technology / the way to introduce systems
• Why is BSCW not as successful as facebook? - idea of using facebook for organizing projects
• “I could use facebook to do something seriously - but I cannot use Sharepoint to do something fun”
• Wendy Kellogg mentioned an interesting quote from Anderson (The Long Tail) about how to view Social Software: “to evaluate systems you have to think probabilisticly” - not every activity (e.g. every tag) is important/has to be perfect, but altogether it works (rule of big numbers)
• There is still a lot to be done integrating Web 2.0 tool - for being successful in the organisational context - currently there is just loose integration, enough for public use, but not enough for in-company use - e.g. it is not possible to integrate everything published and commented on in different Social Software systems (I commented on this earlier)
• In Web 2.0 more complex group structures are not supported / missing
• Web 2.0 tools make new ways of collaborating possible - so it is not enough to look into how CSCW tools are replaced by Web 2.0 tools, Social Software might co-exist/integrate with existing groupware to open new way of cooperation
• Since it will be an issue in CSCW to decide between different ways of cooperation/communication it will be important to link with management science
• One important issue in CSCW will be addressing media choice issues
• Wolfgang Prinz presented a model for how Web 2.0 and CSCW relate: Web 2.0 provides new technologies, focus on usefullness/freedom, CSCW provides insight in groups and structures; Web 2.0 as Living Lab of Freedom vs. CSCW as Living Lab of Policies

In the end of the workshop I extended the model from Prinz to represent the relations between Web 2.0, CSCW and Enterprise 2.0: Web 2.0 is about the development and usage of new ways of communication and tools for this in the public; CSCW is about organizationally focussed support of collaboration in the enterprise; CSCW should incorporate ideas/tools from Web 2.0 (the Enterprise 2.0 field) in addition to the existing Groupware and work on making the ideas and tools from the two field work together. Research questions can be found in learning about success factors (of Social Software) and non-success factors (of CSCW), in making the integration work, in identifying functionalities of CSCW systems that should be incorporated in Social Software systems etc. See more on the upcoming workshop documentation pages.