Workshop on Wide-Area Collaboration and Cooperative Computing

Time: 4:00 - 5:30pm Wednesday, October 19th, 1994

Location: Gold Room, 2nd Floor

Abstract

This workshop is intended as a brainstorming session on ways to extend and develop the World-Wide Web for group collaboration, which may include the sharing of software, data, or human expertise. It emphasizes how the W3 can help people who are geographically dispersed cooperate to create coherent wholes from individual contributions. The Web Interactive Talk is a suggestive early example.

The search for more effective ways to store, locate, retrieve, manipulate, and share networked information has engendered a shift toward explicit representations of knowledge. The workshop will consider how this emergent paradigm relates to the W3 technology needed to support wide-area and large-scale collaboration and cooperative computing. Participation is not limited to researchers actively working in the area; application developers, domain specialists, and potential consumers are encouraged to participate.

A key aim of the workshop is to establish structures within the W3 Consortium for continuing development of the World-Wide Web as a foundation for wide-area collaboration.

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Agenda

Presentations (60 minutes)

Introduction
Tim Berners-Lee
M.I.T. Laboratory for Computer Science & CERN

A Vision of Distributed, Collaborative Enterprises
Robert Neches
Advanced Research Projects Agency

Global Cooperative Computing
Andre DeHon, Jeremy Brown, Ian Eslick, Jake Harris, Lara Karbiner & Thomas F. Knight, Jr.
M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Enhancing the WWW with Co-Presence
Ehud Shapiro
Ubique Ltd

InterNotes: Global Access to Notes Documents and Applications
Reed Sturtevant
Lotus Development Corp.

Conclusions
John C. Mallery
M.I.T. Artificial Intelligence Laboratory

Open Brainstorming (30+ minutes)

After the invited presentations, the discussion will be opened to the full workshop and we'll set some priorities and targets.

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Register Interest in The Workshop

If you plan to attend the workshop or wish submit a statement of interest, please register a position abstract.

View Interest Statements

Add Your Interest Statement

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Meta-Structure of Collaboration and Cooperation

Hypertext Discussion: A WIT structure for collaboration and cooperative computing has been established for people interested in this workshop to discuss the issues. We would like to see this structure capture a representative range of important applications and promising directions for development. By the time we arrive at the workshop, everyone will have the important questions and proposals in mind.

Evolve a Coherent Structure: We have supplied some starting points but you are welcome to create new hierarchies. If at all possible, we strongly encourage you to first try fitting your position statements or reflections within an existing category. Even if the categories feel a bit awkward, building on existing categories will increase the density of the structure, and make it much easier for other people to find what you have to say.

Differentiate Categories: In the initial structure, we used two levels of structure as categories, i.e. topic and proposal. Consequently, the first level of Agree-Disagree below proposal should be used either to further differentiate categories (recursive subcategorization) or to register a position abstract on your research, application, or interest area. Please use agree, whenever you are extending the category system downwards rather than actually agreeing or disagreeing with a proposition.

If the earlier experiments last summer with WIT were a test of how this kind of system might be used by non-specialists, the current round may show how well experts can use typed links. In any event, we will have a concrete, shared experience that can motivate exactly how these systems should be improved. See you in Chicago!

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For further information, please send email to WWW-CCC@AI.MIT.EDU.
John C. Mallery