+Spaces: Intelligent Virtual Spaces for eGovernment

Intelligent Environments most commonly take a physical form such as homes, offices, hotels, restaurants, shops, that are equipped with advanced networked computer based systems, which enable better or new lifestyles for people. However, Intelligent Environments can also take the form of virtual online spaces such as SecondLife, which can both mimic the real world and provide functionalities which could not be provided in reality, such as advanced simulations and movement. There is the growing trend for people to spend more time in such virtual environments and, to these ends, this work in progress paper reports on a new project, +Spaces which is developing a range of virtual world tools for e-government applications, and presents some of the concepts and technical challenges involved in creating these intelligent virtual spaces for e-government. © 2010 IEEE

Increasing engagement through early recommender intervention

Social network sites rely on the contributions of their members to create a lively and enjoyable space. Recent research has focused on using personalization and recommender technologies to encourage participation of existing members. In this work we present an early-intervention approach to encouraging participation and engagement, which makes recommendations to new users during their sign-up process. Our recommender system exploits external social media to produce people and profile entry recommendations for new users. We present results of a live user study, showing that users who received recommendations at sign-up created more social connections, contributed more content, and were on the whole more engaged with the system, contributing more without prompt and returning more often. We further show that recommendations for multiple content types yield significantly better results, in terms of user contribution and consumption; and that recommendations of more active users yield a higher return rate

The Diffusion of ReachOut: Analysis and Framework for the Successful Diffusion of Collaboration Technologies

While virtual communities become more and more dominant, little attention has been directed towards understanding the conditions for creating a successful community. Significant progress has been made in understanding the diffusion of collaborative tools in the workplace. We read stories about the extraordinary success of some communities, and about the harsh failure of others. This paper argues that lessons learnt from these stories should be analyzed using the theoretical foundations of Diffusion of Innovations theories, and systematized to create a set of guidelines for community creators to make their efforts more efficient. We begin by presenting a theoretical background for analyzing technology diffusion. We then analyze the stories of diffusion of ReachOut – a tool for peer support and community building developed in our Research Lab – in two different communities, using this theory. Finally, we propose a framework for planning for successful diffusion of collaborative tools, using our experiences with ReachOut

Why do we ReachOut?: Functions of a semi-persistent peer support tool

Collaboration plays a vital role in today's new business environment. Knowledge that resides within people's heads has become an invaluable resource. Many formal tools, such as e-mail or teamrooms, have been introduced to support formal collaboration and have been studied extensively. However, support for informal communication is still in its infancy. Much work has been done to analyze the functions that informal communication plays in the workplace. Recently, several studies have evaluated the roles that instant messaging (IM) plays in similar settings. Research shows that in the workplace, IM is used primarily for work-related purposes and accelerates the completion of important business tasks. Clearly, new tools that combine both formal and informal interaction can bring organizations tremendous rewards. ReachOut is a tool for semipersistent collaboration and peer support developed by the Collaboration Technologies Group at the IBM Haifa Research Lab. This paper studies the role ReachOut plays in the workplace. We analyzed the collaboration activity of the community of IBM Haifa Labs employees who used ReachOut for a period of two months. As a result, we summarize the important functions played by tools that bridge between formal and informal communication in a workplace-based community