[Taxacom] Call for May 30 workshop participation: Social technology for biodiversity

[Cynthia Sims Parr]

Call for participation
Social technology for biodiversity: Motivation, credibility & community

A workshop to be held May 30, 2008 at University of Maryland in 
association with the Human-Computer Interaction Lab’s annual symposium
and open house (http://www.cs.umd.edu/hcil/soh/)

There have been many recent efforts to engage both scientific and 
citizen communities towards sharing knowledge about biological
diversity. The recently launched Encyclopedia of Life 
(http://www.eol.org) is a particularly high-profile example of a 
web-based project where success (in this case, “creating a website for 
every species known to science”) requires large numbers of individuals 
to contribute their expertise. Others examples are large collaborative 
projects to determine the shape of the tree of life (AToL, 
http://atol.sdsc.edu/).

How do we engage a scientific community in online collaboration? Do we need:

* Financial incentives (if so, how)?
* Non-financial reputation or reward systems?
* More effective technology?
* Training?
* Better analysis of audience needs?
* Assurances of quality?
* Someone else (e.g. not primary researchers) to do the work of getting 
knowledge online?
* A few large, high-quality options for participation or many small, 
targeted, more personally rewarding sites?

Some might suggest that the very nature of scientific practices or 
personalities in taxonomy or field biology precludes online
collaboration. Can we learn from successful citizen science initiatives? 
The social factors involved in such large-scale collaborative efforts
need examination.

This all-day workshop brings together researchers in fields of online 
communities, social networks, and computer-supported collaborative work 
with biologists and biodiversity informaticists to investigate special 
problems and their possible solutions.

The social challenges facing the biodiversity research community are 
arguably its most difficult. Consider joining us for lively discussion 
and plans for how to move forward.

Organized by:
Cynthia Sims Parr (http://www.leptree.net)
Jennifer Golbeck (iSchool, http://clis.umd.edu/)
University of Maryland

To apply:

Send a brief description of your background and reasons for interest in 
the workshop to Cyndy Parr (csparr at umd.edu). Registration will be capped 
at 20 participants. Fee for attending is $60 which includes lunch and 
all materials. It is not necessary to register for the associated May 29 
symposium although we encourage you to consider it.

Co-sponsored by the NSF-funded Spire (http://spire.umbc.edu) and LepTree 
(http://www.leptree.net) projects.

-- 
Cynthia Sims Parr, Ph.D.
Asst Res. Scientist, HCIL and Adj. Faculty, BEES
2117E Hornbake Building
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742
http://www.umiacs.umd.edu/~csparr
301.405.8550, csparr at umd.edu