Keynoters
The 2012 International Conference on Collaboration Technologies and Systems
(CTS 2012)
May 21-25, 2012
The Westin Westminster Hotel
Denver, Colorado, USA
KEYNOTES – CTS 2012
Tuesday Keynote: To Understand Big Data You Need More Humans
Zeynep Tufekci
The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, , and Berkman Center of Internet and Society, Harvard University, MA, USA
Wednesday Keynote: Fast, Rich, Easy: The Future of Real-Time Groupware
Carl Gutwin
The University of Saskatchewan, Canada
Thursday Keynote: Hackademia: Hackers, Makers, DIY, and Non-Expert Innovation
Beth E. Kolko
University of Washington, WA, USA
Luncheon Keynote: Building the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase
Rick Stevens
Argonne National Laboratory, CLS and The University of Chicago, IL, USA
Tuesday Keynote: To Understand Big Data You Need More Humans
Zeynep Tufekci
The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC, , and Berkman Center of Internet and Society, Harvard University, MA, USA
ABSTRACT
The spectacular proliferation of big datasets has ushered in a new age of analysis. In this talk, I’ll be discussing some examples from my research on the use of new media tools in the “Arab Spring” and in social movements in the United States to highlight some of the ways in which informed human analysis is crucial to understanding dynamics of the interaction between social movements and Internet platforms. From Arab uprisings to Occupy, from Kony 2012 to other viral videos, new media tools impact dynamics of political action—but not in an online “vacuum” as commonly misconceived; rather, in a complex mesh of human action and connectivity. I’ll discuss issues with conceptualizing the increasingly integrated online and offline movement repertoires.
Wednesday Keynote: Fast, Rich, Easy: The Future of Real-Time Groupware
Carl Gutwin
The University of Saskatchewan, Canada
ABSTRACT
Real-time distributed groupware systems are becoming common, but the types of collaboration supported in groupware are still limited. In particular, real-time interaction is poorly supported, even though in the real world, people are experts at this kind of shared work: for example, in face-to-face settings, people can coordinate fast turn-taking actions smoothly and efficiently, can synchronize their actions without confusion or error, and can effortlessly negotiate shared physical actions such as handing tools and objects to one another. In distributed groupware, however, the environment lacks the rich information of a face-to-face setting, and people's "interactional expertise" becomes difficult to maintain – groupware systems trap users in a 'beginner mode' of interaction where shared activity is stilted, awkward, and slow. In this talk, I will look at how we might provide better support for true real-time interaction, and thus create the rich and subtle environments that are needed for expert group performance in many shared tasks. I will discuss three main requirements: first, groupware must support faster interaction that happens at a smaller time scale; second, groupware must support richer interaction to provide the cues and signals that people use to manage real-time interaction in the real world; and third, groupware must make collaboration easier to initiate and negotiate. I will present research results in these areas, and discuss possibilities for future work in building the next generation of real-time distributed groupware.
Luncheon Keynote: Building the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase
Rick Stevens
Argonne National Laboratory, CLS and The University of Chicago, IL, USA
ABSTRACT
This presentation will step the audience through the development of the DOE Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), a large-scale development project led by Argonne, Berkeley, Brookhaven and Oak Ridge National Laboratories, and includes participation by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory and multiple university partners. Started in 2011, the KBase project is building the first multi domain systems biology knowledge base aimed at advancing predictive biology in microbes, microbial communities and plants. The KBase project is integrating data from many existing sources, building tools and services that will support complex workflows enabling modeling of microbes, reconciling experimental data with computational predictions, and providing a large-number of computational services that go beyond existing integrated biological databases. KBase will be deployed on a purpose-built infrastructure spanning four laboratories that collectively house multiple petabytes of data, and that will support scalable computing resources on both cloud and cluster environments. End users will be able to access many thousands of public genomes and related datasets for microbes. They will also gain access to tens of thousands of metagenomic samples and dozens of plant genomes and phenotype datasets. In addition to providing web and programmatic interfaces to these data, the KBase will enable users to upload their own private data and virtually integrate it with the public datasets for comparative analysis and development of models. The KBase is aiming to enable collaborative workflows and multiple ways of sharing. The KBase development team is integrating resources such as MicrobeOnline, The SEED, RAST, Model SEED, MG-RAST and other systems into a coherent user-oriented computing environment with a unified API. The first public release of the system is targeted for February 2013.
Thursday Keynote: Hackademia: Hackers, Makers, DIY, and Non-Expert Innovation
Beth E. Kolko
University of Washington, WA, USA
ABSTRACT
How and why do nonexperts contribute to innovation? The conflict between expertise and innovation sits uneasily in established institutions, especially in academia where the enterprise hinges on doling out official credentials. But a lack of expertise can in fact drive people to create the kind of disruptive technologies that really are game-changers. This presentation addresses work over the past 12 years that looks at innovation that emerges from non-expert communities. Drawing on fieldwork in low-resource regions, classes where students have startling insights into how to reconceptualize existing technologies, and participation in community-based hackerspaces, this talk identifies patterns across multiple non-expert innovative communities and demonstrates how the lack of institutional affiliation and formal credentials within each community opens up the space for creative problem-solving approaches.