In this tutorial, we will discuss communities, compare traditional and technology-enabled ones, and discuss some empirical strategies for formulating how to design software that supports online communities. Although a technology-enabled community does not necessarily need to be like a traditional community, one could learn a great deal about why and how human beings congregate by studying traditional communities. This knowledge is expected to be important in designing technologies that will enable efficient communications and learning in technology-based communities. This is also the reason, by the way, why the study of the design of office space that promotes communications and learning could benefit the planning of good online communities.

Social interactions are important in work environments since in addition to cognitive activities, work usually involves procedural and social processes and the fact that human beings are herd animals and they usually like to congregate. Based on current initial experience, technology-enabled communities will broaden even farther the role and scope of social interactions and collaboration in work environments.

Technology has enabled us to develop new types of communities that are not bound to one location where the members interact and communicate using new technologies. Some of the many examples of these non-geographical communities are MySpace [1] and YouTube [2]. Virtual communities are of many sub types depending mainly on the technologies used. Some technologies used in online communities are:

Listserv- by email

Blogs

Wikis

Phone

Video- VTCs, and so on.

In addition to dependence on the specific technology used, the type of the community may depend on the organizational structure governing it, if any. Ideally, the software governing the social network should allow “people build and design their own worlds which is the nature of what people want to do online” [3].

Another form of collaborative work is asking a crowd of people the same questions or letting them bet on specific outcomes and aggregate the results. In his book, The Wisdom of Crowds [4], James Surowiecki suggests that for a crowd to be a wise crowd, it needs to have a diversity of opinion, its members should be independent, and people should be able to specialize and draw on their knowledge. To turn the private judgments into a collective decision, there must be a mechanism for aggregating the diverse judgments into a collective decision. Technology tools are needed to support these types of interactions.

This tutorial is appropriate for novice researchers, academics, practitioners, and students, but should also be of interest to advanced practitioners who are unfamiliar with the specific topics to be covered in the presentation.

The tutorial material will be presented in a 2-hour session.

Nahum grew up in a melting pot- a real one. This multi-lingual environment was cerebral but also literal and oral. So naturally, he desired, since he was a child, to be a scientist, an aspiration he fulfilled specializing in the areas of chemistry, physics, and biology.

Later in life, he discovered that humans cannot live on reason & linear thinking alone, so he went through years of personal transformation. Today, Nahum works on combining creative expressions like storytelling, film, and visual and interactive design with technology, social processes, and strategic planning. He can be still logical (and very much so), but he does it only when it’s appropriate.

Nahum is a Senior Principle Scientist at the MITRE Corporation where he focuses on research and practical applications of presentation and visualization of data and information, as it relates to perception, storytelling, society, and culture. Routinely, he tries very hard not to torture his audience with PowerPoint slides and bully bullets whenever possible.

In his free time, Nahum, among other things, participates in a number of national and international committees. He enjoys life.