BLOGTALK 2010 http://2010.blogtalk.net
The 7th International Conference on Social Software
Galway, Ireland, 26-28 August 2010

Important Dates
===============

Regular paper abstracts due: 7 June 2010 (mandatory)
Regular paper submissions due: 14 June 2010
Notification of regular paper acceptance or rejection: 30 June 2010
Camera-ready regular papers due: 14 July 2010

Demonstration and poster abstracts due: 7 July 2010 (no full papers)
Notification of demo and poster acceptance or rejection: 14 July 2010

Brief
=====

* Audience: practitioners, developers, researchers (academia and industry)
* Topics: social software, social media, blogs, microblogs, networks, etc.
* Format: talks, demos and posters, discussion panels, breakout sessions
* Keynote speakers: Stowe Boyd (/Message); Don Thibeau (OpenID Foundation)
* Conference: 26-27 August; workshop ("MicroBlogTalk"): 28 August
* Medieval castle banquet: 26 August (early booking advised)
* Website: http://2010.blogtalk.net/

Introduction
============

Following the international success of the past six BlogTalk events, the next BlogTalk - to be held in Galway, Ireland from 26-28 August 2010 - is continuing with its focus on social software, while remaining committed to the diverse cultures, practices and tools of our emerging networked society. The conference is designed to maintain a sustainable dialog between developers of innovative social software solutions, academics and researchers who study and advance social software and social media, practitioners and administrators in corporate and educational settings, and other general members of the social software and social media communities.

Due to the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, audiences will come from different fields of practice and will have different professional backgrounds. We strongly encourage proposals to bridge these cultural differences and to be understandable for all groups alike. For researchers, BlogTalk is an ideal conference for presenting and exchanging research work from current and future social software projects at an international level. For developers, the conference is a great opportunity to fly ideas, visions and prototypes in front of a distinguished audience of peers, to discuss, to link-up and to learn. For practitioners, this is a venue to discuss use cases for social software and social media, and to report on any results you may have with like-minded individuals.

We invite you to submit papers describing your research and applications at the BlogTalk 2010 conference. To encourage submission of various types of work by researchers, developers and practitioners, papers can be submitted in either of two tracks:

* Regular Track (full paper required, 12-14 pages in LNCS format). We expect papers that discuss mature and implemented work, both regarding (1) practical or industrial implementations and use-case reports for social software and social media, or (2) theoretical and research aspects of social networks and social data. Papers should clearly motivate the approach and provide relevant evaluations. Each submission will be reviewed by three members of the Program Committee.
* Demonstration and Poster Track (a two-page abstract describing what will be presented). This track gives the opportunity to present recent and in-progress work, in a forum that will encourage discussions since this track will be held in a special session with ample time for discussions and networking.

Topics of particular interest include, but are not limited to:

* Applications of social networking;
* Architectures of social software applications;
* Business use cases and return on experience;
* Categorisation, folksonomies and social tagging;
* Collaboration and content sharing on the Web and in the enterprise;
* Data acquisition and data mining;
* Data portability;
* Digital rights;
* Ethnography studies of social networking platforms;
* Human computer interaction;
* Identity, privacy, trust and reputation;
* Real-time Social Web, microblogging and the Mobile Web;
* Semantic Web, Linked Data and knowledge representation for the Social Web;
* Uses in domains: e-government, health care, education, politics;
* Virtual worlds;
* Web standards for social data;
* Wikis and open collaboration.

Why Galway?
===========

Ranked as one of the 25 top destinations to visit in Europe by TripAdvisor, Galway has simply got it all. Galway is generally regarded as the cultural capital of the Ireland and is a vibrant and cosmopolitan city where visitors are assured of a warm welcome. The city's lively arts and social scene, rich sporting culture and reputation as a laid-back festival town mean there is something to suit all interests. And those who want to explore the rugged beauty of the west coast of Ireland (the Burren and Connemara) will have a perfect base.

BlogTalk will be held in the Information Technology Building at NUI Galway, an Irish university established in 1845. NUI Galway is also home to DERI, one of the world's largest Semantic Web research institutes with over 125 people from 27 nations.

What is BlogTalk?
=================

From its beginnings, the Internet has fostered communication, collaboration and networking between users. However, the first boom at the turn of the millennium was mainly driven by a rather one-sided interaction: e-commerce, portal sites and the broadcast models of mainstream media were introduced to the Web. Over the last six or seven years, new tools and practices have emerged which emphasise the social nature of computer-mediated interaction. Commonly (and broadly) labeled as social software, they encompass applications such as blogs and microblogs, wikis, social networking sites, real-time chat systems, and collaborative classification systems (folksonomies). The growth and diffusion of social software has in part been enabled by certain innovative principles of software development (e.g. open-source projects, open APIs, etc.), and in part by empowering the individual user to participate in networks of peers on different scales.

Every year, the International Conference on Social Software (BlogTalk) brings together different groups of people using and advancing the Internet and its usage: technical and conceptual developers, researchers with interdisciplinary backgrounds, and practitioners alike. It is designed to initiate a dialog between users, developers, researchers and others who share, analyse and enjoy the benefits of social software. The focus is on social software as an expression of a culture that is based on the exchange of information, ideas and knowledge. Moreover, we understand social software as a new way of relating people to people and to machines, and vice versa. In the spirit of the free exchange of opinions, links and thoughts, a wide range of participants can engage in this discourse.

BlogTalk enables participants to connect and discuss the latest trends and happenings in the world of social software. It consists of a mix of presentations, panels, face-to-face meetings, open discussions and other exchanges of research, with attendees sharing their experiences, opinions, software developments and tools. Developers are invited to discuss technological developments that have been designed to improve the utilisation of social software, as well as reporting about the current state of their software and projects. This includes new blog and wiki applications, content-creation and sharing environments, advanced groupware and tools, client-server designs, GUIs, APIs, content syndication strategies, devices, applications for microblogging, and much more. Researchers are asked to focus on their visions and interdisciplinary concepts explaining social software including, but not limited to, viewpoints from social sciences, cultural studies, psychology, education, law and natural sciences. Practitioners can talk about the practical use of social software in professional and private contexts, around topics such as communication improvements, easy-to-use knowledge management, social software in politics and journalism, blogging as a lifestyle, etc.

BlogTalk has attracted prominent speakers in the past, and previous keynote speakers include Yeonho Oh, Isaac Mao, Nova Spivack, Salim Ismail, Michael Breidenbr?cker, danah boyd, Matt Mullenweg, and Rod Smith. 2010 will also feature a stellar lineup of keynotes, including: Stowe Boyd, an authority on social tools and their impact on media, business, and society; and Don Thibeau, executive director of the OpenID Foundation. Since one of the main motivations for organising and running BlogTalk every year is for attendees to be able to meet and connect with a diverse set of people that are fascinated by and work in the online digital world, we encourage you to attend and participate in BlogTalk 2010.

Paper Submission
================

Regular Track
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Submissions will undergo a thorough and competitive pre-conference reviewing and selection process. Each (full) paper is allowed between 12 and 14 pages (in the LNCS single-column page format, see http://www.springer.com/computer/lncs?SGWID=0-164-6-793341-0). Please upload your submission along with some personal information using the EasyChair conference area for BlogTalk 2010 (http://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=blogtalk2010). You will receive a confirmation of the arrival of your submission immediately. The submission deadline is 14 June 2010, and abstracts must be submitted a week earlier.

Following notification of acceptance, you will be invited to submit a camera-ready paper for the conference proceedings. The proceedings for BlogTalk 2009 were accepted for Springer's LNCS series; we are currently negotiating with the publisher for 2010. BlogTalk is a peer-reviewed conference.

(Due to the tight schedule we expect that there will be no deadline extension. As with previous BlogTalk conferences, we will work hard to endow a fund for supporting travel costs. As soon as we review all of the papers we will be able to announce more details.)

Demonstration and Poster Track
------------------------------

You must submit a two-page abstract of the work you intend to present for review purposes. You should provide links to web demos of your work. There are no full papers required in this track. The submission deadline is 7 July 2010.

Panels
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Panels should address timely topics relevant to the themes of the conference. Please submit proposals to the Conference Co-Chairs (blogtalk2010@gmail.com) by 14 June 2010.

Social Events
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We will have a medieval banquet on 26 August at Dunguaire Castle, Kinvara, Co. Galway. As there is limited capacity, we advise that early booking for this event will be necessary. More information is available on our website. (There will be two sessions, one at 5:30 and one at 8:45.)

Committees
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General Chair: John Breslin (NUI Galway / boards.ie)

Programme Chair: Alexandre Passant (DERI, NUI Galway)

Programme Committee:

* Gabriela Avram (University of Limerick)
* Daniela Barbosa (Dow Jones / DataPortability Project)
* Anne Bartlett-Bragg (Headshift)
* Mark Bernstein (Eastgate Systems)
* Stephanie Booth (Climb to the Stars)
* Thomas N. Burg (Socialware)
* Rob Cawte (Web Heavies)
* Fabien Gandon (INRIA)
* Josephine Griffith (NUI Galway)
* Conor Hayes (DERI, NUI Galway)
* Renato Iannella (National ICT Australia)
* Akshay Java (Microsoft)
* Philipp Kaerger (L3S Research Center)
* Sheila Kinsella (DERI, NUI Galway)
* Pranam Kolari (Yahoo!)
* Cameron Marlow (Facebook)
* Michael Maximilien (IBM)
* Daniel Olmedilla (Telefonica)
* Davide Palmisano (Fondazione Bruno Kessler)
* Christine Perey (Perey Research and Consulting)
* David Peterson (davidseth.net / SitePoint)
* Jan Schmidt (Hans Bredow Institut)
* Amit Sheth (Wright State University)
* Hideaki Takeda (NII Japan)
* Mischa Tuffield (Garlik)
* Paolo Valdemarin (Evectors)
* Seokchan "Channy" Yun (Seoul National University)
* David Weinberger (Berkman Center for Internet and Society)
* Ton Zylstra (Interdependent Thoughts)

Steering Committee: Thomas N. Burg (BlogTalk 2003, 2004), Anne Bartlett-Bragg (BlogTalk 2005), Jan Schmidt (BlogTalk 2006), John Breslin (BlogTalk 2008), Hong-Gee Kim (BlogTalk 2009)

Contact
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http://2010.blogtalk.net/
blogtalk2010@gmail.com