SCN: Re: DIAC Workshop CfP: PD of Info/Comm Infrastructures (fwd)

[Doug Schuler]

FYI

This is one event that will take place at DIAC-02 that is
particularly focused on community networks.

-- Doug

   ******************************************************************
   *     SHAPING THE NETWORK SOCIETY                                *
   *          Patterns for Participation, Action, and Change        *
   *                  http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/diac02        *
   * Tomorrow's information and communication infrastructure        *
   *   is being shaped today.                                       *
   *                              But by whom and to what ends?     *
   *                 Seattle: May 16-19                             *
   * Questions: diac02-info at cpsr.org                                *
   ******************************************************************

            (Please forward and re-post as appropriate)

PARTICIPATORY DESIGN OF INFORMATION/COMMUNICATIONS INFRASTRUCTURES

A call for workshop participation.  

See: http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/pdworkshop 

This is an invitation to contribute to a two-part workshop to be held in conjunction with two
          conferences: 
"Shaping the Network Society" symposium (DIAC 2002) Seattle, May 16-
19.  http://www.cpsr.org/conferences/diac02/   Workshop date: May 18

Participatory Design Conference (PDC 02) Malmo, Sweden, June 23-25.    
http://pdc2002.interactiveinstitute.se/  Workshop date: June 24

Participants can attend either one or both of the workshop sessions.

Themes

Public participation in the development of information/communications 
infrastructures is both necessary and extraordinarily challenging.  

Information/communications infrastructures come in many forms. The 
concept is broad, encompassing community networks, national ID schemes, 
privacy regulations, broadband networks, accessibility policies, classification 
schemes (see Bowker and Star), network protocols, public kiosks, as well 
as many other services and facilities we tend to take for granted once 
developed. The unifying idea is that infrastructures should be widely available 
and useful for a variety of public interest purposes. To work well they need 
to be readily at hand to fit a wide range of everyday tasks, yet be largely out 
of sight and mind when not needed so they don’t get in the way. 

The desiderata for good infrastructures pose contradictory implications for 
design.  On the one hand, for them to fit well with the way people live, they 
need to be adapted through many iterations of trial and refinement by their 
users.  Also, since they are needed for everyday life, people have a vital 
stake in their development and hence a right to be heard in their design.  On 
the other hand, the inherent features of infrastructure pose severe challenges 
to effective participation of their users (and citizens generally) in their creation 
and maintenance. Information/communications infrastructures typically are 
large, distributed, expensive and complex. In their crucial formative stages, 
those few with a strong financial interest enjoy disproportionate influence in 
their development.  Once infrastructures are established, their desired 
invisibility then discourages careful attention to refinement and maintenance, 
until the breakdowns become widespread and seemingly intractable. Their 
inherent unwieldiness discourages the long-term engagement necessary to 
accomplish significant improvements. Many people have a stake but in 
differing ways, so consensus is hard to achieve, particularly when 
participation is broadly based.  

Sometimes public involvement in infrastructure development is oppositional, 
aimed at stopping proposals that many people view as threatening (such as 
resisting the development of privacy invasive population identification 
schemes). While this may simplify the issues as well as the participatory 
process, it still leaves open the often thornier question of exploring what 
positive alternatives could be in the public interest.

But this paints too bleak a picture. It is important to observe that some very 
good infrastructures have been developed, reflecting the artfully integrated 
diverse contributions of many people.  How has this been achieved?  Each 
particular infrastructure development offers its own set of opportunities and 
constraints that may be exploited.  How can we learn to read these situations 
and find effective ways to engage with others in developing infrastructures 
that work well for as many people as possible, and that can evolve as needs 
shift? These are the central questions this workshop explores.

Goals

The main purpose of this workshop is to enable people who are actively 
concerned with some form of information/communications infrastructure 
development to get to know each other better and learn from each other’s 
experiences.  This will be done through the sharing of individually contributed 
short position statements, first circulated before the workshop and then 
presented and discussed at the workshop. These individual positions will 
provide the basis for the drafting of a summary statement on the central 
workshop themes. This summary would be reported to the DIAC 
symposium participants and passed to the PDC workshop a month later for 
similar discussion, refinement and reporting. 

The final summary statement, along with selected individual revised position 
statements, would then be offered for publication in a special issue of the 
CPSR Journal or other suitable publishing venue.

A secondary purpose of the workshop is to help link these two CPSR-
sponsored events and their distinctive but compatible themes. Also, it is to 
encourage the participation of Europeans who can't make it to DIAC and 
North Americans who can't make it to PDC.

Organizer

    Andrew Clement
    Coordinator, Information Policy Research Program
    Director, Collaborative Graduate Program in Knowledge Media Design
    Professor, Faculty of Information Studies
    University of Toronto
    140 St. George Street
    Toronto, ON Canada M5S 3G6
    +1 416 978-3111 (office)  +1 416 971-1399 (fax)
    clement at fis.utoronto.ca
    http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp 

The topic of this workshop is close to my research interests in
participatory design and information policy development. I have previously
organized similar workshops at CSCW, Interact, IFIP W9.1 (Computers and
Work) conferences and other research events.  



Participants

Prospective participants are asked to submit 2-5 page position papers, as 
RTF or HTML files,  following the instructions available at the workshop 
website: http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/pdworkshop 

Position statements should report experiences with or reflections on the 
participation of users/citizenry in developing some aspect of 
information/communications infrastructures. In particular, participants are 
asked to highlight the relevant challenges facing public participation 
mentioned above and what can be learned for future participatory initiatives.

In addition, short bios should be included that highlight the participant’s 
relevant background and affiliations, as well as contact information. 

The position statements and bios will be circulated in advance to all 
workshop participants at both conferences via a password protected area of 
the workshop website. These statements will form the basis of the workshop 
presentations, discussions and summary reports. 

Until after the workshops, the position statements and bios will only be 
available to those who have expressed an interest in participating in the 
workshops. Depending on the workshop discussions, access may then be 
made more widely available.

Participation is by invitation only, with a maximum currently set at 15 
participants. If space is available after those submitting position statements 
have been invited, then further invitations will be based on those who have 
expressed an interest in participating and have sent a short bio, preferably 
before the submission date. 

Submission deadlines

For DIAC conference: 	May 8. 	Notifications by May 11. 

For PDC conference:     	June 1. 	Notifications by June 10. 
	The early registration deadline for this conference is May 1

Instructions for submitting position statements and bios can be found at: 
http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/research/iprp/pdworkshop

Queries should be addressed to: iprp at fis.utoronto.ca 


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