2nd International Conference on the Pragmatic Web "Building Common Ground on the Web" 22-23 Oct. 2007, Tilburg, The Netherlands www.PragmaticWeb.info Keynote Speaker: Wolfgang Prinz

TRUST AND COMMITMENT: Whether we look at our geo-political and environmental context, work within and between organizations, or our local communities, there has never been a greater need for understanding across cultural, intellectual, and other boundaries. Whether the context is international policy, distributed teamwork, e- business, or community mobilisation, fundamentally, people must build trust and commitment to common goals by talking and acting together. What role does the Web have to play in these complex processes? GET PRAGMATIC: The study of "pragmatics" is driven by an interest in action. It illuminates how it is that we manage to evolve mutual understanding and commitments in conversation. Central to this perspective is the understanding that the meaning of everything we say and do is contextual. When contexts change, meanings change in conversations, documents, and models of the world. This is something that we manage fluently in face-to-face conversation, but when working on the Web over space and time, tools must still support adaptation to new contexts. A focus on pragmatics draws attention to how communicative actions are performed via Web media.

ICPW Flyer [PDF]

• How can we better understand the usefulness, and limitations, of a concept such as "Web Pragmatics"
• What pragmatic design principles improve websites where trust and commitment to action are central?
• What are the tradeoffs for users of more structured Web collaboration media? (e.g. in learnability, scaleability, intelligibility)
• How can participatory work practices and collaboration tools be orchestrated in the design of the standards, data models and ontologies that underpin data-driven Web applications?
• What role does pragmatics play in the design of personalised information and personalised actions channelled through the Web?
• What impact (intended or unintended, productive or disruptive) do different levels of computational infrastructure have on Web pragmatics?
• How can we clarify our understandings of increasingly important concepts on the Web such as "social ties", "metadata", "knowledge representation", and "transaction"?
• If "context" is pivotal in making human interaction meaningful, how can we take context into account to improve Web applications?

Previous work has identified the following as relevant topics to consider:

Theories, Frameworks, Models and Methods

...inspired by Pragmatics and Pragmatism, or less formally, case study reflections on "pragmatic" uses of the Web that supported the negotiation of social/work relationships and common ground

Applied pragmatic theory
Communication, dialogue and argumentation models
Context models
Design processes from requirements to maintenance
Evaluation perspectives and methods
Linguistic metaphor: its value for framing the Syntactic, Semantic and Pragmatic Web
Technology acceptance/media choice theories Integrative frameworks: approaches to integrating insights from component disciplines (e.g. language-action perspectives, cognition, linguistics, semiotics, knowledge representation, philosophy, interaction design, negotiation)

Pragmatic Perspectives on Technologies, e.g.

Collaboration and coordination tools, both synchronous and asynchronous
Modelling tools
Tagging and other annotation tools
Software for forging and evolving social networks

Activities in which pragmatics play a key role, e.g.

Argumentation, dialogue and debate
Business and other organizational transactions
Collaboration, social networking and coordination
Engaging and mobilising the public to act
Information brokering
Learning
Managing collective knowledge
Negotiation, mediation and conflict resolution
Sensemaking, analysis and decision-making

Key Dates

We invite full papers (max. 10 pages in conference format), short papers and design case studies (max. 4 pages), and poster displays:

Submission Deadline: 14 May (17:00 BDT) *** EXTENDED! ***
Notification of Acceptance: 29 June
Final Version: 28 September
Conference: 22-23 October 2007

ACM Conference paper template

Submit revised papers as an Acrobat PDF file to: icpw2007 {at sign} pragmaticweb dot info

Publication

The proceedings will be archived in the ACM Digital Library, and at a permanent URL in a University Library eprint repository, ensuring free access, minimising conference costs and maximising impact. Selected papers will be invited for re-submission to one or more journal special issues.

Conference Chairs

Simon Buckingham Shum, The Open University, UK
Mikael Lind, University College of Borås, Sweden
Hans Weigand, Tilburg University, The Netherlands

Programme Committee

Mark Aakhus, Rutgers University, USA
Pär Agerfalk, Jönköping International Business School, Sweden
Jens Allwood, Gothenburg University, Sweden
Robert Biuk-Aghai, University of Macau, China
Geof Bowker, Santa Clara University, USA
Andy Dearden, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Harry Delugach, University of Alabama in Huntsville, USA
Jan Dietz, Technology University of Delft, The Netherlands
Göran Goldkuhl, Linköping University, Sweden
Tom Gordon, Fraunhofer FOCUS, Germany
Mike Gurstein, Community Informatics Research Network, Canada
Ian Horrocks, University of Manchester, UK
Christian Huemer, University of Vienna, Austria
Myriam Lewkowicz, Univ. de Technologie Troyes, France
Kalle Lyytinen, Case Western Reserve University, USA
Ann Macintosh, Napier University, UK
Clara Mancini, Open University, UK
Aldo de Moor, CommunitySense, The Netherlands
Ambjörn Naeve, Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Willy Picard, Poznan University of Economics, Poland
Simon Polovina, Sheffield Hallam University, UK
Wolfgang Prinz, Fraunhofer FIT and Aachen University, Germany
Andrew Ravenscroft, London Metropolitan University, UK
Chris Reed, University of Dundee, UK
Gary Richmond, City University of New York, USA
Nicklas Salomonson, University College of Borås, Sweden
Mareike Schoop, University of Hohenheim, Germany
Peter Spyns, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium
York Sure, University of Karlsruhe, Germany
Yao-Hua Tan, Free University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
James Taylor, University of Montreal, Canada
Dov Te'eni, Tel-Aviv University, Israel
Bill Turner, LIMSI Paris, France
Brian Whitworth, Massey University, New Zealand
Manuel Zacklad, Univ. de Technologie Troyes, France

Venue

Tilburg is the sixth biggest city in the Netherlands. The name Tilburg was first mentioned in an old document dating from the year 709. Tilburg is found more frequently in historical sources from the twelfth century onwards.

Because of its location, Tilburg is often called the 'heart of Brabant'. Whether you would like to wander through the beautiful nature which surrounds the city or want to visit a museum, Tilburg has a lot to offer.

Culture is an important issue in Tilburg. Although the city does not have many material examples of a rich cultural history, it has a lot to offer in other fields. Almost every evening you can enjoy live shows in the centre: popmusic in 013, jazz in Paradox, classical music in the Concertzaal and performing arts in the Stadsschouwburg. The musea, amongst which De Pont and Nederlands Textielmuseum, stock big collections and they house changing expositions.

Tilburg is easy to reach. There are good train connections with Schiphol Airport Amsterdam (90 minutes) and Brussels Airport. The airport closest by is Eindhoven (40 km).