My goal is to keep improving the slides. I expect there to be a new version every year or maybe every semester. For me, this is an experiment. I honestly don’t know how to collaborate around a format like ODP and ODT. It sure doesn’t feel like source code. So, my best suggestion is that if you find this useful and would like to see it improve in a direction that suits you, please let me know of your suggestions. I might then incorporate the suggested changes into the slide set. In general, my philosophy is that the content will grow, but ideally in a consistent fashion.

Conference Site: Grand Wailea Maui
Dates: 7-10 January 2013

HICSS conferences are devoted to the most relevant advances in the information, computer and system sciences and encompass developments in both theory and practice. Accepted papers may be theoretical, conceptual, tutorial or descriptive in nature. Those selected for presentation will be included in the Conference Proceedings published by the IEEE Computer Society.

Additional detail about the conference may be found on the HICSS primary web site: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu

This mini-track covers all aspects of the Open Movement phenomena, such as:

• Free, Libre and Open Source Software (FLOSS)
• Open Contents (OC)
• Open Access Publishing (OA)
• Open Communities (OComm)

The mini-track continues nine earlier HICSS mini-tracks addressing the trend towards the adoption of open strategies for peer production, collaboration and knowledge creation. Its scope includes emerging technical aspects of open systems. The mini-track solicits interdisciplinary research about these topics, both in the software development field, and addressing the challenging questions raised by these open movements for many different research fields.

The mini-track presents work in a variety of open phenomena, each with distinctive features and issues: FLOSS, Open Content, Open Access Publishing and Open Communities. FLOSS is a broad term for naming software released under some kind of free or open source software license. Currently, development and adoption of FLOSS projects spans a wide range of applications and critical infrastructure. Recent controversy has revolved around FLOSS software that remains tightly controlled by its creators in one or more ways.

Open Content refers to published content released an open license, allowing the content to be modified and redistributed. Examples of Open Contents are Wikipedia and MIT’s Open Courseware. These principles have also been extended to fields such as scientific collaboratories. Open Access Publishing means publishing of works in a way that allows access to interested users without financial or other barriers. Examples include a variety of Open Access journals as well as a variety of institutional or topical paper repositories. Around all types of projects we often find an active and even devoted community of developers, users, leaders, authors and readers, exhibiting complex interactions with each other. Some of the aforementioned projects comprise both types of Open Communities (developing FLOSS and also open content, e.g., Wikipedia and Creative Commons). We also find other Open Communities of users in successful large projects, supporting interactions among users, and also with open multimedia contents provided by users themselves, e.g., YouTube, MySpace, del.icio.us, Diggit, Twitter and Facebook. A recent trend in open communities is the application of crowdsourcing to many new areas.

Researchers from a variety of disciplines have turned their attention to the phenomenon of FLOSS, Open Content, Open Access Publishing and Open Communities, frequently presenting them as an intriguing new form of Internet-supported work and collaboration. However, open collaboration and peer production create new challenges, as team members typically work in a distributed environment, in which contributors can come from many independent organizations, many working as volunteers rather than employees. The empirical literature on software engineering, programmers and the social and technical aspects of software development suggests that such teams would face insurmountable difficulties in developing quality code or coherent information collections, yet in fact some of these teams have been remarkably successful. Study of these open projects may thus provide guidance for improving the performance of these teams and of distributed collaborations more generally.

As well, open development is an important phenomenon deserving of study in its own right. Millions of users depend on systems such as Linux and the Internet relies extensively on FLOSS tools, Furthermore, there exists a clear trend in Public Administrations all over the world (with some remarkable cases like Australia, The Netherlands and Spain) towards the promotion and widespread adoption of FLOSS technologies. But as Scacchi notes, “little is known about how people in these communities coordinate software development across different settings, or about what software processes, work practices, and organizational contexts are necessary to their success”. Wikipedia has quickly become an extensive and widely-used if sometimes controversial resource. Some studies, like the one presented by Giles in Nature suggest that, despite the apparent heterogeneity of the group of authors behind Wikipedia, the accuracy of some of its articles could rival with other traditional encyclopedic projects like Encyclopedia Britannica, but we lack a deep understanding of the conditions of its production that lead to such outcomes.

This mini-track will provide a place for research and conceptual work to address a variety of questions, such as examining the implications of open content from technical, economic and policy perspectives. As well, the mini-track welcomes studies of the deployment of FLOSS and OC studies, exploring the motivations of individuals to contribute to projects. Studies of the structure and function of open teams and communities are also in the scope of this mini-track, including analysis of the social networks created by those communities and their evolution over time. In addition to studies of specific communities, we seek papers that draw connections across different settings to pose more general questions and explanations or to explore the design and analysis of novel systems.

We have chosen these specific focuses because recent workshops and conferences addressing the FLOSS phenomenon, including HICSS, have identified the need for further research on the process of software engineering in FLOSS, the need to compare FLOSS to other software engineering paradigms and models, and also the need to find similarities and differences between FLOSS development and other kinds of open development . Other commentators have suggested the need to study the work practices and social and organizational elements of open projects, as a model for distributed work. In the same way, HICSS has seen an increase of papers on FLOSS, OC, OA and OC Communities scattered across a variety of tracks. There is much intersection between studies of OC development, motivations and impact and those of FLOSS development. Combining these overlapping areas will provide for a great interdisciplinary discussion of the various forms of Open Movements.

Possible topics for this mini-track include:

• Ideologies behind and motivations for participation in open projects
• Member satisfaction and effectiveness in open projects
• Creators’ roles in open projects and their evolution over time
• Leadership, management and policies in open projects
• Distributed project, team, and group development and management for open projects
• Distributed collaboration in and coordination of open projects
• User involvement and user support in open projects
• Knowledge management and learning in open projects
• Issues in distributed software development for FLOSS
• Issues in content development in open content and open communities
• Open projects as Communities of Practice and problems implementing open practices
• Social networks of open projects
• Economics of open projects
• Community development and its evolution in Open Communities
• Information quality and credibility of open content
• Applications and adoption of open project products
• Implementation of FLOSS systems
• FLOSS systems supporting open projects
• Forecasting the evolution of open movements
• New application areas in FLOSS
• Evaluation, comparison, unification, and differentiation of technical aspects of open projects
• Methods for simplifying development, maintenance, and multi-platform portability in FLOSS
• Applications of open source software in education, government and other domains
• Applications of open project ideas in science, e.g. citizen science
• Applications of and methods for crowd sourcing

HOW TO SUBMIT

To submit a paper, follow the author Instructions posted on the conference web site: http://www.hicss.hawaii.edu/hicss_45/apahome45.htm

• HICSS papers must contain original material. They may not have been previously published, nor currently submitted elsewhere.
• All papers will be submitted in IEEE double column publication format.
• Submissions are limited to 10 pages including diagrams and references.
• All submissions undergo a double-blind peer review process. Therefore, author name(s) are not to be included on the manuscript during the June 15 submission process.
• Abstracts are optional, but strongly recommended. You may contact the Minitrack Chair(s) for guidance or verification of content.
• Submit a paper to only one Minitrack. If a paper is submitted to more than one minitrack either paper may be rejected by either minitrack without consultation with author. If you are not sure of the appropriate Minitrack, submit an abstract to the Track Chair(s) for determination and/or seek opinion(s) of Minitrack Chair(s) before submitting.
• An individual may be listed as author/co-author on no more than 5 submitted papers. Track Chairs must approve any names added after submission or acceptance.

IMPORTANT DATES

[Optional] From now until June 1: Prepare abstracts and contact minitrack chairs for guidance and indication of appropriate content.

15 June: Authors submit full papers by this date.

15 August: Acceptance notices are sent to authors. At this time, at least one author of an accepted paper should begin visa, fiscal and travel arrangements to attend the conference to present the paper.

15 September: Manuscripts that have been “conditionally accepted” (A-M Accepted with Mandatory Changes) must be re-submitted by the authors to the Peer Review Site.

15 September 2011: Authors submit final version of papers following submission instructions posted on the HICSS web site. At least one author of each paper must register by this date with specific plans to attend the conference.

15 October: Papers without at least one registered author will be pulled from the publication process; authors will be notified.

MINITRACK CO-CHAIR CONTACT INFORMATION

Wolfgang Bein, Center for the Advanced Study of Algorithms, School of Computer Science, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 89154 USA. Phone: 702-895-1477. Email: bein@cs.unlv.edu

Kevin Crowston, School of Information Studies, Syracuse University, Syracuse, 13244 USA. Phone: 315-443-1676. Email: crowston@syr.edu

Clinton Jeffery, Department of Computer Science, University of Idaho, Moscow Idaho 83844 USA. Phone: 208-885-4789. Email: jeffery@cs.uidaho.edu

CONFERENCE ADMINISTRATION

Conference Chairman: Ralph H. Sprague, Jr. E-mail: sprague@hawaii.edu
Conference Administrator: Sandra Laney. E-mail: hicss@hawaii.edu

1. We have a Facebook page for announcements: http://www.facebook.com/events/221514727865075/
2. We have a travel page where people can plan and discuss travel arrangements http://www.facebook.com/events/314574741939037/
3. ECOOP registration is now live at http://ecoop12.cs.purdue.edu. Early registration deadline is May 1st. Please register early.
4. There is funding for student travel to PLDI+ECOOP: http://pldi12.cs.purdue.edu/content/students
5. Students are also encouraged to participate as volunteers (free ECOOP+ registration): http://ecoop12.cs.purdue.edu/content/call-student-volunteers
6. The PLDI Student Research Competition (http://pldi12.cs.purdue.edu/content/student-research-competition) and the ECOOP PhD Symposium (http://ecoop12.cs.purdue.edu/content/ecoop-2012-doctoral-symposium) are open for submissions.

See you at ECOOP 2012 in Beijing!

I just finished teaching a one-week course on agile methods at Tsinghua University, the top (mainland) Chinese engineering school and one of the two leading Chinese universities. My host told me that I was the first non-Chinese-speaking lecturer to have held such a short course, not only in Computer Science but at Tsinghua as a whole. (I’m sure there have been plenty of prior foreign lecturers, but apparently I was the first one not to teach for a whole semester, but only for this condensed one-week half-day type of course). Yay! Adventure and breaking new grounds is still possible on this planet.

Moreover, with my research partner Prof. Bai, I’ll be leading a joint distributed agile software development project, involving student teams from both Tsinghua University (THU) and Friedrich-Alexander University (FAU). The goal of the project is to learn about what makes or breaks distributed agile development. We’ll start with simple hypotheses but hope to grow this into something larger. We already have student teams, but are looking for more. If you are a software engineering student at either THU or FAU, please come and talk to us!

• on how I’m teaching startupinformatik at my University (in German),
• how that teaching feels like (the AMOS lab course) (in English),
• as well as recent spoils like Mydosis (others coming up).

Enjoy!

I’m an Addison-Wesley author and just received a letter from Pearson, the owner of Addison-Wesley, informing me about their thoughts and steps towards e-books and the digital age. The letter is written as an open letter with no apparent secrets, so I’m making it available here for anyone interested to read and to comment on it.

In general, I have sympathies with companies trying to sustain their revenue streams. I do expect them, however, to understand that change is inevitable and to flexibly react to and to lead that change for their customers’ sake and not just their shareholders’ sake. As an author, I’m naturally in a similar or at least related situation.

The PDF is marked up with numbers. The following list relates to what the (German) letter says on the respective issues:

1. Letter: “The e-book is entering mainstream [...]” – I’m glad to see Pearson realized that e-books are inevitable. While some may argue that’s hardly news I’m well aware of many publishers still fighting this development.
2. Letter: “It is important to maintain price control [...]” – I can also understand that distribution partners are trying to take their share of the revenue and that this is a major struggle for publishers who missed out on creating their own effective channels.
3. Letter: “We believe in the value of content you entrust to us [...]” – Naturally, as an author, I believe in the value of my books. I also hope that this value can be enhanced through e-books and ancillary services! I don’t agree that this naturally leads to DRM (Digital Rights Management) as a primary control mechanism. There may be reasons for and uses of DRM, but not as a general approach to e-books. Here is my thinking:
   • DRM is a nuissance and typically locks me into a platform. As a buyer, I don’t get the full freedom of use that I’m used from trad. books. Personally, I hate this. It is the primary reason why I never bought anything on iTunes and will keep a safe distance to all things Apple and proprietary lock-in.
   • DRM may be an intermediary solution until publishers figure out a better business model. As such, DRM is fighting progress, trying to keep us locked into “old ways of doing things”, thus reducing the potential for innovation and making us all worse off.
4. Letter: “[...] we use DRM to protect your content [...]” – I don’t like suggestive sentences like “it is important for authors to have their content protected” – who said that? Nobody says you should naively dump all works onto the net; the smart publisher uses the net for experimentation with new business models rather than trying to maintain the status quo.
5. Letter: “[...] Rough Cuts gives readers a pre-release version of a book [...]” – I’m reassuring publishers that innovation will happen, like this example given by Pearson here. So, publishers need to improve their ability to innovate, more rapidly. How to feature-differentiate? How to enhance value? How to provide complementary services? That’s Business 101.
6. Letter: “[...] how to consume books will be an important issue [...]” – So it is obvious to me that the publishing products of the future will be much more than just “books” as still suggested by much of this letter.

The good news? Innovation can open up new revenue streams. I actually believe that well-done e-books should cost more than the paper copy. If DRM didn’t get in the way, that is. I certainly would be willing to pay more for the added flexibility and benefits, and the main reason why I’m not doing it today is that I can’t stand the restrictions of being locked into some random platform trying to dictate my usage patterns.

As an author, shouldn’t I simply be behind Pearson supporting them in any way I can? After all, I’ll be getting more royalty payments if Pearson is making more money? The answer is obviously no, not just out of principle, but also because not pushing ahead with innovation is robbing me of additional revenues.

A technology is disruptive, if it allows new companies to shake up an established market and win against established large companies.

I got asked three times this week what “disruptive” means so here is my definition

August 27-29, 2012 | Linz, Austria

The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration (WikiSym) is the premier conference on open collaboration and related technologies. In 2012, WikiSym celebrates its 8th year of scholarly, technical and community innovation in Linz, Austria.  We are excited this year to be collocated with Ars Electronica, the premier digital art and science meeting that attracts over 35,000 attendees per year.

Submissions are invited for the following categories:

[1] As determined at the International Date Line. In other words, as long as it’s still April 7th or April 27 somewhere on Earth, the system will accept your submissions.

The conference program will include a peer-reviewed research track, experience reports, workshops, posters, demos, a doctoral consortium, invited keynotes and panel speakers. As always, the participant-organized Open Space track will run throughout the conference. Evening social events will follow, because wiki folks know the value of a good party for sparking conversation and collaboration. Finally, WikiSym co-occurs with Ars Electronica, and we are arranging experiences where conference attendees can enjoy this innovative and unusual event.

Topics appropriate for submissions include all aspects of the people, tools, contexts, and content that comprise open collaboration systems. For example:

• Collaboration tools and processes
• Social and cultural aspects of collaboration
• Collaboration beyond text: images, video, sound, etc.
• Communities and workgroups
• Knowledge and information production
• New media literacies
• Uses and impact of wikis and other open resources, tools, and practices in fields and application areas, for example:
• Open source software development and use
• Education and Open Educational Resources
• E-government, open government, and public policy
• Law/Intellectual Property (including Creative Commons)
• Journalism (including participatory journalism)
• Art and Entertainment (including collaborative and audience-involved art)
• Science (including collaboratories)
• Publishing (including open access and open review models)
• Business (including open and collaborative management styles)

In addition to research and development topics, WikiSym also invites innovative proposals for open, collaborative art and performance.  These proposals should be made directly to the conference chairs.

General submission instructions and information

All accepted submissions will be published in the WikiSym proceedings and archived in the ACM Digital Library. Long and short research papers will be rigorously peer reviewed and treated as archival publications. Submissions to other tracks will also be reviewed and appear in the ACM DL, but they are considered to be non-archival and may be used as the basis for later publications. Authors of research papers should use the ACM/CHI SIG Proceedings Format, and other contribution types will use the ACM/CHI Extended Abstracts Format. Templates for both formats are available at http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

General submission instructions will be posted and the conference submission site opened around March 1. Instructions for the various contribution types are below.

Research Papers – Long (up to 10 pages) and Short (up to 4 pages)

Research papers present integrative reviews or original reports of substantive new work: theoretical, empirical, and/or in the design, development and/or deployment of novel systems.

Research papers will be reviewed by the Program Committee to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Papers will be reviewed for relevance, conceptual quality, innovation and clarity of presentation. They should be written in English and must not exceed 10 pages (for full papers) or 4 pages (for short papers). At least one author of accepted papers is required to attend the conference in order to present the paper.

Workshops (up to 6 pages, Extended Abstracts format)

Workshops provide an opportunity for researchers and practitioners to discuss and learn about topics that require in-depth, extended engagement such as new systems, research methods, standards, and formats.

Workshop proposals should describe what you intend to do and how your session will meet the criteria described above. It should include a concise abstract, proposed time frame (half-day or full-day), what you plan to do during the workshop, and one-paragraph biographies of all organizers. Workshop proposals will be reviewed and selected for their interest to the community. Each accepted workshop will be provided with a meeting room for either a half or full day. Organizers may also request technology and materials (projector, flip pads, etc).

Panels (up to 6 pages, Extended Abstracts format)

Panels provide an interactive forum for bringing together people with interesting points of view to discuss compelling issues around open collaboration. Panels involve participation from both the panelists and audience members in a lively discussion. Proposals for panels should describe the topics and goals and explain how the panel will be organized and how the Wikisym community will benefit. It should include a concise abstract and one-paragraph biographies of panelists and moderators. Panel submissions will be reviewed and selected for their interest to the community. Each panel will be given a 90-minute time slot.

Experience Reports (up to 16 pages, Extended Abstracts format)

Experience reports are an integral part of the conference program. These are opportunities to discuss how ideas that sound good on paper (and at conferences!) work in real life projects and deployments. Many attendees want to learn from people on the front lines what it is like to do things like start a company wiki, use open collaboration tools in a classroom, or build a political campaign around open collaboration systems. Experience reports are not research papers; their goal is to present experience and reflections on a particular case, and they are reviewed for usefulness, clarity and reflection. Strong experience reports discuss both benefits and drawbacks of the approaches used and clearly call out lessons learned. Reports may focus on a particular aspect of technology usage and practice, or describe broad project experiences.

Posters (up to 4 pages, Extended Abstracts format)

Poster presentations enable researchers to present late-breaking results, significant work in progress, or work that is best communicated in conversation. WikiSym’s lively poster sessions let conference attendees exchange ideas one-on-one with authors, and let authors discuss their work in detail with those attendees most deeply interested in the topic. Poster proposals may describe original research, engineering, or experience reports. Successful applicants will display their posters, up to 1x2m in size, at a special session during the Symposium.

Demos (up to 4 pages, Extended Abstracts format)

No format is better suited for demonstrating the utility of new collaboration technologies than showing and using them. Demonstrations give presenters an opportunity to show running systems and gather feedback. Demo submissions should provide a setup for the demo, a specific description of what you plan to demo, what you hope to get out of demoing, and how the audience will benefit. A short note of any special technical requirements should be included. Demo submissions will be reviewed based on their relevance to the community.

Doctoral Symposium

The WikiSym 2012 Doctoral Symposium is a forum in which Ph.D. students can meet and discuss their work with each other and a panel of experienced researchers and practitioners. The symposium will be held on Tuesday August 28 on the campus of Johannes Kepler University. More information about the symposium’s leaders, goals, submission process and criteria, and funding will be posted shortly.

Open Space

For short and informal opportunities to organize discussion, brain-storming, and other collaborative activities, the Open Space track will run throughout WikiSym. Open Space is an entirely participant-organized track and requires no submission or review.

Note on Publications

Work submitted to Wikisym is published in the ACM digital library. This means it is not open access. However, ACM has a very new service called ACM Author-izer which allows authors to post official copies of their papers on personal websites for people to access, even if those people do not have access to the ACM digital library. We see this as a step to open access and are pleased to support this service.

http://www.acm.org/publications/acm-author-izer-service