“Infrastructuring Collaboration” is a workshop organized within the 12th International Conference on the Design of Collaborative Systems. As it is in COOP’s tradition “workshops provide an opportunity to discuss and explore emerging areas of research on designing cooperative systems with a group of like-minded researchers and practitioners. Workshops may focus on any aspect of theory or practice, established concerns or new ideas in the field of the design of cooperative systems. The goal of a workshop is to share understandings and experiences, to foster research communities, to learn from each other and to envision future directions.”

Derived from the Latin cum (with) and laborare (to work), collaboration means the act of working alongside someone to achieve something. Framed in contemporary society such a definition emphasises the power of collaboration for achieving purposes that would be challenging for a person alone. However, the collaboration is far from being spontaneous and this is why it deserves the experts’ attention. How to support collaboration in design field was the theme of a full day workshop that we organised on the occasion of the 12th International Conference on the Design of Cooperative Systems. The purpose was to engage participants in a discussion about collaboration while developing a discourse on infrastructuring. Such a term emphasises the complexity of activities that occur over-time in socio-material-technical contexts [1]. By applying the Open Space Technology (OST) [2], the workshop grounded on the question: “What should we consider for infrastructuring collaboration in design/-ing?” The participants were invited to reflect on the conditions for collaborating today that is how to infrastructure [3] collaboration in different domains while experiencing an infrastructuring process.

[1] Karasti, H.: Infrastructuring in Participatory Design. Proc. PDC 2014, October 06 – 10, Windhoek, Namibia (2014) 141-150
[2] Owen, H.: Open Space Technology: A User’s Guide. Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco (1997)
[3] Star, S.L., Bowker, G.C.: How to infrastructure? In: Lievrouw, L.A., Livingstone, S.L. (eds.): The Handbook of New Media. Social Shaping and Consequencesof ICTs. Sage, London (2002) 151-162

To Participate:
Submit a position paper (1500words), which briefly explains who you are; your personal experience and/or future intention to work on areas or initiatives that are connected with the workshop theme; why you would like to participate.

The workshop has a maximum number of 30 participants

Important Dates:
Deadline for position papers: 26 March 2016
Notification of acceptance: 31 March 2016
Workshop: 23 May 2016