+ http://csarven.ca/cooling-down-web-science
Amy added http://csarven.ca/cooling-down-web-science to https://rhiaro.co.uk/bookmarks/
web science (11 out of 11)
WebSci2015
ACM Web Science 2015 (Oxford, UK) was the complete opposite of WWW2015. Almost to a point of saturation... but I shouldn't complain :)
With a heavy weighting of social science (or social science influenced) papers, despite still having a majority of computer scientists in the audience, most sessions and panels were about ethics, privacy, digital rights, inclusivity and a 'pro-human' Web. The focus was overwhelmingly social media, with a side of Internet of Things, plus a weird smattering of robot ethics. Usually a focus on social media means lots of SNA, detecting content trends, and user profiling and other things I hate, but instead substantial discussion of people as people, rather than users (or targets), was refreshing. There was also plenty of work on sites other than Twitter and Facebook! Such as individual blogs, social gaming sites, specialist and smaller communities. Though I'm not sure if we figured out any solutions to the personal data crisis.
That's not to say it was all social! There were technical talks too, including a few papers on linked data.
Max presented our paper The Many Dimensions of Lying Online during the first Online Social Behaviours session, and along with the other three papers presented formed a great narrative about the complex and nuanced nature of online identities, and how they both affect and are affected by technical systems.
I'm not going to write up content here. Instead, see all my posts from during the conference at /tag/websci15.
Other things. The structure of the conference felt unusual (in a good way); parallel paper sessions were dispersed amongst panels and workshops. All sessions were very interdisciplinary. The catering was really good. There were fewer people than I expected.
"If Mark Zuckerberg had done GCSE Web Science, how would the web be different now?" How can Web We Want influence new creators/entrepreneurs/innovators on top of educating the users.
Rapidly coming to the conclusion that WebSci15 is going to be everything WWW2015 should have been. Clearly Web needs more social scientists.
Uh oh, WebSci15 is shaping up to be way more interesting and fun than I expected, how will I write a paper during the conference now?!
☑ Attending!
Helping with the pre-conference hackathon at BritishHCI, and returning to my native Lincs for a week.
RSVP
Helping with the pre-conference hackathon at BritishHCI, and returning to my native Lincs for a week.
British HCI 2015
☑ Attending!
RSVP
Amy RSVP'd to☑ Attending!
RSVP
Amy RSVP'd toGoing to WebSci to support Max and Dave presenting our paper about lying online.
Oxford
Longitude: -1.2577778100967
Latitude: 51.751945495605
Our epic poster about lying online, complete with laser unicorns, by eMax
In talk by a computer scientist to social scientists on crawling for SNA. Q: 'is it ethical?' A: 'yes data is public'. Resisting challenge about expectation of privacy cos I want to go to the pub. But honestly, damn computer scientists.