Participant information and Streaming, Twitter: #VWworkshop
The research team of the Virtual Worlds Research project at Roskilde University is excited to announce a 3-day cross disciplinary research workshop entitled ‘Making Sense of Virtual Worlds and User Driven Innovation”, June 7th-9th 2010 in Denmark. We aim to bring together researchers with high-end expertise in research on virtual worlds to share distinctive theoretical and empirical analyses of virtual worlds as spaces for sense-making and as sites for user-driven innovation. We will pay special attention to creating a program and atmosphere that promotes joint explorations, interactions and exchange of ideas among invited participants.
The key challenge of the workshop is to jointly explore meaning-making, sense-making processes and user-driven innovation in and/or about virtual worlds through particular case studies of empirical field(s) such as: new market dynamics and management, (and/or) social and cultural innovation, (and/or) knowledge construction. Some of the research questions we will seek to address are:
• How have actors (private, public and academic) appropriated this collection of new media and technologies?
• In what situations do actors of these empirical fields find that it is meaningful to design and use virtual worlds and thereby facilitate innovate practices?
• How are the specific affordances and challenges of working in and with virtual worlds dealt with in practice?
• Through the use of what forms of communication, design and practices do actors of these empirical fields bridge experienced problems and thereby innovate existing and/or develop new practices?
• What particular analytical concepts and theories can facilitate our understanding of virtual world processes of co-design, re-design and user-driven content creation and innovation?
On a conceptual plane, the workshop then aims to explore the ways in which ’sense-making’ and ‘user-driven innovation’ interrelate and how these interconnected processes can be conceptualized and theorized across different situations and cases.
The workshop will be held at Magleaas, located 20 km from Copenhagen.
We will take several steps to share the workshop presentations and discussions with interested parties unable to participate. Abstracts and summaries will be published on the blog along with live-streaming of selected sessions. Furthermore, a selection of papers developed at this workshop will be published in a guest edited special issue of the journal (Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies) Parts of the workshop will also be opened up for virtual participation in Second Life.
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