COINS13: Call for Submissions

When: August 11-13, 2013
Where: Santiago de Chile, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile
Papers: Paper submission deadline May 15, 2013 (extended to May 31)
Workshops: Proposal submission deadline May 15, 2013 (extended to May 31)
Artifacts: Proposal submission deadline June 1, 2013
Web: http://www.coinschile.com

The Collaborative Innovation Networks Conference (COINS) invites you to submit your papers, workshop proposals, and artifacts to the 4th annual international conference to be held in Santiago de Chile, hosted by Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile from August 11 to August 13, 2013. COINS13 brings together practitioners, researchers and students of the emerging science of collaboration to share their work, learn from each other, and get inspired through creative new ideas. Conference activities will take place throughout the historic cities of Santiago and Valparaiso. Attendees will be encouraged to engage with the community, meet local entrepreneurs, artists, and designers, take a guided tour of the city, and participate in hands-on workshops and interactive sessions.

Where science, design, business and art meet, COINS13 looks at the emerging forces behind the phenomena of open-source, creative, entrepreneurial and social movements. Through interactive workshops, professional presentations, and fascinating keynotes, COINS13 combines a wide range of interdisciplinary fields such as social network analysis, group dynamics, design and visualization, information systems, collective action and the psychology and sociality of collaboration.

The best papers will be selected for a special issue of the International Journal of Organisational Design and Engineering (IJODE; http://www.inderscience.com/jhome.php?jcode=IJODE).

Program Chairs: Marisa Von Bülow (UC) & Cristobal Garcia (UC)
Proceedings Chair: Peter Gloor (MIT)

Learning from the Swarm

The COINS13 conference committee seeks original paper submissions, creative workshop ideas and concepts, unique artifacts or installations, and engaging rapid-fire presentations celebrating the theme “Learning from the Swarm”. This year we are asking what is relevant with regard to the innovative powers of creative and civic swarms, what are the observable qualities of virtual collaboration and mobilization, and how does the quest for global cooperation affect local networks. We invite both theoretical and practice-based dialogues, case studies, scientific papers, technological solutions, research studies, and interactive artifacts that thoroughly reflect this year’s conference theme.

We invite researchers and designers to submit their latest scientific results and experimental design solutions as full research papers, workshop proposals, and artifact demonstrations in the following conference themes:

● Networks & Collaboration in a Global Context: Optimization through Collaboration | Teamwork through virtually enhanced Collaboration | Measuring the performance of COINs | Patterns of swarm creativity
● Group Dynamics, Social Movements & Net Activism: Collaborative Learning | Collaborative Leadership | Design & visualization of interdisciplinary collaboration | Virtual Teaming
● Individual & Social Learning: The psychology and sociality of collaboration and collective action | Social Behavior Modeling | Social Intelligence and Social Cognition
● Tools and Methods: Social System Design and Architectures | Dynamic Social Network Analysis | Semantic Social Network Analysis | Actor Network Theory

The increase of online social network communication opens up unprecedented opportunities to read the collective mind, revealing trends while they are still being hatched by small groups of creative individuals. The Web has become a mirror of the real world, allowing researchers, in fields of social & behavioral science as well as design, to study and better understand why some new ideas change our lives, while others never make it from the drawing board of the innovator. Collaborative Innovation Networks, or COINs, are cyberteams of self-motivated people with a collective vision, enabled by technology to collaborate, challenge the status-quo and innovate by sharing ideas, information, resources and work. COINs are powered by swarm creativity, wherein people work together in a structure that enables a fluid creation and exchange of ideas. ‘Coolhunting’ – the discovering, analyzing, and measuring of trends and trendsetters as well as movers and shakers – puts COINs to productive use.

Below are the details and deadlines for the submission of Papers, Workshops, and Artifacts sessions.
For up to date information and additional details please visit our website: www.coinschile.com
To engage with the broader COINs community, follow us on twitter @coinschile and join our Facebook page (Collaborative Innovation Networks: COINs Conference).

Papers:
Submission Deadline May 15, 2013 (extended to May 31)
COINS13 seeks original, high-quality papers that reflect the full breadth and scope of collaboration science and design including: bold research ideas, conceptual developments, research investigations, methodological & theoretical advances, design ideas, development experiences and more. Submissions should report original research, reflections on theoretical concerns, methodological advances, or other insights that contribute to our understanding of all aspects of collaboration and help advance the state of knowledge for the community. We encourage perspectives from diverse disciplinary backgrounds. Papers should be submitted in .doc or .pdf format.
Authors are required to attend the conference to present their work.
Submit papers by May 31, 2013 on EasyChair: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coins13

Important Dates:
May 15, 2013 | Deadline for Paper Submissions (extended to May 31)
June 30, 2013 | Author(s) will be notified of provisional acceptance of the paper
July 30, 2013 | Final copy for conference to publications chair
August 11-13 | Paper presentations at COINS13, Santiago, Chile


Workshops: Proposals Submission Deadline May 15, 2013 (extended to May 31)
Workshops will take place during the conference and will form part of the main program. This year we are accepting proposals for both two-hour and four-hour sessions.
Workshops are intended to provide a forum for exchanging ideas, sharing experiences, fostering conversation and research communities, learning from each other, exploring controversies, engaging in debate, envisioning future directions and elaborating new methods and perspectives.
Workshop activities can range from open forum discussion, to demonstrations or presentations with discussion, to collaborative activities such as structured brainstorming, illustrative games or role-plays. Whatever the focus or format, organizers will be required to schedule time for conversation, reflection, discussion, and debate. Although we envision most workshop activities to take place in one setting, let us know if your workshop will venture out into other sites in Santiago.

Workshop proposals should include:

● a summary of 500 words describing the theme(s) of the workshop
● a longer detailed description of the workshop structure, activities and goals
● the names, contact information and background of the organizer(s)
● the maximum number of participants you'd like to attend the workshop
● anticipated A/V requirements.

Please be as specific as possible as it helps us in selection, and in helping you plan the workshop.
Workshop participants will be registered on a first come first served basis by the conference committee, so the workshop organizers will not be able to select their participants.
Accepted workshops will be publicized via the COINS13 website within a month after organizers are notified. Workshop organizers will also be encouraged to promote COINS13 and their workshops to potential attendees.

Submit proposals by May 15, 2013 to:https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coins13. Additionally, please include your email address and other contact details.

Important Dates:
May 15, 2013 | Deadline for workshop submissions (extended to May 31)
June 30, 2013 | Author(s) will be notified of provisional acceptance of the workshop
August 11-13 | Workshop at COINS13, Santiago, Chile


Artifacts:
Proposals Submission Deadline June 1, 2013
The artifacts category seeks to provide participants with an opportunity to present work in a forum that facilitates open discussion and enables direct interaction with conference attendees. A dedicated session will be held during the conference to present the artifacts.

Artifacts can be anything from design sketchbooks, to reformed organizational processes, to ads you’ve produced, to products you’ve made, to short films, to conceptual objects, etc. We encourage submissions that are thought provoking and visually engaging, and which cover exploratory/speculative work, smaller projects, unusual representations of ethnographic work, and so on. The form of the presented materials is open. In keeping with the category title artifacts though, we encourage submissions based on some material instantiation that can be exhibited at the conference. Our hope is that it will be the ‘thinginess’ of the artifacts that will, in part, prompt interaction with and between conference attendees.

Submissions should include a single page describing or illustrating the proposed submission (the one page inclusive of any and all figures and references, where appropriate). This page should convey to reviewers what the artifact being submitted is and how it is hoped to provoke discussion. The page will also be included in the published conference proceedings.

Also included in the submissions should be a paragraph and image (no more that 150 words) that can be displayed on the conference website.

Please submit these submission materials by June 1, 2013 to: https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=coins13 Additionally, please include your email address and other contact details.

Important Dates:
June 1, 2013 | Deadline for artifacts submissions
June 30, 2013 | Author(s) will be notified of provisional acceptance of the artifact. Accepted submissions will have their 150 word descriptions posted on the COINS13 website. Descriptions (including images) of accepted artifacts will be published in the COINS13 Proceedings.
July 30, 2013 | Final papers due
August 11-13 | artifacts presentations at COINS13, Santiago, Chile. The artifact itself should be transported to Santiago for the conference.

Academic Committee:
Jose Allard, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Jana Diesner, UIUC
Jorge Fabrega, Universidad Adolfo Ibañez
Kai Fischbach, Bamberg University
Karin Frick, GDI
Sebastián Gatica - Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Takashi Iba, Keio University
Emmanuel Lazega, Paris Dauphine
Ionna Likorenzu, INRIA
Takis Metaxas, Wellesley & Harvard
Meghan Pierce, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Alvaro Pina-Stranger, Ecole des Mines
Johannes Putzke, University of Cologne
Carlos Rodriguez-Sickert, Universidad del Desarrollo
Erica Salvaj, Universidad del Desarrollo
Daiane Scarboto, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile
Detlef Schoder, Cologne University
Yang Song, University of Amsterdam
Ruth Stock-Homburg, Technical University of Darmstadt
Marisa Von Büllow, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile

Steering Committee:
Cristobal Garcia, PUC
Peter Gloor, MIT
Julia Gluesing, Wayne State University
Casper Lassenius, Aalto University
Christine Miller, SCAD
Maria Paasivaara, Aalto University
Ken Riopelle, Wayne State University

More information: http://www.coinschile.com

CALL FOR LISTENERS/PARTICIPANTS

Conditions of Mediation: Phenomenological Approaches to Media, Technology and Communication

2013 International Communication Association (ICA) Preconference

ICA Theory, Philosophy and Critique Division

17 June 2013, Birkbeck, University of London

Conference website (includes full conference programme and registration details):

http://conditionsofmediation.wordpress.com

Confirmed keynote speakers:

· Dr David Berry, Swansea University
· Professor Nick Couldry, Goldsmiths, University of London
· Professor Graham Harman, American University of Cairo
· Professor Shaun Moores, University of Sunderland
· Professor Lisa Parks, University of California Santa Barbara
· Professor Paddy Scannell, University of Michigan


Conference Outline:

Media theory seems to have reached a moment in which it is effectively orthodox to presume we must pay attention first and foremost to the intricacies of everyday experience. Ethnographic audience studies, for example, have attacked assumptions that there is a discrete relationship between media content and audiences, arguing that media forms, content and technologies have indeterminate and multifaceted significance within the daily rhythms and spaces of their everyday lives. Studies of digital and networked media, meanwhile, have put into question the very notion of ‘audiences’ as the starting point for understanding mediated experience.

For some, accounting for the intricacies of everyday mediated experience has implied asking people what they actually do with media. But for others this is not enough: instead, the question is what constitutes the conditions of media experience in the first place. How do political configurations of discourses and inherited dispositions prefigure mediated action? How do material arrangements themselves constitute environments for mediated experience? How might we account for nonhuman agency, for example the ways in which software objects interact not only with human perceptions but also each other? Such questions point to a renewed confidence in explaining not just how but also why media, technology and communication are experienced as they are – all the while resisting a reversion to functionalism.

These interests in the very conditions of mediation suggest, if sometimes only implicitly, an emerging interest in a phenomenology of media. Indeed, phenomenology – broadly the structuring of perception – has seemingly obvious relevance for recent academic interests in media experience. Yet its use or invocation in media studies has been scattered. While this might simply reflect the considerable diversity of phenomenological philosophies and their applications, there have also been concerted efforts recently to rethink phenomenology across the social sciences and humanities. Paired with recent interests in mediated experience, the time seems apt to reassess what it might mean to theorize media phenomenologically.

Conditions of Mediation seeks to bring together scholars from a very wide range of perspectives – such as media history, media archaeology, audience studies, political theory, metaphysics, software studies, science and technology studies, digital aesthetics, cultural geography and urban studies – to reflect explicitly on the phenomenological groundings of their work on media. The phenomenological thinking to which participants might connect will be broad-based, ranging from core thinkers such as Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty and Sartre to those with looser affiliations to phenomenology per se, for example Arendt, Bergson, Bourdieu, Deleuze, Garfinkel, Ingold, Latour, Whitehead and Harman.

In short, the overall aim is that this conference goes beyond a mere congregation of media phenomenologists. Instead, it will encourage critical reflection on what various readings of phenomenology might offer media and technology studies that other approaches cannot. Conversely, it will also welcome reflections on the limits of phenomenological approaches in philosophical, theoretical, political and empirical terms.

If you have any inquiries, please email both:
Scott Rodgers (s.rodgers@bbk.ac.uk) and Tim Markham (t.markham@bbk.ac.uk)