GTA: Groupware task analysis Modeling complexity

The task analysis methods discussed in this presentation stem from Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and Ethnography (as applied for the design of Computer Supported Cooperative Work CSCW), different disciplines that often are considered conflicting approaches when applied to the same design problems. Both approaches have their strength and weakness, and an integration of them does add value to the early stages of design of cooperation technology. In order to develop an integrated method for groupware task analysis (GTA) a conceptual framework is presented that allows a systematic perspective on complex work phenomena. The framework features a triple focus, considering (a) people, (b) work, and (c) the situation. Integrating various task-modeling approaches requires vehicles for making design information explicit, for which an object oriented formalism will be suggested. GTA consists of a method and framework that have been developed during practical design exercises. Examples from some of these cases will illustrate our approach

Market Prices as Indicators of Political Events Evidence from the Experimental Market on the Czech Republic Parliamentary Election in 2002

According to efficient markets theory, the stock price on a competitive market is the best estimate of the stock’s present value. This is the basic assumption for predictions using experimental markets. The first part of the paper describes the features of such an experimental market, discusses shortly its advantages in providing predictions as compared to traditional opinion polls and identifies some assumptions that can influence its efficiency and predictive accuracy. The second part of the paper is then devoted to the results of the first experimental market organized in the Czech Republic, the political stock market on the Czech parliamentary elections into the Chamber of Deputies in June 2002.Experimental economics; political stock markets; predictions

Forecasting Inflation via Experimental Stock Markets Some Results from Pilot Markets

While there are various techniques of inflation forecasting in use, none of them has proved to deliver consistently more accurate forecasts than the others. That is why most users of inflation forecasts monitor a variety of inflation indicators and forecasts and check them for consistency. This paper aims at contributing to an extension of themethods in use. We propose to conduct experimental inflation forecasting markets in order to uncover market participants' inflation expectations. While the markets directly deliver density forecasts of inflation they also allow to construct mean forecasts and a measure of forecast uncertainty. We also present evidence from a number of pilot markets underlining that the proposed method might enrich the arsenal of existing forecastingtechniques.Inflation forecast, field experiments, experimental stock markets.

Immigrant-Led Organizers in Their Own Voices

Despite record levels of immigration, the United States lacks coordinated and responsive integration policies. CLINIC has recognized the increasing need for immigrants to integrate effectively, and the benefits that this provides for both the foreign- and the native-born. This report attempts to give voice to immigrants as they struggle in their migration and integration experiences. As a result, it contains numerous quotes from community organizers, particularly on why and how they organize

Stable Invitations

We consider the situation in which an organizer is trying to convene an event, and needs to choose a subset of agents to be invited. Agents have preferences over how many attendees should be at the event and possibly also who the attendees should be. This induces a stability requirement: All invited agents should prefer attending to not attending, and all the other agents should not regret being not invited. The organizer's objective is to find the invitation of maximum size subject to the stability requirement. We investigate the computational complexity of finding the maximum stable invitation when all agents are truthful, as well as the mechanism design problem when agents may strategically misreport their preferences.Comment: To appear in COMSOC 201

Calendar.help: Designing a Workflow-Based Scheduling Agent with Humans in the Loop

Although information workers may complain about meetings, they are an essential part of their work life. Consequently, busy people spend a significant amount of time scheduling meetings. We present Calendar.help, a system that provides fast, efficient scheduling through structured workflows. Users interact with the system via email, delegating their scheduling needs to the system as if it were a human personal assistant. Common scheduling scenarios are broken down using well-defined workflows and completed as a series of microtasks that are automated when possible and executed by a human otherwise. Unusual scenarios fall back to a trained human assistant who executes them as unstructured macrotasks. We describe the iterative approach we used to develop Calendar.help, and share the lessons learned from scheduling thousands of meetings during a year of real-world deployments. Our findings provide insight into how complex information tasks can be broken down into repeatable components that can be executed efficiently to improve productivity.Comment: 10 page

The applications of social media in sports marketing

n the era of big data, sports consumer's activities in social media become valuable assets to sports marketers. In this paper, the authors review extant literature regarding how to effectively use social media to promote sports as well as how to effectively analyze social media data to support business decisions. Methods: The literature review method. Results: Our findings suggest that sports marketers can use social media to achieve the following goals, such as facilitating marketing communication campaigns, adding values to sports products and services, creating a two-way communication between sports brands and consumers, supporting sports sponsorship program, and forging brand communities. As to how to effectively analyze social media data to support business decisions, extent literature suggests that sports marketers to undertake traffic and engagement analysis on their social media sites as well as to conduct sentiment analysis to probe customer's opinions. These insights can support various aspects of business decisions, such as marketing communication management, consumer's voice probing, and sales predictions. Conclusion: Social media are ubiquitous in the sports marketing and consumption practices. In the era of big data, these ＂footprints＂ can now be effectively analyzed to generate insights to support business decisions. Recommendations to both the sports marketing practices and research are also addressed

Power in Coalition: Strategies for Strong Unions and Social Change

{Excerpt} For decades, unions around the world, like the teachers\u27 union in Australia, have been struggling. Across advanced English-speaking economies, we have seen the rising power of capital and its increasing influence over government. This has created a hostile environment for unions, characterized by aggressive employers, unfriendly governments, and declining union membership. Unions have been forced to reevaluate their role and objectives. Debates have considered how unions could advance the conditions of their members and whether achieving this goal also requires a more fundamental confrontation with the political and economic logic that underpins this crisis for unions (Hyman 2007). This book is about the promise of successful coalitions. I consider why coalitions have re-surfaced as a strategy and the various ways in which coalitions can successfully achieve social change and rebuild the organizational strength of civil society. To do this, I identify three elements of coalitions using case studies based in Australia, the United States, and Canada. I draw out key principles about how to build strong coalitions and the circumstances under which coalitions succeed. I apply these lessons directly to unions, distinguishing the ways in which coalitions support union revitalization and enable unions to win on issues and build political agendas that they have struggled with on their own

Social movement meetings as organized collective spaces: a hybrid of network, institution and partial organization – case Ethereum Helsinki Meetup

The purpose of this study was to describe social movement meeting organization and to increase the understanding of organized spaces for collective action. This paper contributes to several research streams. Firstly, this study advances a novel research stream conceptualizing social movements as spaces, and particularly as open rather than isolated spaces. Secondly, it raises meetings into the focal point of organizing and offers a multisided examination of meeting organization instead of limiting structure under one label such as network or formal organization. Thirdly, by focusing on organizing based on multiple logics and partial organization this study brings forward the understanding of organizing in the contemporary society as well as organization located in the outskirts of formal organizations. Fourthly, by making a distinction between organizing and mobilizing, this study develops the understanding of how movements can serve as a resource for individual actors and their goals. Finally, the case provides a rare example of a movement born around a nascent digital innovation with possibly considerable impact on society. The research was carried out as a descriptive case study focusing on the meetings of Helsinki Ethereum Meetup, which is a meeting-based organization set up around a nascent blockchain platform, Ethereum. The primary data consisted of eight interviews with the meetup participants. In addition, the case was complemented by an analysis of the group’s social media accounts and membership data retrieved from meetup.com, through which the group was facilitated. The data was analyzed utilizing a dual approach deploying both open coding and theory-based coding techniques. Meetings and their organization were analyzed from three perspectives: a network, an institution and an organization. Furthermore, the case analysis included identifying the ideological, business and political context of the case and the meetup group’s relations to other groups in the field of blockchain technologies. The results of the analysis indicate that the meetings can be described as a hybrid of a norm- based institution, a network hub and a partial organization with less than all elements of a formal organization. In practice, all three perspectives are linked to each other and together complement each other to form one entity. However, this study implies that the specific logics can be regarded as analytically separate to arrive at a more pronounced multilevel analysis of meeting organizing. In addition, the case organization was found to be an example of a pioneer group in its own field being the first and only meetup devoted to Ethereum in Finland at the time of the study. Furthermore, the settings and the organization of the meetup were possibly linked to the group’s position in its field and the nascent developmental state of Ethereum