[chisigmail] SOCIAL INTERACTION AND MUNDANE TECHNOLOGIES WORKSHOP, 26th-27th November, Melbourne, Australia

[Graham, Connor]

SOCIAL INTERACTION AND MUNDANE TECHNOLOGIES WORKSHOP - DIGITAL DOCUMENTS OF LIFE, 
PHOTO SHARING AND MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGIES IN EVERYDAY LIFE
http://www.mundanetechnologies.com/goings-on/workshop/melbourne/
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Workshop on Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies (simtech workshop), University 
of Melbourne, 26th - 27th November, funded by European Microsoft Research Fellowship. 
Contributions in the form of 4 page position papers (ACM SIG format) are invited for a
one and a half day workshop at the University of Melbourne, Australia.
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SYNOPSIS
http://www.mundanetechnologies.com/goings-on/workshop/melbourne/call.html
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"That's a funny kind of thing, in which each new object becomes the occasion for seeing 
again what we can see anywhere; seeing people's nastiness or goodness or all the rest, 
when they do this initially technical job of talking over the phone. The technical 
apparatus is, then, being made at home with the rest of our world. And it's a thing 
that's routinely being done, and it's the source for the failures of technocratic dreams
that if only we introduced some fantastic new communication machine the world will be 
transformed. Where what happens is that the object is made at home in the world that has
whatever organization it already has." Harvey Sacks, 1992:548-9.
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This one and a half day workshop, supported by Mark Rouncefield's European Microsoft 
Fellowship "Social Interaction and Mundane Technologies", and preceding the 2007 
Australasian Conference on Computer-Human Interaction (OzCHI'07) is responding to the
proliferation and developing constellations of 'social technologies' in people's everyday
lives. These technologies are often simple, minimalist and 'loose' and yet support richly
layered social interactions which are sustained and develop across time, place, and even
culture.

This workshop will centre around the social interaction around 3 main classes of'mundane
technologies' - mobile technologies, domestic technologies and management technologies.
We do not regard these as mutually exclusive categories and, indeed, an additional interest
for us is how particular technologies can blur category boundaries and operate across 
different situations. Our particular interest is around the use of digital photos (e.g. 
mobile phone cameras), the generation digital documents of life (e.g. blogs, Web pages, 
text messages, phone call logs) and office technologies (e.g. wordprocessors, email, 
calendar applications) by leaders and, more generally, in everyday life. Put simply, we are
interested in exploring 'real' studies of quite ordinary technologies that have already been
appropriated (Carroll et al., 2002), domesticated (Silverstone, 1991) and subsumed into the 
fabric of family, social and organisational life and do particular work: maintaining a sense
of community; assisting with everyday decision-making; maintaining "social translucence"
(Erikson and Kellogg, 2000); providing channels for emotional labour; and so on. We also 
have a strong interest in how technology supports or fails to support the crossing of 
boundaries in everyday life - between home, work, public and 'third places' - and how we
(use technology to) deal with the 'in-betweeness' of life. We define 'mundane technologies'
as those quite unremarkable technologies that, given the context in which they operate, have
been 'made at home', have become 'ordinary', in plain view yet invisible because they are,
indeed, part of the organisation already in place.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS
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Professor Rob Procter: Rob is Research Director for the newly created National Centre for
e-Social Science at the University of Manchester. Rob's research interests concern socio-
technical issues in the design, implementation, evaluation and use of interactive computer
systems, with a particular emphasis on ethnomethodologically-informed ethnographic studies
of work practices, computer-supported cooperative work and participatory design.
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Dr Keith Cheverst: Keith is a Senior Lecturer in the Computing Department at Lancaster 
University. Keith's research interests lie in the user centered design and evaluation of
interactive systems that utilise mobile and/or ubiquitous computing technologies.
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Dr Dave Randall: Dave is a Senior Lecturer in the Sociology Department at Manchester 
Metropolitan University. Dave's key research interests concern ethnography and design and 
computer-supported cooperative work.
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THEMES AND INTERESTS
Our primary interest is in understanding how 'mundane technologies' really work in people's
lives. We are concerned with (but are certainly not restricted to) answering questions like:
- What do people do to maintain a sense of community through blogging?
- What is the role of digital photo sharing in family life, if any?
- How do managers operate across technologies (e.g. email, mobile phone, Word, Excel) to 
lead in their organisations and what does each technology afford for them?

One of our secondary interests is how mundane technologies can be useful methodological 
instruments in the ethnographic enterprise and how they can be combined with other, more 
'traditional' approaches in social science research, to inform how technology is used and
how practices, rhythms and routines are structured around technology to get work done. 
Our assumption is that these 'mundane technologies' are at a mature level of adoption, with
seemingly well worked-out affordances so that their use has become so tightly entwined with
activity and social interaction as to be almost invisible and thus, difficult to study and
to be surprised by. We are also convinced that the digital trails left my individuals as 
they traverse their everyday lived and what people slough and shed via mundane technologies
can provide real insights for the ethnographic enterprise: browser histories, mobile phone
logs, temporary files generated on-the-fly etc.. We are interested in how these 'digital
footprints' can be provide insights into people's use of technology. Additional concerns are

: how such technologies are 'made at home in the world'; the social translucence afforded by

such 'mundane technologies'; how they are hashed together with other technologies to get work
done: how they are reconfigured over time as functionality evolves, the context of use changes
etc.

AIMS & OBJECTIVES
Among other things, we want to:
- understand the relationship between social interaction and mundane technologies better;
- understand the role of mundane technologies in everyday life better;
- develop a greater understanding of particular mundane technologies in domestic, mobile and 
management settings.

SUBMISSIONS & PARTICIPATION
Attendance at this workshop will be via (a) submission(s) only (although multiple authors can 
attend). Papers should address the themes and interests of the workshop (see above) and can 
include position pieces, work-in-progress, new themes with old data, early reports from the
field, and initial case study findings. Papers should be 4 pages in length and accord with the
ACM SIG format. All submissions will be reviewed and selected on the basis of their relevance
and interest.

Successful authors will be invited to present (10 minutes) and discuss (5-10 minutes) their
papers during the first day of the workshop. The second, half day of the workshop will focus
on developing the themes and papers of the first day. The first day will consist of some formal
talk and questioning, with the second consolidating the ideas in papers towards further
publication. Initially we will aim at a special issue of a journal. Eventually we intend to
publish an edited book from the themes and papers seeded at the workshop.

KEY DATES
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Papers due:
Monday 10th September 2400 (EST)
To: cgraham [at] unimelb.edu.au
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Acceptance notification:
Monday 1st October
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Accepted papers available:
Monday 22nd October
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Workshop preliminaries:
Sunday 25th November
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Workshop registration:
Monday 26th November
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ORGANISING COMMITTEE
http://www.mundanetechnologies.com/goings-on/workshop/melbourne/people.html
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Workshop Chairs
Connor Graham, Researcher, Computing Department, Lancaster University and Honorary Fellow, 
Department of Information Systems, University of Melbourne.
Mark Rouncefield, Senior Research Fellow, Computing Department, Lancaster University and 
European Microsoft Research Fellow, Microsoft Research, Cambridge, UK.
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Melbourne Chair
Peter Benda from the Department of Information Systems at the University of Melbourne
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Contact
For matters concerning the workshop, please contact Connor Graham at cgraham [at] 
unimelb.edu.au
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Program Committee (provisional)
Frank Vetere, Martin Gibbs, Christine Satchell and Wally Smith from the Department of
Information Systems at the University of Melbourne 
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REGISTRATION COSTS
The cost to attend this one and a half day workshop is AUS$200. This will include attendance
at the workshop sessions, materials, refreshments and a workshop dinner.

PUBLICATION
Initially we will aim at a special issue of a journal. Eventually we intend to publish an
edited book from the themes and papers seeded at the workshop.

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Please contact Connor Graham for further information: cgraham [at] unimelb.edu.au.
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