....... International Conference
Building the Information Commonwealth

(Virtual) Community Informatics Workshop
for the Community Information Research Network in the CIS (CIRN)

(Virtual) Community Informatics Workshop for the Community Information Research Network in the CIS (CIRN) participants (01 July 2003, St. Petersburg, Russia)
will be held in the frames of the BIC2003 International Conference (http://www.communities.org.ru/conference)

(Virtual) Community Informatics (VCI) involves many facets of supporting communities, including technical, educational, societal and policy aspects. VCI research and activities address all of these. At the VCI workshop, we will focus on the technical aspects of and frameworks for electronic community support. How can we best direct and construct Web and other technologies to support the activities that take place within communities? While our focus is on engineering technological support, we welcome participants interested in all aspects of communities in an electronic environment.

(Virtual) Community Informatics lies at two cross-roads: bringing together people concerned with Local , Virtual and Communities of Practice; and structuring collaborations between researchers and practitioners, including industry, in these three domains. (Virtual) Community Informatics promotes the cross-fertilization of ideas and experience found at this cross-roads, bringing together researchers and practitioners from many varied disciplines.

Workshop Program Overview
  • keynote address
  • overview of and current issues in Community Informatics
  • panel
  • short overview of several nascent (Virtual) Community Informatics activities
  • general discussion
The specific focus of this workshop will be on a discussion of the technology aspects of, and frameworks for electronic community support. The VCI Workshop will lead Prof. Michael Gurstein .

Other Workshop speakers will include:
  • Fernande Faulkner, Partner, EriksenFaulknerFoster (Communities of Practice)
  • Elena Gayevskaya , IATP Kazakhstan Coordinator, International Research & Exchanges Board (IREX), Kazakhstan
  • Ninelle Kobaliany, Information Communication Technologies Coordinator, Project Harmony, Georgia
  • Yulia Leonova, Information Program Coordinator, Soros Foundation-Kazakhstan
  • Sergei Stafeev, director of Centre of Community Networking and Information Policy Studies (CCNS), Russia

For further information and articipation details, please, contact Prof. Michael Gurstein (gurstein@njit.edu).