• “Asymmetrical collaboration in print shop-customer relationships”, Jacki O’Neill – a paper from Xerox Research Centres Europe and Webster: customers (design shops) have to collaborate with print shop to get consistent colors (color managed workflow); the “standard” system intended for the task (color spaces, CMYK, …) does not work; there are several ad hoc solutions that have developed to address this task (practical color management) – tailored to real practicalities, but costly!!!
  
  interesting application area, the main message was that automation (color management) may not be the best solution for such areas; better support communication and collaboration with sets of tools and technologies …

• “Dressing up for school work – supporting a collaborative environment with heterogeneous technology”, Ole Sejer Iversen: studying children in schools with CSCW methodology (work practice studies, field studies, interaction design); presented some of the interaction design that was done in the project; heterogeneity in school work: multiple intelligences (Gardner 1993), 20 stimuli that influence school work (Dunn and Dunn 1993); participatory design with children and teachers to build heterogeneous technologies to support children’s collaborative school work; four IT concepts developed; The Wisdom Well – an interactive floor for kinesthetic collaboration (combine learning and physical exercise) – interesting ubiquitous computing application (well integrated in learning environment); The Hycon:Explorer – a geo-spatial hypermedia system for nomadic learning: an application for mobile phones combining context awareness (GPS) with documentation facilities, outside assignments, annotate and document places they go to; eCELL – a niche for collaboration in adhocracies; eBAG – a personal, digital repository for school work, carry electronic files from device to device using mobile phone and bluetooth
  
  alltogether some very nice ubiquitous computing applications for school – well rooted in ethnographic research and participatory design – and well implemented
  
  evaluation of tools was done in school; quote: “this was the second day of evaluation; on the third day things went crazy; children discovered completely new ways of using the technologies, …”
  
  Link to group: http://www.interactivespaces.net/

• “Exploring cooperation through a binder: A context for IT tools in elderly care at home”, Alexandra Petrakou: agenda: 1) explore the complex cooperation in elderly care at home, 2) the focus is on the actual use of a (non-digital) binder – as tool for cooperation and coordination between care personal, 3) through focusing on the binder, issues crucial to cooperation in general become visible; ad 2) binder is placed in the care receivers homes, different types of documents in binder; problem: binder only accessible in care receivers homes; cannot be used for preparation;
  
  summary: a nice analysis of artefact based collaboration and coordination (in a particular setting); but in my opinion too little results that might inform future design/development

Btw: One observation: I see MacBooks and PowerBooks everywhere – seems to me that two thirds (or more) of all laptops here are Macs …