A Collaboration Model for Community-Based Software Development with Social Machines

Crowdsourcing is generally used for tasks with minimal coordination, providing limited support for dynamic reconfiguration. Modern systems, exemplified by social ma chines, are subject to continual flux in both the client and development communities and their needs. To support crowdsourcing of open-ended development, systems must dynamically integrate human creativity with machine support. While workflows can be u sed to handle structured, predictable processes, they are less suitable for social machine development and its attendant uncertainty. We present models and techniques for coordination of human workers in crowdsourced software development environments. We combine the Social Compute Unit—a model of ad-hoc human worker teams—with versatile coordination protocols expressed in the Lightweight Social Calculus. This allows us to combine coordination and quality constraints with dynamic assessments of end-user desires, dynamically discovering and applying development protocols

Mathematical practice, crowdsourcing, and social machines

The highest level of mathematics has traditionally been seen as a solitary endeavour, to produce a proof for review and acceptance by research peers. Mathematics is now at a remarkable inflexion point, with new technology radically extending the power and limits of individuals. Crowdsourcing pulls together diverse experts to solve problems; symbolic computation tackles huge routine calculations; and computers check proofs too long and complicated for humans to comprehend. Mathematical practice is an emerging interdisciplinary field which draws on philosophy and social science to understand how mathematics is produced. Online mathematical activity provides a novel and rich source of data for empirical investigation of mathematical practice - for example the community question answering system {\it mathoverflow} contains around 40,000 mathematical conversations, and {\it polymath} collaborations provide transcripts of the process of discovering proofs. Our preliminary investigations have demonstrated the importance of "soft" aspects such as analogy and creativity, alongside deduction and proof, in the production of mathematics, and have given us new ways to think about the roles of people and machines in creating new mathematical knowledge. We discuss further investigation of these resources and what it might reveal. Crowdsourced mathematical activity is an example of a "social machine", a new paradigm, identified by Berners-Lee, for viewing a combination of people and computers as a single problem-solving entity, and the subject of major international research endeavours. We outline a future research agenda for mathematics social machines, a combination of people, computers, and mathematical archives to create and apply mathematics, with the potential to change the way people do mathematics, and to transform the reach, pace, and impact of mathematics research.Comment: To appear, Springer LNCS, Proceedings of Conferences on Intelligent Computer Mathematics, CICM 2013, July 2013 Bath, U

Human Computation and Convergence

Humans are the most effective integrators and producers of information, directly and through the use of information-processing inventions. As these inventions become increasingly sophisticated, the substantive role of humans in processing information will tend toward capabilities that derive from our most complex cognitive processes, e.g., abstraction, creativity, and applied world knowledge. Through the advancement of human computation - methods that leverage the respective strengths of humans and machines in distributed information-processing systems - formerly discrete processes will combine synergistically into increasingly integrated and complex information processing systems. These new, collective systems will exhibit an unprecedented degree of predictive accuracy in modeling physical and techno-social processes, and may ultimately coalesce into a single unified predictive organism, with the capacity to address societies most wicked problems and achieve planetary homeostasis.Comment: Pre-publication draft of chapter. 24 pages, 3 figures; added references to page 1 and 3, and corrected typ

Towards distributed architecture for collaborative cloud services in community networks

Internet and communication technologies have lowered the costs for communities to collaborate, leading to new services like user-generated content and social computing, and through collaboration, collectively built infrastructures like community networks have also emerged. Community networks get formed when individuals and local organisations from a geographic area team up to create and run a community-owned IP network to satisfy the community’s demand for ICT, such as facilitating Internet access and providing services of local interest. The consolidation of today’s cloud technologies offers now the possibility of collectively built community clouds, building upon user-generated content and user-provided networks towards an ecosystem of cloud services. To address the limitation and enhance utility of community networks, we propose a collaborative distributed architecture for building a community cloud system that employs resources contributed by the members of the community network for provisioning infrastructure and software services. Such architecture needs to be tailored to the specific social, economic and technical characteristics of the community networks for community clouds to be successful and sustainable. By real deployments of clouds in community networks and evaluation of application performance, we show that community clouds are feasible. Our result may encourage collaborative innovative cloud-based services made possible with the resources of a community.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

The LAB@FUTURE Project - Moving Towards the Future of E-Learning

This paper presents Lab@Future, an advanced e-learning platform that uses novel Information and Communication Technologies to support and expand laboratory teaching practices. For this purpose, Lab@Future uses real and computer-generated objects that are interfaced using mechatronic systems, augmented reality, mobile technologies and 3D multi user environments. The main aim is to develop and demonstrate technological support for practical experiments in the following focused subjects namely: Fluid Dynamics - Science subject in Germany, Geometry - Mathematics subject in Austria, History and Environmental Awareness – Arts and Humanities subjects in Greece and Slovenia. In order to pedagogically enhance the design and functional aspects of this e-learning technology, we are investigating the dialogical operationalisation of learning theories so as to leverage our understanding of teaching and learning practices in the targeted context of deployment

Prosuming, or when customers turn collaborators: coordination and motivation of customer contribution

This article investigates the phenomenon of increasing integration of customers and users into the organizational creation of value, focusing primarily on the dissolving boundaries between production and consumption. Concepts such as "prosuming", the "working customer", "produsing" and "interactive value creation" have been used to describe this phenomenon. Within the framework of a research project at the Goethe-University Frankfurt/Main, this debate was investigated theoretically as well as empirically in three case studies. The research question is as follows: Why do customers participate in "new types of prosuming" or "interactive value creation" and how are these processes coordinated by the firms? The results show a considerable range of motives and forms of coordination: The customers’ primary motives to voluntarily assume tasks and activities were both intrinsic and extrinsic in nature. The organizational models identified range from strategies of rationalization to prosuming as a basic business model to the collaborative and interactive value creation between the company and the web-community

Free and Open Source Software in Municipal Procurement:The Challenges and Benefits of Cooperation

The use of free and open source software by municipal governments is the exception rather than the rule. This is due to a variety of factors, including a failure of many municipal procurement policies to take into account the benefits of free software, free software vendors second-to-market status, and a lack of established free and open source software vendors in niche markets. With feasible policy shifts to improve city operations, including building upon open standards and engaging with free software communities, municipalities may be able to better leverage free and open source software to realize fully the advantages that stem from open software development